I think that the superhero-as-metaphor involves a superhero being some sort of intellectual, emotional, or other such concept writ large. But I don't know that it's a necessary part of the appeal that the superhero be superior.

At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition.

I think the Hulk has always appealed very strongly to much younger readers than Spider-Man, because Spider-Man is an adolescent character, and the Hulk is a very childlike character.

I seem to like playing with form, and the superhero genre has an awful lot of formula to it. It has a lot of formula to it that I don't think it should be limited to.

The metaphor is the story, not the character.

The characters are, by their nature, archetypes that can serve different metaphors.

Superhero creators who engage in deconstruction fall into two categories: There are the guys who do it because it's easy, because it gets an audience reaction if you point out that superheroes must be a bunch of psychotic nuts. And there are the guys who do it because they're actually interested, and they're trying to get at what's going on underneath. They're interested in the process and the results.