Superhero Theme Justification

The superhero theme fits perfectly into the context of this class. We did an entire Watchmen unit that had to do mainly with superheroes. There are many different lenses that go with superheroes and their comics. The different lenses we covered in class that could be used to analyze the superheroes include, the feminist/masculine lens, the racial lens, the power lens, and the underground/mainstream lens. Each of these can give a deeper description of what to expect from them and the message they are trying to get across. They all provide a unique perspective and provide different details. The class encourages us to look at things in a different way in order to understand it and that is what these lenses help us do.
This class also covered the different genres that a book or movie could be put into. Superhero comics can represent a variety of different genres too. They could fit into the science fiction genre, since they contain characters with abnormal abilities, they can take place in settings real people can't be and the characters look different from how normal people would look. The whole superhero franchise has it's own sub genre that is completely its own. They all contain characters fighting evil or a villain, protecting their community, and helping their fellow peacekeepers. Overall, the main theme of a superhero comic tends to be similar. The big theme of the class was whether a media item can be classified as mainstream or underground. Comics about superheroes could be considered as both underground and mainstream. Superheroes can have a big following in the mainstream, but the content itself would probably be considered more underground. The movie adaptations could be considered mainstream since it has a large audience. More people know about superheroes because of their movies, not so much by their comics. The comics contain elements that are more underground than the movies and contain a lot more detail. There is a smaller audience for the comic books, since it is more for readers, and the movies are more for everyone else.  This also really ties into our title of the zines, "Not really underground, actually fairly mainstream" because superheroes have become more mainstream lately. Ultimately, superheroes is a rather broad topic, allowing us to cover almost everything that we have gone over in class and that is why we have chosen this topic.