Heroes Among Us

Can Our Newfound Passion For Genre Fiction Save The World?

- Marc Bernardin

IF YOU WERE BORN AT ANY TIME BEFORE, SAY, 1990, the pop culture ecosystem we’re living in today would’ve been unthinkable when you were a kid—especially if you were a kid who grew up loving science fiction, comic books, and fantasy. Sure, we had Star Trek and Star Wars, Batman and Superman movies, with Doctor Who as the crazy British uncle who loved to remind you that he’s been there the whole bloody time.

But there was no way to envision a television landscape that had room for more than one show that came from the pages of DC Comics, let alone six: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, and iZombie. And all at the same time! You couldn’t have convinced anyone that both the Avengers and the Justice League would be in theaters, competing for a planet’s box-office attention.

And if you went to Vegas in 2010 and said, “I’d like to bet this massive wad of cash that not only will we get a Black Panther movie within the decade, but that it will be the third-highest-grossing movie in the U.S. of all time,” they would’ve taken your money and laughed at you as you left.

But that is the world we live in today, a world in which the most popular movies are “nerd” movies and entire television networks are built on the backs of superheroes. This is the Age of the Geek, in almost every way. And it’s not just geeks who are inhaling this kind of entertainment: No movie gets to a billion dollars at the box office without everyone seeing it.