S is for Superman

The world desperately needs Superman. Hell, we’d be happy if Iron Man could pinch hit while Supes was en route to Earth. Alas, none of them are real. The world is so full of problems, it would be so convenient to have a superhero to help sort them out.

But then again, is it a hero we’re looking for or is it a question of what we need versus what we think we want? I think we need some alien threat. Humanity really only gets together and resolves differences when there is a superordinate threat placed upon us. Anything could play this role, alien invasion, killer asteroid, or even Dr. Manhattan. I find the movie rendition of The Watchmen to be just as good a story as the book one was. That our race will only resolve our differences when we’ve got something bigger and grander than ourselves with which to fight. We can’t fight alongside each other because there is no villain to the piece. What we have are fogs. The fog of war, the fog of terrorism, the fog of bigotry. It’s next to impossible to fight a fog. The only way to dispatch these fogs is if we face some dire superordinate threat.

That would be all the superhero we’d need. We’d be our own.