I spoke to Minyanville Executive Editor Kevin Depew last week, and this exact topic came up: While Depew says a great many assets have been overvalued, there are some exceptions: 

“What has been undervalued for so long are the things we take for granted: being with family, being with friends, interacting on a person-to-person level. One of the outcomes of [this crisis] is that there’s going to be less of an emphasis on what people look like, how they dress, and there’s going to be a freedom that comes with that.”

Freedom to wear tights? Why the hell not.

Despite the largest drop in consumer spending in 3 years, Marvel’s resilience shouldn’t be that surprising. After all, comic books, just like Disney (DIS), were born from the ashes of the Great Depression. They were cheap then, and they’re still cheap now. At Midtown Comics in Manhattan, the average cost of the latest X-Men is only $2.99.

Could the Age of Austerity mark the re-ascendancy of the populist escapes of yore?

J.K. Rowling might certainly think so. Harry Potter, the fantastical escapist children's series that took the world by storm, is now a billion-dollar industry. Breaking Dawn, the final book in Stephanie Meyer’s vampire series, sold 1.3 million copies in its first day alone.

If you’d like to get in on the action, consider writing your own novel. It’s cheap, and starting November 1st you’ll be in good company. During National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), over 100,000 participants strive to complete a 175-pager by midnight November 30th. That’s only about 6 pages per day.

In which direction the manic market will turn tomorrow no one -- not even the dazzling Oracle of Omaha -- knows for sure. But with the economy bearing an ever greater resemblance to an evil villain, perhaps we'll stop looking to things for the answers. Instead, we'll start looking at each other.

Who knows: Maybe in the next decade, the real Ubermensch will be Everyman.