I.

I asked a question on Bluesky, and I’ll repeat it here: what happens to US superheroes when the US is obviously in imperial decline? (And, moving forward, I am only talking about mainstream superheroes, almost exclusively the ones owned by Marvel and DC. Indie comics are a wild and wonderful woolly world of weirdness and likely to remain so forever.) The response I got on Bluesky, since I used Captain America as an example, is that now and then, Cap will leave the role to someone else, such as during the Watergate Era. But my question wasn’t what would superheroes do when the US made a mistake but about American superheroes in an age of imperial decline (and despite a few instances when they do something, most of the time they are silent; Cap has yet to opine on an insurrectionist rapist being in the Oval Office currying favor with tyrants over democratically elected leaders being invaded by those tyrants… if Cap quit over a bit of light spying by Nixon, you’d think he’d quit over that, but times have changed.) I think it’s a question worth looking at, given the cache that superheroes have had on the global scene with the rise of the MCU.

So, right now, US superheroes are incredibly high-handed. They routinely invade other countries.  In Captain America: Civil War, two groups of superheroes (of whom, all but one, are either permanent residents or citizens of the US) get into a massively destructive brawl at a German airport. Let me be clear: this could easily have been an act of war. But the movie – and audience – assume that it’s okay for Americans to tear up a German airport.  Sometimes, it isn’t very big, such as when Thor just goes to hang out on a Norwegian fjord without going through border control. It happens almost constantly in US superhero movies.

The heroes in movies get into fights all over the world with scant political repercussions. The assumptions are deeply imperial: that the US has the right to use force anywhere in the world and that other countries must accept it when it happens. (1)  And why not?  The US routinely fires missiles into any country it wants.  We’ve kidnapped people all around the world, including in Italy, an ally of the United States.  In some ways, it is a reality of living in the modern world: the US will go around and do as it pleases, and no one can stop us.

While it might seem I’m bagging on Cap specifically, I think the problem will be general. There are a great many imperial assumptions about almost all superheroes. Superman being the strongest is a reflection of America’s imperial glory. We – and other nations – know that America is the strongest. Batman, too. He’s the best of the best at everything because he’s a rich American. No one – certainly not Americans – pause to consider how weird it is that, in the comics, all the best of everything are in the US because world historic empires see themselves that way. American wealth and power justify our superheroes.

So, what happens when those assumptions are gone? When it is no longer possible to imagine that other countries will put up with Americans flying into their countries and blowing things up? When it becomes obvious that there are bigger dogs in the yard, who will bite back should such intrusions occur?

II.

At a guess, not much. I think that Americans would rather see the genre fade into irrelevance than acknowledge times have changed. Other countries might also be willing to abide by the status quo, too. James Bond is the UK’s version of this fantasy, harkening back to the days when the UK was a global power, and he continues to be a popular character… though he hasn’t spawned a whole genre of imperialist UK spies operating internationally with impunity.  There is no James Bond extended universe (yet.) (2) But even with the US in imperial decline, everyone – even in other nations – might shrug and go, “Eh,” and enjoy it as pure fantasy.

Maybe not, though. The UK ceded its imperial primacy to the United States in an unusually peaceful – indeed, cooperative – manner, often thinking that they’re “Greece to the American Rome.” (3) And the US is burning through social credit very fast. The UK maintained its alliances as its power waned, whereas the US is telling our oldest allies – and some of the world’s oldest democracies – to fuck off while cozening up to a Russian tyrant. Though, even without Trump, the US has done some questionable things. There will come a time, I think when the world won’t look at the US kindly for its environmental stands. It’s very openly one of the “right to pollute” countries that have both offshored its pollution while ignoring international standards at home. That’s going to be a bad look in the coming years, particularly when the imperial decline is in full swing. The US has been particularly profligate, after all, and the pollution in other countries – such as China – is often in service to the US economy.

Likewise, the number of nations the US has simply left in ruins is extraordinarily high. The British Empire was better about, well, ruling. I’m not saying they’re the good guys, but because they often took a direct rule rather than developing proxy states, they had to justify their policies to the people of the UK. The US, almost always preferring proxies to direct rule, has avoided domestic scrutiny for the crimes of the proxies. Certainly, if an American governor had been in charge in place of Ferdinand Marcos, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Augusto Pinochet, and many others, those nations would have been better governed. Proxy rule may have avoided too much public scrutiny in the US, but the people of the Philippines, Iran, Chile, etc., remember the author of their troubles.

However, the instances of direct rule by the US weren’t better. We destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq and then left both places to rot rather than stay and use our immense wealth and power to improve things in the long term. The multi-generational nation-building envisioned by George W. Bush was always propaganda to justify war, and that fantasy has collapsed.

