Ooh boy, this is a subject that really interests me. So I ask you people to forgive me as I go on and on and on...
To begin with, I believe there will always be a degree of silly in the concept of the superhero. Superman's original spandex costume, the famed trunks, was designed aping from circus performers garb. All flash and spectacle and over the top action! It's all a little silly.
But I also think this is one of the great things about the genre.
Adding to the whole mythology thing, which I wholeheartedly agree, I feel that it goes even a little deeper.
The superhero grants a broad and bigger than life frame of reference to translate mundane experiences.
Superman is the myth of the immigrant in America, someone coming from ''the old world'' to find a home that embraces him and allows him to be the best version of himself. The X-men are the myth of the minority struggle. The Fantastic Four is the myth of the American family unit, which is a reason why they faded so hard into obsolescence. All in general terms.
This broad strokes approach allows the genre to talk about an obscene amount of subjects, most times in a heightened and fun fashion. Everything fits. The best superhero stories are about very human subjects.
The superhero genre has a lot of overlaps with soap operas because they do basically the same thing: heighten our mundane experiences through pop filters. There's this X-Men storyline about Cyclops TELEPATHICALLY CHEATING Jean Grey with Emma Frost because both can't face the fact they're outgrowing each other and that's just pure soap opera gold. There's Batman Inc. too, which is basically the story of this ugly divorce between Batman and Talia Al Ghul and their son caught in the middle, just with the war of a corporation made of Batmen and the greatest crime conglomerate of all time. A mundane fact cranked up to 11.
The greatest sin of the superhero genre, to me, is that it so overwhelmingly consumed everything. The fact that the genre is so prevalent that when you talk mainstream USA comics you talk ''superhero comics'', well, that's just unacceptable.
It's also good to point that the superhero genre can have, if you're not careful with it, some really pointed and unfortunate fascistic parallels. It can be read, after all, as the idea of ''one worthy person that is better than the others, bending the rules of the world through his massive will''. Very Ayn Rand. But it's more than that.
Like anything with a massive, borderline industrial input, there's a lot of generic stuff. Even then, since the 2000s we are getting maaaany amazing and thoughtful runs.
I take a lot from the work of Grant Morrison. The stories I mentioned are his.
Morrison is the anti-Alan Moore. He's more interested in building stuff than deconstructing it. While Alan Moore drags the superhero concept through the mud of the real world, Morrison believes that there's no reason our world shouldn't be more like the superhero one.
Everything begins with an idea. The bomb, before it was a bomb, was an idea.
For Morrison, Superman is a much better idea than the bomb. The bomb doesn't have shit on Superman. It can't make him sweat. We created someone that has absolute power and yet chooses to use this power to better the lives of those around him. We created someone to embody our altruistic aspirations. Why would we want to expose the ugly in it?
If everything starts with an idea, then in time, if we can imagine something like this, we can be better people. To Morrison, we created the superhero in one of our lowest points to save us. Philosophically speaking.
The superhero is an inherently optimistic idea. It's full of idealism, yeah. I do think that idealism can go toe to toe with flawed superheroes (Spider-Man is super idealistic. Wolverine and the ideal of redemption, etc)
It's all really dramatic and over the top, so yeah, it gets super silly. Boy, does it get silly.
But silly can be so much fun. And I feel it's all worth it.