RIGHT AROUND THE time my three-year-old son started having behavioral problems—kicking, hitting, biting—at daycare, I stupidly took him to the comic-book store for the first time. That’s when, rifling through back issues of Batman, I realized that my favorite childhood superhero was kind of an asshole. Even though the Bat vows never to kill anyone, he does do almost everything I was trying to teach my son not to—using violence to solve problems, holding in his emotions, and employing an elderly butler my wife and I clearly couldn’t afford.
Regardless, I bought my son a few books that day, and I told him that it’s all pretend. His behavior did not improve—maybe because I was too late. Fifteen or so years ago, superhero worship was a subculture confined to those dusty comic-book stores, Comic-Cons, and other geek gatherings. Now . Credit the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the money-amassing empire that started with in 2008. Since then, the MCU has kaboomed into 27 movies and five TV shows and brought words like and into the average guy’s lexicon.
