Breakout Session: Great Caesar's Ghost: Superhero Comics in Historical Perspective

Superheroes are metaphors about the soaring human spirit, born of necessity in times of powerlessness and despair like the Great Depression. Their function is the same as the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies from that era — to enable the downtrodden to fantasize about defying gravity in fancy duds. I'll discuss their history in popular culture and myth.