Marco Favaro

Unhappy is the land that needs an antihero for it is a land in crisis, without a clear morality, without truths. The antihero embodies competing values: on the one hand, antiheroes and antiheroines are born of a crisis; on the other, they exasperate it. Antiheroes could not exist without a crisis of values and worldviews. They reveal it through their very existence. To be an antihero, it is fundamental that the heroic model remains present, even in its absence. Brombert states: ‘the antihero can exist only if the heroic model remains present in absentia, by preterition’ (Brombert 1999: 66). Antiheroes are still heroes, but decayed and controversial: while the heroes embody and defend their society’s values, antiheroes question them. Antiheroes would be heroes in a different kind of society, but the one in which they live rejects them, because they embody, show, and call into question its contradictions and controversies. Through Nietzschean concepts, such as the mask (Apollonian and Dionysian) and the Übermensch, the purpose of this chapter is to distinguish superheroes and antiheroes, with respect to their relationship to the concept of the mask, their society and their morality. The contemporary superhero’s reconfiguration will be traced and compared to similar events in The Dark Age of Comics of the mid-1980s. Comparing Dark Age antiheroes (Frank Miller’s Batman, Watchmen’s Rorschach) with contemporary films and comics like Marvel’s Civil War (2009 [2006-7]) and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (2005-12), it will be analysed how the perception of antiheroes and superheroes has changed.

Superheroes are more than mere entertainment: like the mythological heroes they descend from, they carry symbolic, psychological, and philosophical implications, functioning as archetypes and iconic representations of the values and moral frameworks of their cultures. Yet the concept of the "superhero" is not immutable. While contemporary superheroes share certain traits with their Golden Age predecessors, their transformation over the decades has been profound, mirroring the evolution of Western society itself. The most radical turning point in the genre occurred during the 1980s, a period of cultural and social crisis that saw the deconstruction of the "pure" superhero and the emergence of a darker, more violent and morally ambiguous figure: the antihero. This revolution — widely regarded as the most significant in the history of the genre — ushered in what is commonly known as the Copper Age, or Dark Age, of comics. From this point on, superheroes became more realistic, their relationship with society more controversial, and the symbolic implications of the mask more complex and layered. However, this transformation was not without precedent. Two decades before the landmark works of Frank Miller and Alan Moore reshaped the genre, Stan Lee — alongside Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Bill Everett — had already begun challenging the established conventions of the superhero. During the Silver Age, Lee introduced a second generation of heroes that were fundamentally different from the DC demigods of the Golden Age: monstrous figures like the Hulk and The Thing, social outcasts like the X-Men, and struggling everyman characters like Spider-Man. These were superheroes burdened by psychological trauma, alienation, and conflict — not defenders of the status quo, but characters at odds with the very society they sought to protect. Lee's innovation lay in his commitment to realism. He wanted heroes without secret identities, heroes who paid rent, teenagers searching for their place in the world, ordinary families confronting extraordinary circumstances. Yet this growing realism carried an unforeseen consequence: the more human the superhero, the more visible and disturbing the nonhuman, monstrous dimension lurking beneath the mask. The experience of the mask — its psychological weight, its connection to trauma and duality — became a central and unsettling theme rather than a narrative convenience. This essay argues that Stan Lee's creations anticipated the defining characteristics of the antihero years before Moore's Watchmen or Miller's The Dark Knight Returns canonized them. By examining some of Lee's most iconic characters, it investigates whether the seeds of the Dark Age revolution were already present in the Silver Age, and whether Lee's heroes can legitimately be read as proto-antiheroes — complex, fallible, and deeply human figures who fundamentally redefined what it means to wear a mask.

Traumas and losses mark superheroes´ lives from the beginning. Often orphans, superheroes start their journey with the loss of a paternal or maternal figure. This tragedy destroys their previous world and identity, but it also gives them a purpose. The superhero character, Daredevil, is no exception; he experiences loss and pain, too. Matt Murdock’s life is marked by the death of many people close to him, starting with the loss of his father, which leaves the deepest scar on him. The assumption of the "super" identity is necessary to replace the previous one, shattered by the trauma suffered. Matt, traumatized, needs to create a new persona. This new persona comes with a new worldview and values, a new moral code that conflicts with the mainstream one. Daredevil's story highlights the contradictions of his character involving the balancing of his violent vigilantism with an Übermenschliche morality.

While much of the scholarship on superhero narratives has focused on the heroes themselves, Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls takes into view the depiction of the villains and their lives, arguing that they often function as proxies for larger societal and philosophical themes. Approaching Gotham’s villains from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, the essays in this collection highlight how the villains’ multifaceted backgrounds, experiences, motivations, and behaviors allow for in-depth character analysis across varying levels of social life. Through investigating their cultural and scholarly relevance across the humanities and social sciences, the volume encourages both thoughtful reflection on the relationship between individuals and their social contexts and the use of villains (inside and outside of Gotham) as subjects of pedagogical and scholarly inquiry.

