Jim Steranko wants to know what side I'm on. I'm not sure if that's the same thing as George Bush's "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists", but it sounds pretty close.

If you're feeling a little saturated by the 'Attack on America'/'War on Terrorism' coverage, and you came here for some four-colour relief, then I apologise, because you're not going to get it. You see, my column tends to take a personal bent, for better or worse, and I've been swimming in newsprint for the past two weeks with very little room to reflect on anything else. My job involves reading American newspapers all day, and even if it didn't, I'm a news junkie, so I'd be reading them anyway. A lot of information is going in, and here's where a little of it will seep back out again.

A guy from Atlanta drove up to New York to collect random scraps of office paper. These were papers he'd found in the street, which had once sat on the desks of office workers in buildings that aren't there anymore. He found a photograph caught in some railings, a picture of someone's infant daughter. A journalist asked him why he was collecting these things. "It's something to take home," he said. "It disturbs me."

'People want the real world to be subject to the easy fix of fiction.' Such ghoulish activity seems strange, but then no one knows how to respond to an event of this magnitude, and everyone wants to be seen to react. Everyone wants to be involved, to show that they were part of history, to show their solidarity, to do something just so they know they're not doing nothing. Most of us are impotent to do anything more than give blood or donate money. Most of us can only offer mumbling platitudes of affirmation to each other. Hence some comic fans' frustrated exclamations of, "If only superheroes were real".

It offended me the first time I saw someone make that remark, because I thought it was a stupid, trivial thing to say. On reflection, though, I realise it's no worse than saying, "I wish this had never happened". Such exclamations are futile, sure, but they're readily understandable. These people want the complexities of the real world to be subject to the easy fix of fiction. In grief, we always fantasise that the tragedies we face could be made unreal. Everybody's waiting for Superman.

Superman, of course, is a particularly apposite superhero at the moment, as he classically represents the ideals of truth, justice and the American way. As a European, I've never really understood that last part. The idea that being American was some kind of special virtue, one only available to those with the proper passports, actually put me off Superman when I was young.

Yet the American way is very much at the fore at the moment. It's there in Congress singing "God Bless America", and in President Bush being greeted in the streets of New York by chants of "USA, USA". It's there in the sales of stars and stripes flags, which in barely more than a day managed to outstrip sales during the entire Gulf crisis. Patriotism is always at the fore in a nation under siege, and America is an unusually patriotic nation even at the best of times.

In a sense, America, the last superpower, is the closest thing there is to a superhero. Certainly that's how America is being treated at the moment: as a noble avenger, a symbol of righteousness, a paragon of virtue. Since the terrorist attack was an attack on America's potent symbols, it makes sense for Americans to respond by making a symbol of America. The building manager of the New York Stock Exchange said on the day before it reopened, "You can't stop America". Like Superman.

'Bush's speech paints a black and white morality - a 'superhero' morality.' Thus those who were moved to criticise America in the days immediately following the attacks were quickly condemned. Perhaps that makes sense, in so far as it's distasteful to speak ill of the dead at a funeral. On the other hand, this was no funeral, and should never be thought of as such. America was given pause, but not laid low. Life must go on if we are to be unbowed in the face of terror, and if life continues, dissent continues too.

That is why George Bush's "us and them" speech was so difficult for many people to swallow. It paints a black and white morality - a 'superhero' morality - when there are serious complexities to be addressed. Yes, of course the people responsible for the recent murders must be brought to justice. But it's not enough to say we are at war with terrorism. We should wage war on the causes of terrorism, such as poverty, imperialism and religious intolerance. We need to look at the ways the West has fuelled terrorism, or made excuses to distinguish between one form of terrorism and another when no such distinction should exist. That's not a fight that can be won with an "us and them" mentality.

Which brings us back to Jim Steranko, a man who created superb stories about the seemingly black and white conflict between America and the evil empires. In his open letter to Comicon, published on Friday, Steranko rails against an industry he believes has turned its back on virtue. "Today's comics are possessed by brutality, destruction, depravity, cynicism, and obscenity," he writes.

Steranko takes the forthcoming Garth Ennis, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti collaboration PRO, about a superhuman prostitute, as his evidence, though we can doubtless all name a few of the other books we suspect he'd prefer had never seen print. Taking Palmiotti's tongue-in-cheek exhortation, "It's evil, it's gonna be worse than Hitler's testicles", somewhat too seriously, Steranko accuses the creators of celebrating evil.

'I want an appreciation that life is not as simple as Superman.' "They obviously think of themselves as cultural terrorists," he remarks. "Well, gang, if you fancy yourselves as terrorists, there are those among us who'll treat you as terrorists."

Will he have any qualms about shooting their camels in the butt, I wonder?

Steranko's letter exhorts us to return to clear-cut morality. He believes in the iconic struggle of Good versus Evil. Steranko wants a "social mythology" where you can always tell your heroes from your villains, and in calling for this, all he sees are heroes and villains. The virtuous and the wicked. "I'd like to know what side you're on," he demands.

I'm not on his side. If he'd permit me, I'd say I'm not on Garth Ennis' side, either. I have no particular desire to read about a Promethean prostitute. However, if that's a symptom of the diversity of comics stories today, I'll support it, because what I want in all forms of discourse, be it the art of comics or the art of war, is an appreciation that life is not as simple as Superman.

There is right and wrong, but it's not tied to might, faith or nationality. What it is, in fact, is rarely what one person believes it to be, and must be arrived at through a meeting of different ideas. That's why we must have discourse, both in our politics and in our comics. That's why it's unhelpful - unpatriotic, even - to be deaf to dissent and blind to ideological differences, and to divide the world into "us" and "them".

We shouldn't be waiting for Superman, or clinging to a flag, because those icons never solved any real world problems. The future should be about truth, justice, and finding your own way.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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