GENRE THEORY TIDBIT: The genre of superheroes are best understood as the third type of idea-centric or "speculative" fiction, and not just simply as power fantasies. The superhero genre makes ideas into people, while fantasy makes ideas into culture and science fiction makes ideas into material things. They are related because they give ideas primacy over characters and use ideas to tell the story, as opposed to social, realistic fiction where the interplay of the characters tell the story. Yep.