Orwell had a glancing familiarity with superhero comic books. In 1945, he received a package of comics published by DC and Timely (the precursor to Marvel), which introduced him to the likes of Superman, Batman and the Human Torch. He was not a fan. “Quite obviously they tend to stimulate fantasies of power,” he wrote, “and in the last resort their subject matter boils down to magic and sadism. You can hardly look at a page without seeing somebody flying through the air . . . or somebody socking somebody else on the jaw, or an under-clad young woman fighting for her honour—and her ravisher is
...more
