I have been enjoying Alastair Sooke’s documentary series, Treasures of Ancient Greece. However, I think he’s quite wrong when he says in the final episode that the influence of Greek art on Western culture has waned thanks to its co-option by the Nazis and the rise of non-realist forms of art. He’s just not looking in the right place.

That statue was on display at an exhibition called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008. I would love to have seen that.

I’m sure there are people who have made a study of this sort of thing, but to my inexpert eye Jim Starlin in particular has a direct line of descent via Michelangelo to ancient Greece. I’m sure there are many more examples.