ince their birth, superheroes have always been characterized by a very strong look: their bright costumes, their spectacular powers, their dramatic metamorphosis have profoundly marked the visual imagination of our time, often symbolically representing the transformations of our culture. Since around the 30s of last century, they accompanied America during the Second World War, embodying its fears and ideals; resurrected after a period of neglect, they told the tensions and uncertainties of the cold war and of the nuclear fear. Mostly these two periods, known as Golden and Silver Age of Comics, shaped superheroes’ image and identity: powerful symbols, embodiment of values and ideals without compromise, representation, maybe schematic, but clear, of the struggle between good and evil. At the time when Hitler, and later Stalin, used to represent absolute evil, the conflict between Captain America and Red Skull, or Superman and his struggle to defend the American values of freedom and democracy took an ideological value, became the representation of a culture that identified with its champions. In later years, these dichotomies have largely faded, while superheroes had to deal with a more complex and diversified reality: good and evil appeared no longer so distinct, heroes proved to be subject to doubts and errors, and villains revealed, at times, a complexity that made them look more human. From an artistic point of view, this was not a bad thing, indeed: characters abandoned the one-dimensional personality that had characterized them for many years, become alive, more interesting, more real; their stories lost their stiffness and the naivety of the past, gained shades, atmosphere and depth. However, in the course of this transformation something probably got lost: when superheroes realized that their costumes were a little ridiculous, and replaced them with more credible clothes; when they understood that their battle cry were sometimes a little too much; when they ceased to be asexual figurines and got engaged, married, divorced; when they realized they were gay; when basically they become real people, with vices and virtues like real people, they inevitably ceased to be the embodiment of an ideal, ceased, at least in part, to be symbols. This is perhaps one of the reasons why, as they reread today the myth of the superhero and his iconography, some do so playing with a taste and aesthetics that appeal to the Golden and Silver Age of Comics. Our culture, nowadays, understands and identifies with these characters, with their complexity, weaknesses, flaws; but when it’s up to the heart, when we feel the need for a clear signal, nostalgia emerges for those silly pictures what, in the years of our childhood, used to describe a simple world. The search for a graphical impact, for a penetrating communication gesture, emotional more than rational, goes to look for its sources of inspiration in those years, in those untouched ideals, in those atmospheres. It’s probably just a game: or maybe it means that, now as then, after the years of complexity, a threatened world is seeking again the consolation of less complex certainties.
Alex Gross
Danny Haas
Eric Tan
http://erictanart.blogspot.com/
Mark Grambau
Marko Manev
http://www.behance.net/markomanev
Michael B. Myers
