Are comic books and superheroes the American version of Mythology?

It's definitely one of them. And the sensibility has infected movies which are another version of mythology, but one thing we do best is marketing -- a superficial and corrupting version of education -- and essentially what IS going on is Superheroes are being run into the ground the same way that westerns, an earlier version of our mythology, were. We shall see what happens but superheroes are not the same as older mythologies: they are just sold that way.