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In the twenty-first century, in which notions of good versus evil have thrived, the word "hero" has taken on a striking resonance. As a consequence, the decades-old superhero of comic books (as established in the guise of Superman in 1938) has been thrust to the forefront of mainstream popular culture, present across multiple media and the character's signature emblems now among the most recognisable in the world, functioning as powerful, pervasive and vastly profitable brands. Most notably, this domination is no more apparent than the realms of blockbuster cinema. With Superman: The Movie (1978) having provided an epic, special effects-fuelled spectacle finally worthy of the superhero's stature, and the vast cultural and commercial impact of Batman (1989), the superhero movie made a popular return to prominence with X-Men (2000), leading to billion-dollar earning and critically-lauded films such as The Dark Knight (2008) and The Avengers (2012) - and with more

Empathy, the will to understand or to attempt to understand others by imagining what it might feel like to be them; how it might feel to experience the world from inside their skin, underpins much of our lives. For instance, it is present in the ways in which people relate to and care for one another within families and in bigger groups, to the ways in which we communicate with one another through literature, art, film, advertising and digital media. Many professions - from nursing, counselling psychotherapy and medicine, to teaching, product design, architecture, advertising and stand-up comedy, depend at least partly, on empathic skill. We can empathise with others whose lives are very different from our own, and because empathy involves the use of the imagination, we can even empathise with people in experiences that we are unlikely ever to have, and even in experiences that we will never be able to have. Though empathy is often viewed through 'rose-coloured spectacles'