Captain Nowhere - Reason.com
The disconnect between Dittmer's thesis (Captain America, nationalism embodied!) and the most popular recent iteration of the character (Captain America, nationalism obsolete!) points to a general difficulty for scholars writing about superhero comics. Namely: Why are we writing about comics again? There are a couple of ways to assert the relevance of a piece of pop culture. The first is to make a claim for aesthetic value.
Thus, Charles Hatfield's recent book Hand of Fire argues that the comic-book illustrator Jack Kirby was a great artist and is therefore worthy of a monograph or 12. Alternately, you can make a claim for sociological value. Tania Modleski's classic Loving With a Vengeance analyzed Harlequin romances not because the novels were worthwhile in themselves but because they were extremely popular and could offer insights into the lives of the many women who read them.
The disconnect between Dittmer's thesis (Captain America, nationalism embodied!) and the most popular recent iteration of the character (Captain America, nationalism obsolete!) points to a general difficulty for scholars writing about superhero comics. Namely: Why are we writing about comics again? There are a couple of ways to assert the relevance of a piece of pop culture. The first is to make a claim for aesthetic value.
