Not-Really Off-Topic: Hope, Comic Books & MAN OF STEEL

After recently re-watching MAN OF STEEL I've come to the conclusion that my original review was not as positive as it should've been. While I still maintain that it was not the best superhero or comic book based film of the year (that honor is taken, IMHO, by THOR: THE DARK WORLD), it is actually a better film than I remember it being. It is quite good.

And like so many of the comic book based films, it has something that has been lacking in too many comic books recently: a theme of ultimate hope. Whatever else is true of MAN OF STEEL, it really did engender this feeling that there is something inherently salvific or hopeful about life. That life itself is salvation. It faces up to the cosmic proportions of the evils it faces, and represents the terrors of life in properly extreme forms. But it holds up the conviction that however dark the world may seem, the darkness cannot overcome the light and the light is grounded in something even greater, for the light is aligned with the good, which is the ultimate power in the universe.

The recent INFINITY and FOREVER EVIL story lines in Marvel and DC comics have been well-written and entertaining. They work as art. But they lack this sense, so present in so many of the great story lines of the past, that good can and will triumph over evil eventually. I'm all for dark and foreboding periods in comic book story lines for without them tensions could not be properly ramped up to give us good dialogue and effective pathos. But comic book writers should see the success of the recent films as a sign that despite the need for realism most comic book readers demand, the general public wants and needs a sense of the salvific, of the hopeful.

It is in art and fiction and in mythos that the human soul expresses its conviction that goodness is truly Ultimate and so life itself is redemptive or at least contains within it the potential for redemption. This conviction may be nothing more than illusion, but in our hearts I do not think we believe this to be so. Good comic book art is at its heart both apocalyptic and soteriological. Too many recent comic books have expressed the former without the latter. Such art can be entertaining and riveting, but it lacks the power to open people up to something better, a potential I explored recently in another post.