Dr. Eric Bender

That's an interesting question because one of the things that I remember most from one of the comic-con lectures I was a part of is we were talking about mental health and comics and TV shows and at the end of the lecture a woman raised her hand and said when is there gonna be a depiction of a character that doesn't Make me feel like I'm gonna be a criminal.

When am I gonna see a villain with mental illness?

It doesn't make me think I'm just gonna grow up and be terrible and

And I remember that so vividly.

And I think the way I go about this is never to teach somebody, oh, don't be like Batman.

It's more like, let's understand this.

How is he coming to deal with maybe PTSD?

Or how is he dealing with this?

Why does he react so strongly to this?

And I think that gives audiences little bits of themselves.

They're like, oh, wait, I do that too.

Oh, wait, Tony Soprano, he has a panic attack.

I've had those.

Oh, I could talk about that.

Or, oh, Batman, he did this.

Or Superman, he feels this burden of responsibility to take care of people.

That's what I feel like with my parents right now.

So it's just ways for people to understand themselves and see themselves differently.

Yeah, and I think you've seen that over time, where it used to be all the villains, the tropes were, oh, they were neglected, they had this, and they became this psychopath and this.

Now you see antiheroes more, like Don Draper from Mad Men, or you would see Tony Soprano.