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Edited by Robert Beach
Now that we’ve crossed the midpoint of the 2010s, one thing has become very clear: superheroes aren’t going away. The genre never really went away after it emerged through Batman in 1989, but for a time, people were expecting there to be a peak or finale to things. However, after eight years of Marvel blockbusters coming out like clockwork along with FOX reviving the X-Men in 2011 and DC/WB getting their act together, the superhero has simply become a constant part of our cultural diet. While this is an exciting prospect, it does raise the question of what happens to those companies without access to the superhero IP of DC or Marvel.
Now that we’ve crossed the midpoint of the 2010s, one thing has become very clear: superheroes aren’t going away. The genre never really went away after it emerged through Batman in 1989, but for a time, people were expecting there to be a peak or finale to things. However, after eight years of Marvel blockbusters coming out like clockwork along with FOX reviving the X-Men in 2011 and DC/WB getting their act together, the superhero has simply become a constant part of our cultural diet. While this is an exciting prospect, it does raise the question of what happens to those companies without access to the superhero IP of DC or Marvel.
The answer, clearly, is that they’ll dive into lesser-known heroes, either from the public domain, smaller publishers, or creator owned. We’ve already seen this with the 2000s’ Hellboy, yet it seems the key people jumping on this bandwagon now are, shockingly, Disney. Yes, even though the house of mouse already owns Marvel, they’re hungry for more. Their first aim is a reboot of their 1990s underrated superhero classic The Rocketeer with the new Rocketeer allegedly being conceived as a black woman.