Dylan Dog, l’Indagatore dell’Incubo (the nightmare investigator), lives and works at 7 Craven Road in London. The comic book character is English, but he was created in Italy by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, and it is still published today monthly. Dylan had enormous success, not only in Italy but worldwide. His job is to investigate, together with his assistant, Groucho, the paranormal, the irrational, the nightmare that can assume different forms and aspects. Dylan fights against all types of monsters: vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, even against Death itself. However, the horror that he faces is not always paranormal. The monsters are often extremely human. Maybe that is the reason why Dylan remains extremely skeptical and rational. Everything in Dylan Dog’s world revolves around the absurd, the chaos without explanation, without sense, and the need to find meaning in it. This chaos can take different forms: the horror that Dylan fights, but also the satirical and nonsense humor of Groucho. This irrational dimension manifests itself also through Dylan’s love and sexual life: in almost every story, Dylan falls in love with a different woman, who usually will die or will break his heart. Love and sex are strongly connected with horror and death in Dylan Dog’s narrative: they are irrational forces, from which it is not possible to escape. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the irrational and fearful dimension in Dylan Dog: l’orrore, as he calls it, but also its connection to sexuality and the comic relief provided by Groucho. This chaotic and monstrous reality will be analyzed mainly—but not only—through the Nietzschean concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian related to the concept of absurd as described by Albert Camus. In this frame, the analysis of René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred will also be helpful. Violence is an irrational and uncontrollable force, and its manifestation is tightly linked with the horror and the monstrous reality that it unveils.

The mask's role is central to the superhero narrative. The mask is a non-human identity, which replaces the civilian, human one; sometimes forever. It is what happens to the majority of Gotham's villains. While Batman can take off his mask and at least pretend to be Bruce Wayne, many of his enemies do not have the same privilege. For characters like Two-Face, Joker, Zsasz, and Clayface, the mask is carved directly into their bodies. Like masks, scars can replace one's identity, but deeply and sometimes irreversibly. Bodies and masks play a central role in ancient primitive cultures, especially during initiation rituals. The two elements are distinct, but closely linked. Wearing a mask always implies a modification of the body, or at least of the way it is perceived. Furthermore, marks left on the body, whether temporary like a face paint or definitive like a tattoo, perform a similar function to that of the mask: they replace the individual's identity and communicate a message. The initiation ceremonies destroy a previous identity to create a new one. While an individuum is a Leib, a living body that is becoming and escapes an ultimate meaning, by inflicting pain and scars, the initiation rituals aim to reduce the body to a stable dimension. First an ecstasy, induced by drugs and fasting, and through the infliction of physical pain, shatters the previous identity. The Leib is reduced to the passivity of flesh. Then a new identity is literally written on the body through scars or tattoos, thus receiving an "ultimate" sense and giving him/her a role and a place within society. The scar is a new identity, like a mask carved directly on the body.

Cartesian and Western religious and philosophical traditions distinguish the body from the mind, viewing the former as a prison or a burden. The mind (spirit, soul, rationality) is identified as good, while the body is devalued and associated with evil. Some philosophers restored the body's value: humans are not imprisoned spirits, but they are their bodies. Husserl, for example, claims that human beings are not an immaterial substance in a Körper, a physical body, but Leib, a living body that solves within itself the two Cartesian res. Although the Cartesian legacy survives in the Existentialism in the distinction between In-itself (the passive Being) and For-itself (the human, transcendental freedom), the second does not use the object-body as the res cogitans did: "the very nature of the For-itself demands that it be body." Nevertheless, the body plays an ambivalent role, suspended between Körper's passivity and Leib's transcendence. The chapter's focus on Arkham's female characters is not random. Leder notices that "women have consistently been associated with the bodily sphere. They have been linked with nature, sexuality, and the passions, whereas men have been identified with the rational mind. This equation implicitly legitimizes structures of domination." By associating human categories like "lunatics," "savages," or women with the immanence of the body and nature, their transcendentality is denied, and, simultaneously, men's control and domination over them is justified.

While much of the scholarship on superhero narratives has focused on the heroes themselves, Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls takes into view the depiction of the villains and their lives, arguing that they often function as proxies for larger societal and philosophical themes. Approaching Gotham’s villains from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, the essays in this collection highlight how the villains’ multifaceted backgrounds, experiences, motivations, and behaviors allow for in-depth character analysis across varying levels of social life. Through investigating their cultural and scholarly relevance across the humanities and social sciences, the volume encourages both thoughtful reflection on the relationship between individuals and their social contexts and the use of villains (inside and outside of Gotham) as subjects of pedagogical and scholarly inquiry.