Remember when everything was a Western?
For a long stretch of film and television history, the Western was one of the biggest myth machines in American entertainment. You had the horse, the frontier, the town with weak law, the corrupt land baron, the sheriff, the outlaw, the saloon, the standoff, and the lone figure who had to decide what kind of code he was going to live by.
Then the cowboy changed costumes.
The horse became a rocket ship. The frontier became space. The wagon train became the starship crew. The strange town became the alien planet. The sheriff became the captain. The saloon became the cantina.
Then it shifted again. Fantasy picked up the same bones. The cowboy became the ranger, the knight, the wandering mercenary, the chosen one, or the person walking into a village where the locals had a problem nobody else could solve.
That is the thing about genre cycles. They do not really disappear. They mutate.
The cowboy never left. He just changed hats.
The Swashbuckler Was Part of the Same Pattern
Before superheroes became the dominant costume, we had swashbucklers. Those were big movies too. Swords, masks, secret identities, rooftop escapes, corrupt officials, aristocrats with double lives, dramatic rescues, and a hero who entered the room with style.
That is superhero grammar before comic books made it official.
Zorro is one of the clearest examples. He has the secret identity, the mask, the symbol, the costume, the skill set, the public legend, and the personal code. He is not wearing a cape in the modern comic book sense, but he is already operating like a superhero. He is a masked figure acting where the official system is corrupt or useless. Encyclopedia.com describes Zorro as a masked avenger created by Johnston McCulley in 1919, dressed in black, concealing his identity while fighting evildoers in nineteenth-century California. (Encyclopedia.com)
Then you can go further back and look at Don Quixote. He is not a superhero in the modern sense. He is something stranger and more interesting. He is a man who has absorbed heroic stories so deeply that he tries to perform them in the real world. That makes him both a comedy and a warning. He is what happens when heroic mythology stops being entertainment and starts becoming someone’s operating system.
So the line is not hard to see:
Knights become swashbucklers. Swashbucklers become masked avengers. Masked avengers become pulp heroes. Pulp heroes become superheroes. Superheroes become cinematic universes.
The costume changes. The machine underneath is familiar.
Shakespeare and the Power of Watching People
This is also why the old argument about Shakespeare never made much sense to me. People act surprised that someone like Shakespeare could write across class, politics, violence, romance, law, fools, kings, soldiers, merchants, drunks, and social climbers.
But that misunderstands what a working writer does.
A writer does not need to be every person he writes about. He needs to observe people clearly enough to understand how they move through the world.
Shakespeare was not just some isolated name on a page. The Folger Shakespeare Library describes him as an actor, playwright, and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men, with his plays performed on professional stages connected to his company. (Shakespeare Documented) That means he was standing inside a machine where different parts of society brushed against each other: patrons, workers, actors, tradesmen, nobles, crowds, gossip, politics, money, reputation, ego, and public reaction.
That is a writer’s education.
You hang around the room long enough. You watch who lies. You watch who flatters. You watch who performs power. You watch who has power but pretends not to. You watch who wants status. You watch who is scared of losing it.
Then you write it down and get paid for it.
That is not magic. That is observation.
The Superhero Cycle Is Not New
That is why superheroes were never really new. The costumes were new. The publishing model was new. The cinematic universe model was new. But the archetype was already old.
We have always had figures who operate between law and justice.
The knight errant.
The masked swordsman.
The outlaw with a code.
The detective.
The cowboy.
The vigilante.
The superhero.
They all answer the same basic question:
What happens when the system is too weak, too corrupt, too slow, or too far away to solve the problem?
That is why superhero stories worked so well for so long. They were not just about powers. They were about a code. They were about identity. They were about the person behind the mask. They were about what someone does when they can act, but no one can truly force them to act correctly.
That is a strong story engine.
But a strong story engine can still be overused.
Corporations Learned the Wrong Lesson
The problem with large corporations is that when something works, they often mistake the surface for the reason.
