I get e-mail from readers of the articles I write. Not many, mind you, but every time something gets posted I tend to get a "huzzah" or a "you're an idiot", or even a message from someone who very honestly would like to debate the issues I've brought up. One of the more common "issues" people bring up with regards to my writing is that I am "anti-superhero".

Now, I could be defensive and mention how I read 21 DOWN, NEW X-MEN, PLANETARY, POWERS, SLEEPER, TOM STRONG, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and WILDCATS 3.0. I could mention that I have the entire run of STARMAN in a comics box in my closet. I could talk about my love of HITMAN and X-STATIX and the Tischman-Macan-Kordey run of CABLE and SOLDIER X.

But no, I really am anti-superhero.

My issue with superhero comics isn't that they aren't capable of saying something, of being more than people in spandex with violent tendencies, but that they seem almost universally disinterested in being anything more than that. The writing tends to be simultaneously anaemic and overwritten to the point where I have to force myself not to grab a red pen and edit it. Most of the artwork I admit to being disinterested in - where I don't enjoy it or like it but I don't hate it either - and that seems to be the reaction most editors are actually looking for when selecting artists. That casual apathy seems to be what propels most successful superhero comics. The maintenance of an artificial status quo surrounding characters that cannot change.

'I could be defensive, but I really am anti-superhero.' I enjoy reading GLOBAL FREQUENCY and THE LOSERS and QUEEN AND COUNTRY, to name three of the best action series on the stands right now. Maybe it's because I'm interested in characters and subtext, but I think there's more to it than that. Each of these books is engaged in the world, and they gain from that interaction. If each of them were to exist in that odd vacuum of reality that is "the comics universe", there would be almost nothing to them.

I'm 24 years old. I remember back before everyone had a cell phone, because they were obnoxiously bulky things; when having a computer was a big deal; when having an e-mail address was weird. I live in a multicultural society, and when I travel I see that that's not just true of the odd corner of the globe I live in; it's everywhere. There are old factories that have been gutted for decades, but that were built to remain standing after a bombing raid, even as office buildings a few streets away start to crumble the year after they were completed. There are train stations and post offices with larger-than-life murals that might as well be the remnants of a former civilization.

I live in a cultural focal point where Islamic extremism, the limits of American military power, the structure of the global economy and the future of privacy are almost daily topics of discussion. Where my grandfather didn't have to graduate from high school to get a good job, and my grandmother has false teeth older than my mother. A world where every now and again it strikes me that all the technology around me is like magic.

'I enjoy books that engage in the world, and that gain from that interaction.' That's the world around me. None of that is reflected anywhere in the superhero comics I see on the stands. Most of them could have been written five years ago or ten or fifty. Making a SOPRANOS reference doesn't count. Some high tech weapon by Evil Spandex Boy based on an article the writer read about in last month's issue of Wired doesn't count either.

Some people will say that I'm being too harsh; that comics wouldn't be escapist literature if they involved anything 'real', and that if I want to read comics that address the real world, I should go read alternative comics or manga or European graphic novels.

I do read alternative comics and manga and European work. Lots of other people read manga, too, and part of the reason that they do so is because of what they can find in those books, namely some relevance. Reading BATTLE ROYALE OR INITIAL D or PLANETES or FLCL may not be like looking into a mirror of my own life, but I can relate to the books on many levels. That's not just because they have characters with recognisable human emotions, though that helps, but because they seem to feed on the concerns of the real world, rather than trying to distance themselves from them.

Anyone who thinks that reality doesn't have a place in popular culture or in escapist work is deluded. Superman is a product of the 1930s and Jewish immigrant identity. Part of the late Julius Schwartz's influence at DC in the fifties was to emphasise the role of science, and the big ideas that creators played with back then may seem campy now, but at a time when satellites and men were being launched into orbit while telephones and televisions were invading people's homes, that kind of 'gee whiz' look at reality doesn't seem too unusual.

'The real world isn't reflected in the superhero comics I see on the stands.' Stan Lee and the artists who created Marvel Comics in the sixties were reacting to the sense of wonder and possibility that marked America during that decade, even as the nuclear age and the constant threat of annihilation hung over their everyday lives.

When Len Wein and Dave Cockrum launched a new X-Men title in the seventies, it didn't owe its success to the fact that the creators were more talented than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. It succeeded because they replaced the original team of WASP teenagers with a group of multicultural, international oddballs who, despite their differences, tried to fight the good fight even though they were hated and feared. Horror was a major genre in the seventies as the United States dealt with war, recession, oil crisis and political turmoil.

Almost all of Alan Moore and Frank Miller's work in the eighties was a product of its time. Part of the reason that writers like Bendis, Ellis, Ennis, Millar and Vaughan have found success in recent years is that they do seem to bring a sense of cultural awareness to the table. Greg Rucka may be a better novelist than a comics scribe, but he's still a great comics scribe, because he's interested in character and politics and morality and violence.

Anyone who thinks that reality doesn't have a place in popular culture or in escapist work is deluded. Some of the finest works of popular art over the past century have been responses to what's happening in the world. American comics need to engage the world. Right now they're just trying to get a development deal in Hollywood, and Hollywood ain't on this planet.

Alex Dueben is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.

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