You especially want to strive for that nuance on a show like 'The Flash,' which is different from 'Legends' in the sense that it's really, at its heart, a smaller show. It's a more intimate show, in a way.
Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
With epic fantasy, there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack.
John Carter was also one of our first recognizable superhumans and there is little doubt that his extraordinary physical feats inspired Superman's creators. Remember: before Superman could fly or turn back time, he was nothing less than an earthbound crime-fighting John Carter in tights.
I love the idea of writing these huge, bombastic characters; I'll stay in the superhero world as long as I can.
Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.
Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously.
The language of the heroic is something that has evolved over time.
I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones.
The great thing about Batman and Superman, in truth, is that they are literally transcendent. They are better than most of the stories they are in.
In the days of Gary Cooper, James Stewart etc, film stars personified the better aspects of human nature.
We kind of forget because what television tends to do with these professions like lawyers and doctors and police officers, we create them on such a heroic level that you kind of forget that these are really people.
