No More Heroes

As a child I didn’t get an allowance as many of my buddies did because my parents weren’t affluent but, I began earning money early in life from mowing lawns and shoveling snow.  My income was meager however, as they say, it paid the bills.

The bills I’m talking about included school supplies in the form of pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, and milk for lunch.  Milk was 3¢ a carton; chocolate milk was 4¢.

Seems pretty inexpensive however, I was making 50¢ an hour, under the table.

And every so often I found some soft drink bottles carelessly tossed onto neighborhood yards.  I redeemed them at the corner store.  Pint bottles brought 2¢, while quarts fetched a handsome 5¢.  These bonuses were what fed my habit of comic books.

When I had time, I helped Superman fight criminals with his super human abilities.  I knew full well he couldn’t really fly or leap tall buildings.  I also had a tough time trying to figure out why he so enjoyed the company of Lois Lane.

Lois was a colleague of Clark Kent, Superman’s disguise.  He would dash behind a hidden space with a business suit and hat only to emerge as Superman replete with cape but, no glasses.

That quick change transformed Clark so much so that he fooled everyone in town.  Maybe the whole city was just plain stupid.

But the comic book version of Superman was so much more entertaining than the television version.  And, it was in color.  We only had black and white televisions to watch which made theater-of-the-mind important.

Still, Superman was one of the comics I regularly reached for with my pocket full of precious change.  Batman was another hero of mine. And again, this guy and his ward, Robin, fooled all of Gotham City.  Their voices were never a giveaway.  Another metropolitan area full of mind-altering drugs, I guess.

Fast-forward to modern times and too much of these characters have changed, and not for the better.

Superman and Batman both left me and my child-like fantasies of good vs. evil, some years ago.  One controversial story line had these two fictional heroes somehow corrupted and doing battle with one another.

Then, the Batman series of movies, and the Superman television series, and associated spinoffs, have totally bastardized the fantasy of these super-characters to the point of no return.  They are no longer heroes, and the line between good and evil has vanished.

The writers seem to have used these franchises as personal playgrounds for their own satisfaction to destroy comic books figures kids looked up to.  In fact, just last week I discovered that according to the New York Post, “Marvel Comics plans to take “disciplinary action” against an artist who slipped political propaganda into a comic book. The comic book giant has been under fire since it was revealed that Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf used Islamist and anti-Semitic verses in the series released on Wednesday, “X-Men Gold #1.” Fans started to point out the hidden messages on social media, prompting Marvel to announce recently that it would pull some of the images, according to Time.

Today, America has little in the way of escapism and it needs some conduit to encourage the youth to want a virtuous side on which to stand.  Indeed, today’s youth have no real heroes, and they seem to fall for anything.

College students love terrorists over President Donald Trump, and they detest America’s police and military in favor of criminals and anarchists.

I’m glad I could experience the comic book characters in their true glory of good and evil where a distinct line could be drawn.  Alas, the good old days.