This seems pretty heavy stuff to consider when talking about comic books, but such is my way. In a world where American imperial crimes are being dragged out into the open, when there is no political reason for every country in the world to curry favor with the United States, it is easy to imagine that the international interest in US superheroes will decline.

III.

But what about in the US? I think it can go one of three ways.

First, superheroes won’t be able to survive the transition at all. I think this is the least likely outcome. They’re too rooted in American culture to simply vanish. But it could happen, or they could become something like Westerns are today – fallen from their dominant position but always there a little and with minor cultural resurgences now and then.

Second, superhero media will simply ignore the collapse of American imperialism. My understanding of modern comics is that’s what they’re doing now. So, long after the US loses its dominant technological and economic position, Iron Man will still be Iron Man, Batman will still be Batman, just the same as before, just existing in a fantasy version of the US that is even more divorced from reality than the current versions. Likewise, the JLA and the Avengers will have the same stature as before, being the best and greatest because they’re American with no further rationalization. I’d find this boring. Hell, I’d prefer superheroes ceasing to exist altogether, leaving behind a fascinating legacy of a bygone period. I do, however, think it is most likely that they’ll continue business as usual with a diminished audience.

Third, they will adapt to the new political and economic order. Honestly, this is my preferred outcome. I’d like to see stories where it isn’t assumed that Captain America is a global paragon, both militarily and ethically. Where Batman’s fortune is ruined, and he has to adapt to losing his elite social status, and the “best at everything” falls apart. Where Metropolis isn’t the “city of the future” but the city of a glorious past.  I think this is the least likely outcome, though I suspect indie comics will explore it. (4)

IV.

What about outside of the US? I think if the US goes the third path, that might be enough to generate sustained interest. I suspect that the last kind of influence the US will lose will be culture influence (as we see with the UK, which continues to have an outsized cultural influence despite the decline of its empire.)  Facing up to the decline of empire could give the genre legs, but I’m not betting that’s the case.

Otherwise? It isn’t as if other countries can’t produce fun action stories drawing on their cultural background. The most probable country to eclipse the US is China, and they have a rich literature and cinema devoted to superhuman martial arts masters. The difference between a wuxia kung fu movie and a superhero movie is fairly notional, and some superhero movies are already essentially wuxia movies. Japan and its manga and anime culture have also spread and have shown that “superheroes” can be easily adapted to other cultures, including back to the United States, but also to South Korea, China, and many other places.  It could be more plausible in the near future to imagine Chinese superheroes than American ones for international audiences.

I suspect, regardless of what happens to US superheroes relative to the hastening collapse of American imperial power, superheroes will survive for at least the medium term.  What they look like, and the countries they support will look different, but superheroes are now part of international cinematic culture.  Even when the MCU and DCEU are made preposterous by American imperial decline, SOMEONE will be making superhero movies and comics.

And… that’s it! My editor is going to say that I cut it off quickly, which is typical of me. There is no call to action. It was just something on my mind and I wanted to think it out, and I do that best by writing it down. If I had to guess, US superheroes will have a slump here in the US but go on much as they are, with very few changes to the mainstream heroes. They will always exist in a world where American imperial power is undimmed and untarnished. I think the rest of the world won’t agree, and international interest in US superheroes will wane and perhaps vanish while superhero stories rooted in their cultural legacies expand. In other words, get used to a lot more Asian superheroes as China’s power grows relative to the US. (5)

Notes

(1) Even the Sokolov Accord was very mild. After all, Ultron was an out-of-control creation of Tony Stark. It was a de facto American invasion of Sokolov to stop an American problem. Very imperial.

(2) And many of the popular pastiches of James Bond are parodies, like “In Like Flynn.” There is, of course, a whole spy-fi subgenre of literature, but few of its heroes are proxies for British imperialism. They are usually proxies for American imperialism, y’know, the Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible movies (though often flirting with British imperialism.)

(3) Though, right now, that attitude might be dying, what with the US eschewing even the UK! Unarguably our closest ally with the possible exception of Canada! Though… yeah, burning the bridge with Canada, too.

(4) I’d argue that we see this when English writers write superheroes. While the form never existed in the heyday of the British Empire, UK comics with superheroes are vastly more cynical than American comics. I’m talking stuff like Judge Dredd, V for Vendetta, and The Boys.

(5) Which isn’t optimal for me. I find the PRC kung fu movies far less interesting than the ones made in Hong Kong before the Chinese takeover. The relative artistic freedom of the pre-Chinese takeover of Hong Kong allowed kung fu movies to be funnier when comedies and grittier when serious. Modern Chinese kung fu movies are glossier but also less interesting, and the political biases are as crude as in MCU movies. But I’m talking about US superheroes in the main body of the text, not my feelings about changes in Chinese martial arts movies due to the communist takeover of Hong Kong!