Batman Just Wants to Sleep

Russian illustrator Lesya Guseva has been imagining what happens to superheroes when they finally age out of saving the world, and the results are warmer and funnier than that premise has any business being. Batman napping. Supergirl and Wonder Woman feeding pigeons together like old friends who survived something neither of them talks about anymore. Captain America sheltering Snow White from the rain with his shield. The collision of Marvel and DC grimness with Disney softness shouldn’t work, but she pulls it off.

What strikes me most is the implication of rest. These are figures defined entirely by urgency—the world is always ending, the villain is always five minutes away—and Guseva’s illustrations are interested in the gap between crises. What does it feel like to finally not be needed? To sit on a bench, watch the birds, and have that be sufficient? There’s genuine wistfulness in it that gets at why we invest so much in these characters in the first place.

Guseva also draws herself occasionally—naked, with the same unselfconscious ease she brings to everything else. More of her work lives on her website, where prints are available too. My favorite image is the one with Ariel and her grandchildren—no superheroes involved, just the little mermaid grown old and surrounded by family. Ariel is my personal superhero anyway. Or so.