POP CULTURE SHORTS

Does Batman Explain The Rise Of Far-Right Politics?

‘Watchmen’ author Alan Moore thinks superheroes can be a forerunner of fascism

Here’s an idea you’re unlikely to hear in election postmortems that try to explain America’s rightward political drift: It’s Batman’s fault. Or, at least, Batman warned us.

Alan Moore, author of the trailblazing Watchmen comics, also wrote several issues of Batman and Superman. And he offered a surprising theory in an interview to promote his new short story collection, Illuminations.

“I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queuing up to see Batman movies,” he told the Guardian. “Because that kind of infantilization — that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities — that can very often be a precursor of fascism.”

Moore accepted some responsibility for trying to create, in the Watchmen books, comics that might appeal to older readers. But, he added, “I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare.”