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for this trend was Frank Miller's 1986 graphic novel, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (or simply Dark Knight ).
    Dark Knight was a relentlessly brutal look at urban violence, seasoned with heavy doses of crypto-fascist propagandizing and sexually transgressive imagery. The book's apocalyptic fury (complete with nuclear warfare) had the emotional impact of a bludgeon, and soon all of comicdom was following suit. Superheroes began to shed their naive, kid-friendly aura, and soon became up-to-the-minute urban warriors. This appealed to inner-city youths, many black and Hispanic, who were living through similar mayhem in their own neighborhoods. Indeed, the bulk of new readers who came into the comic-book market in the late 1980s were urban. American cities were in the midst of an existential crisis, and it is in times like these that gods appear. Likewise, it is probably no accident that the comics boom began to wane as the crack epidemic and the horrific gun violence that accompanied it began to ease in the mid 90s.
    The landscape changed, however, when the tragedy of 9/11 struck. Politicans and pundits alike responded to the event with a calculated series of statements and actions that seem lifted straight from the pages of Superman or The X-Men . Andthe comic-book industry wasted no time rising to the occasion. A series of commemorative magazines and comics quickly flooded the racks, featuring Marvel's top characters reacting to the tragedy.
    The following summer, a big-screen adaptation of Spider-Man hit the screen. The damage done to Manhattan by the Green Goblin in that film tapped into the primal fear unleashed on that beautiful September morning, and Spider-Man's eventual victory guaranteed that the movie would become a box-office juggernaut. The trauma of 9/11 explains why the film packed the visceral punch it did. As we watch Spider-Man triumph over the forces of chaos and evil, in some sense the psychic damage done on that day is repaired. And those primal fears still linger. Witness the success of the 2005 Batman Begins , which also featured similar acts of apocalyptic mayhem wreaked on Gotham City.
HOLLYWOOD HOMEGROWN HEROES
    The box office success of superheroes has led many movie studios and animation firms to attempt to build their own superhero properties from scratch. Space Ghost, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, The Mighty Isis, The Greatest American Hero, Thundarr the Barbarian, The Thundercats, Darkman, Dark Angel, Meteor Man , and M.A.N.T.I.S . are all examples of this. Most of these attempts, however, have been short-lived. There have also been movie characters that are superheroes in all but name—Terminator and Rambo, for instance. But there is something about the medium of the comic book that seems to be the best incubator for our substitute gods. People seem to sniff out the insincerity of these prefab Hollywood properties. And insincerity is instant death for a superhero—or a god, for that matter.
    The two films that have successfully created superheroes from the ground up have drawn heavily on comic books to do so. In 1999, The Matrix was created by two comic-book-fans-turned-movie-directors, Andy and Larry Wachowski. The brothers enlisted two flashy comic-book artists, Geoff Darrow and Steve Skroce, to help them develop their concepts. In fact, Darrow and Skroce essentially created a comic book out of the script. The directors then used the comic book to pitch the film. The Matrix also drew heavily on religious mysticism and cyberpunk science fiction, effectively creating the first Gnostic, computer-hacking, Zen Buddhistsuperhero in Neo, played by Keanu Reeves. After writing and producing another big-budget movie based on a comic book (V for Vendetta) in 2006, the Wachowskis took the plunge and started their own comic-book line, Burlyman Entertainment.
    A more family-oriented band of heroes, The Incredibles , was created by animator Brad Bird for the computer-animation studio Pixar. This heroic family