Superheros Should Not Be Part of the Real World

There are many things I love about Jamie Hernandez, and his love of fun comix is one of them. You see that in his mixture of realism and pure cartooning in his art, and in the way that he approaches the problem of superheros. In part three of this fascinating interview on The Daily Cross Hatch, Xamie talks about his fun two part return to superhero comix (in Love and Rockets Volume 3, #1-2):

Those things [like The Dark Knight movie] are fine, because I still look at them as fantasy. They have hoodlums that steal money and go in the alley to count it. That’s still old school criminals. Things like that. For me, when they bring it more into the real world, it loses it’s charm. I do like superheroes.
I guess I should say, I like superheroes with their own rules. Not our rules. And I think that was cool when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko changed the rules. I think that was cool, but it kind of—they created a monster to me. I think you should go by your own set of rules. It was kind of like we were the intruders, instead of them.
It’s kind of like I say at the end of the Ti-Girl story, where Maggie says she always felt that Penny was this drawing cut from a comic and pasted on earth, but one of the characters says, “yes, but in this situation, you’re the fake.” And Maggie goes, “yeah, I figured that.” So Maggie was the weird visitor in their world.