And I did not even bother to watch the latest Superman and Batman movies.
You may want to rethink that policy (at least for the Batman trilogy; I didn't realize that Nolan's Superman movie came out yet). None of the batman movies, including the first one of this trilogy, made much of a splash in philosophical, psychological, theological, and social science literature. One expects, especially with the tragic shootings and Ledger's death, greater impact but not necessarily due to more sophisticated plots, narratives, etc.
So it is not particularly surprising to find journals like
Journal of Religion & Popular Culture or
Perspectives in Psychiatric Care (among many others) to feature articles about one or more of the movies. I have to say, however, that I wouldn't have expected to find articles like "Myeloid-derived suppressor cells: the dark knight or the joker in viral infections?" in a peer-reviewed journal like
Immunological Reviews. Nor would one expect the
Journal of Internal Medicine to publish, in the letters to the editor section, a paper like "The dark knight of syncope: the urologist!"
And then there's the academic volumes, from
Batman & Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul to chapter 2 ("The Best Batman Story:
The Dark Knight Returns") of
Beautiful Things in Popular Culture.
It's not often one finds everyone from theologians to psychiatrists writing papers in journals about film characters or films.