I love super heroes. I've loved them ever since I was a kid and for the same reasons that most people love them. Their stories are our modern legends and myths - a modern pantheon of gods and goddesses who can perform wonderful and terrible feats of strength or outwit the enemy with superior thinking ability. Like the ancient gods of old they are able to do what we can't do.

They are different from the older heroes of earlier eras in that they have human failings and weaknesses that can seem insurmountable but they still represent the best of us; the best qualities humanity has to offer up. In a world full of strife, evil and injustice a superhero, who possesses a good heart but is flawed in some way (like we are) can right wrongs and bring evil-doers to justice. In other words they fulfill our desires to have security, peace and justice - they fulfill that desire all humans have to look up to something or worship something greater than and outside of ourselves. By virtue of their superior strength, intelligence and will they are not as easily thwarted by evil or by bureaucracy as mere humans are. We want someone to fight against the misery and the corruption we face everyday in the world. To fight against it and succeed, because so often it is that we as mere humans fail in the fight. Superheroes succeed where we can't.

In terms of cultural relevance and psychology superheroes represent the "savior" or "messiah" archetype - the Hero, which is found in all of the stories of Man since the beginning. This archetype is extremely powerful and it brings about the best stories every culture around the world can create. Great heroes and legendary characters like Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Atlas, Hercules and so on. Superheroes ignite the imagination and allow us to live outside the mundane confines of our own lives through them. Like gods, they can take us to exciting new places, or the darkest, blackest places and do what they want at will. But they are also like humans in that they live outside convention and often have to overcome huge obstacles in order to right wrongs, to do the right thing or to understand themselves and help others - very much like what we experience in our own lives. This quality of overcoming adversity is often offered as a lesson in itself for how we should face problems. They can instruct us about good and bad, how to make choices and how to move and act in the world. They also instruct us on the values of the culture that constructed them and what its people viewed as important.

Just as we are able to get a glimpse into the values, way of life and cultural assumptions about past cultures and civilizations through their myths and legends and what adversities they may have faced, societies in the future will be able to get an idea of what we are like and what we value through our superhero stories. They may also see the same themes and archetypes no doubt in their own stories. I suppose the most important things in superhero stories bring us back to the ideas that Joseph Campbell made famous - the ideas of societal archetypes that are universal throughout time and are within every culture. Even though each society's stories are different at the core they share some of the same qualities: heroism, courage, character, cleverness, good versus evil, moral tales and lessons. Our superhero stories of today at their core serve the same function and that quality, no matter what era, will never change.

Learn more about this author, Victoria Jeffrey.
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