Comics

Others made the regular critiques like exceptional individualism but I wanna bring up another angle, beyond the literal superhero.

You can read superhero stories as myths, legends, and folklore for the modern world (and to be frank, the Western world). And the myth of a culture can be a retelling of their experience of their world. In this case it's explanatory, like creation stories, national epics, and cultural heroes. Just memorializing and celebrating what already exists

But sometimes it's more hopeful or even vengeful, like eschatological myth (end of the world prophecies). These express a change they want to see or hope to prevent in the future.

Superhero stories might seem like they are in the second category because they are promoting the regular world and regular people to the supernatural. But that's just the premise that puts it in the fiction genre. They aren't actually proposing humans become superhumans. Really they are more in the first category: they explain, justify, and celebrate what already exists.

Which is why superheroes are "defenders of the earth" or of specific nations, like Captain America. Otherwise they'd just be revolutionaries.

I remember playing with my younger cousin who lives in a 3rd world country. His little kid fantasies weren't about being the strongest guy and beating up bad guys. Rather he wanted to start a movement to establish a system where everyone had access to all the things they need (in his mind, snacks, sweets, and games)

Btw this is kinda why most superhero stories disappoint me. It's all a contrived conflict. It's already a symbolic story because it's fiction. But then you have heroes fighting villains out of the blue. For example Captain America fighting the made up Red Skull even though Hitler was still there. Or the Indian Brahmastra could have been about saving India but rather it was some cult vs another cult that didn't matter to any regular person in that world or the real one