“An article on Superheroes?! Andrew, you’re so good to us!”
You’re going to thank me one day for this, you know.
The little spark that set off the inspiration to write yet another potentially rubbish article for Ebola Cola, was a little spider I encountered the other day. Of course, when I say little I mean the size of a small cat. Remember the nursery rhyme, “Little Miss Muffet”? Well my encounter was kind of like that, except little Miss Muffet didn’t shout and imitate a stroke victim when it landed on her shoulder, and scuttled towards her face.
After I cleaned my pants, I was telling the story to one of my little brothers about how I bravely fought it off, readjusted my imaginary tie, and had a martini afterwards. Shaken, but clearly not stirred. My brother, not believing a single word I was telling him and being clearly consumed by blockbuster movies as it is, started to talk about how cool it would be if it bit me, and I had turned into Spiderman. Afterwards he went on to say how I wasn’t cool enough to be Spiderman, and that I’d probably be more apt to being ‘Banana-shaped head man’, or ‘Goof-Boy’, but that’s besides the point. I was stuck with the idea of ‘what if ‘and ‘Spiderman’ and ‘real world ‘ and ‘cool’ - all in the same sentence, at the same time.
Yes. Fantastic start - writing about why you’re writing. At least as a string of characters it makes sense.
Spiderman is pretty cool. I know that it’s typical of a comic book geek to say something like that, but I don’t particularly swing that way. The closest I got to a comic was a Beano club membership when I was 8. Again, like I said, I’m not particularly into comic books. However, If I had known about Marvel or DC back then, Dennis the Menace would be sticking that pea shooter up his arse. What really did Superheroes for me though, and everybody else other than the comic book minority, was the movies.
With Spiderman, Batman and the wide range of comic book titles bringing the action from the comic books to the big screen, it’s no surprise people like me (representing the common man) think what is essentially a load of balls to be absolutely brilliant. Everybody loves Tobey Maguire, everybody hates Kirsten Dunst, the openings are slick and the action is explosive. It’s not perfect, but for action movie fans it’s not far from it. Which leaves the question: Just how cool would it be to be or to have a superhero in this day and age?
I mean, we’re not exactly short on bad guys: Terrorists, Gordon Brown, Global Warming, Big Brother contestants, America, Imhotept and Fern Cotton’s television presenting skills (curse her) all help to terrorise today’s society. All are undeniably bad. All could do with a big Superhero going over. Be it Batman to send ‘em to prison, or Punisher to shove their heads in a big pot of boiling tomato soup.
Although today’s world is probably the safest it’s ever been, (If you ignore nuclear bombs and developing countries for a moment) what with increased health care, living conditions, security… It still has to be said that out there is still quite dangerous.
Heck, I don’t know if I’ll live ’til next week because of some black hole machine experiment in Switzerland (We did live by the way, because it happened last week and I really need to edit quicker), never mind a potential knife-wielding thug that keeps threatening me for money.
Of course, not all is gloom for the human race. We still do have our everyday heroes in today’s society, like New York firemen, Tom Cruise (Since he’s the only person that can save someone from a car crash), John Smeaton (Because he kicked a man up the arse) and Naomi Watts, not necessarily because she’s done anything, but because I want her picture here.
However, we might have our distinguished heroes who have performed great acts of bravery and duties to society, but John Smeaton can’t fly and he’d make a shit Tekken character (Press ‘O’ to kick) and Naomi Watts just acts and has a pretty face.
What I’d really be interested in seeing though, would be an actual comic book superhero take to the skies. “A bit of a geek’s wet dream!”, I hear the gentleman shout at the back. Maybe so, but that gentleman licks dogs.
Batman would kick ass if he was real. He could easily fix the Ozone layer using Ozone layer bat repellent spray from his utility belt, and schedule a worldwide mute whenever Fern Cotton speaks on television, or even breathes. However brilliant Batman may be, he is also tragically flawed.
What sucks just now is that I can’t make any Jade Goody jokes ever since she got cervical cancer. Batman has that same morality problem. When Batman catches criminals he abides by the law and sends them to prison. This may be fair, and work in the fictional world of Gotham City, but our prisons are pathetic. Last thing I heard they were letting inmates play the latest video games and watch movie’s on HD televisions. I don’t even have a HD television! This isn’t prison, it’s a holiday camp compared to what prison should be. It’s more or less a nice hotel that they’re not allowed to leave.
Prison is meant to rehabilitate but all it does is make people less scared of it. We probably have people going in just because they have Sky television. Rehabilitation my arse, and let’s face it, Batman only sends the bad guys to prison so that the writers can reuse them when they run out of ideas for new characters.
Personally, I’d love to be a superhero. Although, in amongst the occasional gestures of goodwill and contributions to society, I would probably be a complete dick, but how would I gain them in the first place?
Gaining superpowers the traditional way, in which people unwittingly get bitten by poisonous spiders and fall into pits of nuclear waste, like in the comics, is not exactly recommended. In fact, nuclear waste is more likely to get you cancer, but that’s another story. What you can get though, is laser eye surgery and breast enhancements.
While I could really do with a decent eyesight, laser eye surgery doesn’t mean my eyes can shoot laser beams like Cyclops. I don’t really care though, because to be honest I thought Cyclops was a bit of a gimp. On the other hand plastic breasts aren’t so good either. Sure, they may look good in the photographs, but how is that going to save 14 school children from a burning building? Exactly, and don’t even start with your Pamela Anderson ‘Baywatch’ jokes.
Every sane person knows that the closest realistic way of gaining superpowers is through technology. To many, the image of Bill Gates flying around in a Japanese-style Mech - giggling hysterically while performing software audits on unsuspecting companies, is just too much to bear. It’s true though, our knowledge on Biology is just too shit to make people shoot webs out of their eyes yet, so we have to make do with circuit boards and technology to perform specific tasks.
Some may think technology is cheating but it isn’t really. As you know the human species is famous amongst, um, the human species for it’s thinking power, and not it’s physical capabilities. Who cares if technology isn’t really a distinctive superpower, like shooting webs and being stretchy? It worked for Iron man. Of course, we’re not quite on par with Iron man just yet, but who knows what the future holds? Forty years ago or so a computer the size of a house could do less calculations than an abacus. Yesterday we were using MS-DOS on PC’s with screens about two feet square in diameter. Now we can stick screens on walls with bits of blue tac if we really wanted to. And that’s just the evolution of computer technology, never mind engineering and science. At this rate we’ll have Mechs that shoot nukes out of their arse by the next ten years or so (probably).
With technology being the agreed medium of anything capable of performing anything remotely superheroish, we run into problems. Having such powerful technology wouldn’t just be plain-sailing as anyone who has played Metal Gear Solid will know. In this world, and not the superhero world, we have a big grey blob when it comes to morality. In this world, who is good depends on which way you look at it, and in the end the guys you’re rooting for don’t always win. The technology goes to the highest bidder, not the guy with the better ethics. This is because the people who build and design this stuff are geeks, and everybody knows geeks are complete bastards (I know a bunch of ‘em).
For geeks it’s okay I guess, when there’s nuclear devastastion, at least you’ve been paid.
So in a world were Nuclear waste gives you cancer rather than lasers, it’s probably best that flamboyant superheroes were kept to the comic books. Earth is serious business, so fuck off Batman - and keep the metal, circuitry, technology and hopefully the right minds to control them coming, because quite frankly there’s no other realistic way. What a mess this turned out to be, *click publish*.
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