They see a successful superhero movie and think:
People like capes. People like shared universes. People like post-credit scenes. People like brand recognition. People like endless setup for the next thing.
But that was never the full reason.
People liked the movies when the stories felt fresh. They liked them when the characters mattered. They liked them when the emotional payoff felt earned. They liked them when the event felt like an event, not homework.
Then the industry overproduced the form.
Too many shows.
Too many movies.
Too many tie-ins.
Too many timelines.
Too many multiverses.
Too many characters introduced as investments instead of people.
Too many endings that were not endings, just advertisements for the next product.
That is how a genre cycle gets killed.
Not because the audience suddenly hates superheroes. The audience does not hate superheroes. The audience hates being treated like it owes the corporation attention.
We Have Seen This Crash Before
The comic industry already went through its own version of this.
The late 1980s and early 1990s helped create a collector and speculation bubble. Special covers, variant editions, “important” issues, first appearances, deaths, relaunches, and artificial collectability turned comics into products people were buying as investments. Then the appetite collapsed.
Marvel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 1996. The Los Angeles Times reported at the time that collectors who bought heavily in the late 1980s and early 1990s had lost their appetite for comics and cards. (Los Angeles Times) Harvard Business School’s summary of Marvel’s bankruptcy also points to sharp declines in Marvel’s core businesses before the filing. (Harvard Business School)
That matters because the current superhero movie problem feels like the same cycle wearing a different outfit.
The product became the point.
The event became routine.
The routine became obligation.
The obligation became fatigue.
And once that happens, the logo does not save you.
The Current Superhero Cycle Is Dead for Now
The superhero genre is not dead forever. That would be too simple.
The superhero cycle is dead for now.
That is the distinction.
A genre can survive while the active business cycle collapses. Westerns did not vanish forever. Swashbucklers did not vanish forever. Fantasy did not vanish forever. Space adventure did not vanish forever. They all went through periods where the market got oversaturated, the audience got tired, and the industry had to back off.
That is what superheroes are facing now.
Even Disney recognized the volume problem. In Disney’s May 2024 earnings call, Bob Iger said Marvel would decrease volume to about two TV series a year instead of four, and reduce film output from around four a year to two, or at most three. (Q4 Capital) That is not the language of a machine running at full strength. That is a company admitting the machine had been overfed.
The signs were already there. The Marvels opened to about $47 million domestically in 2023, which Axios reported as the worst domestic opening weekend in Marvel franchise history at that time, while also pointing to broader superhero and comic book fatigue. (Axios) Investopedia similarly noted that the film’s weak performance came after years of Marvel spinoffs, sequels, series, and interconnected storytelling across theaters and television. (Investopedia)
That does not mean no superhero movie can succeed. Some still will. But the automatic protection is gone.
A cape is no longer enough.
A post-credit scene is no longer enough.
A shared universe is no longer enough.
A famous logo is no longer enough.
The audience has been trained to ask a different question:
Is this actually worth my time?
The Myth Survives, the Factory Breaks
That is the real point.
The superhero is not dead. The factory version of the superhero is dead.
The myth will survive because the myth is older than the current business model. People will always want stories about codes, masks, justice, corruption, identity, danger, and the individual standing against something larger.
But the next successful version will probably have to shrink back down.
Fewer required tie-ins.
Fewer fake events.
Fewer characters introduced as franchise placeholders.
Fewer stories that feel like corporate calendar management.
More complete stories.
More personality.
More consequence.
More human scale.
More actual endings.
That is how the cowboy comes back.
Not necessarily with a horse. Maybe with a sword. Maybe with a spaceship. Maybe with a mask. Maybe with a cape. Maybe with a steering wheel and a dashboard camera.
But the structure is always waiting underneath.
A dangerous road.
A broken system.
A person with a code.
A choice that reveals who they really are.
That is why everything eventually becomes a cowboy.
And right now, superheroes are just the latest cowboy cycle that rode too long, got overproduced, and needs to leave town for a while before anyone is excited to see it ride back in.