During my junior year of high school, I had a British literature class that covered everything from "Beowulf" to "1984" and everything in between. Because my English teacher was a genius, we also found ourselves considering different forms of media as a class. His justification – unnecessary to the students – was that media has grown immensely, resulting in books not being the only means of storytelling anymore. He considered movies, television and even video games to be a new medium of the artistry.

In this same class, we studied "Watchmen" as part of this forward-thinking curriculum. "Watchmen," a movie about superheroes, plays with a large amount of anti-hero imagery. It's set in a Nixon-ruled, dystopian past is what juxtaposes the actions of these neurosis-afflicted heroes – making Rorschach (a hero modeled after film noir-style detectives) killing someone not seem that bad in contrast to the inevitability of a worldwide nuclear war.

But why bring all this up? What’s the point of me telling you something about my past that has no value to you? It’s now evident that the superheroes of our time now are making an uncharacteristic turn towards these morally-complicated, questionable anti-heroes of "Watchmen." Look at the next movie of the "Batman" franchise about to come out (no, not "Lego Batman"). "Batman vs. Superman" pits two of our supposed saviors against each other in a battle of seemingly no wits and all brute force.

Do I have a problem with the "Batman" and "Superman" franchises? At first glance, no. These are characters who are highly complex and tested time and time again by the collective American mindset merely because they have been a staple of America’s comics. Both come from childhoods without birth parents, both rise through the muck of their situations and both name their rivals to be supervillains with a flare for green and purple costumes. Their commitment to justice and compassion outrank their need to defeat their villains.

Now that these two beacons of exceptional character and moral purity end up on the different sides of the ring, I question the validity of this fight. No supervillain serves jail time at the end of this battle; only a hero dies. How does this reflect, as comics commonly do, the current moral landscape of America now?

This observation isn’t limited to "Batman vs. Superman" only either. "Jessica Jones," "Daredevil," "Deadpool" and "Captain America: Civil War" all share these "Watchmen"-esque characteristics. Heroes are now soot-stained instead of pure. Morally ambiguous actions characterize these heroes instead of a commitment to justice and what is right. After this proverbial switch was thrown, American superheroes found enemies not only in villainous lairs but also in fortresses of solitude.

What are we supposed to take away from this shift? I sarcastically answer that question: “Mistrust every man, woman and child as they could end up your enemy despite any inherently ‘good’ traits they have.” More realistically, I think it allows us a chance to back up and look at how our collective brain perceives the moral best of our societies. Especially in this political climate, we need to acknowledge the fact that someone has to be the upstanding citizen(s) so that deceit does not infect our morality.