Well, I figured I ought to start out light for my first topic, as I think with all the buzz about what’s going on in the world, I ought to at least do something fun before I tackle anything serious. So today I’m going to tell y’all the story of how I went blind for a day and ended up understanding Superman.
I had been driving on the freeway (usually a pretty uneventful experience) while it was hot out, so I had the air going in the car. Little did I know something had made its way into the vents, and just as I was attempting a rather tricky merging maneuver a burst of dust and gravel shot out right into my eyes. Horrified, I began slapping my passenger, who up til this point had been sound asleep, about the head and chest until he grabbed the wheel and helped me guide us off the freeway and into a parking spot. I tried flushing my eyes, resting them, forcing them open so whatever was in them would simply fall out, but none of it did any good. I would soon come to find out the dust had scratched my corneas, which left me blind for almost 48 hours.
Now, I learned pretty darn quick how much I had been taking sight for granted up until that point, and how much everyone else had been taking it for granted as well. My mother ended up picking me up about an hour later, and as we were navigating our way to the nearest medical center , she kept asking me where to go. So I’d tell her what roads to turn on or what intersections to look for, but she kept getting frustrated and telling me to just point out which way to go. The dilemma there should be obvious.
After all that muss and fuss, and with a little more help, I made it home and plopped down on my couch. That was when everything went all Altered States on me; I’d been in complete darkness for almost 8 hours at this point which was a new experience for me. Now, my mind often drifts about when I have full command of my senses, but without sight (and now alone, so no noise other than the low hum of the refrigerator) I began to drift right along with it. As I floated through a sort of psychosomatic Small World consisting of the geographical denizens of my own mind, I decided this was a perfect time to really root through some thoughts and see if I couldn’t gain some new perspectives on them. I thought over my personal ethics, my opinions on current events, even touched upon a little metaphysics here and there, but that was the sort of stuff I usually thought about. No, as the popular meme goes, I had to go deeper. (Cue Hans Zimmer)
I had been driving on the freeway (usually a pretty uneventful experience) while it was hot out, so I had the air going in the car. Little did I know something had made its way into the vents, and just as I was attempting a rather tricky merging maneuver a burst of dust and gravel shot out right into my eyes. Horrified, I began slapping my passenger, who up til this point had been sound asleep, about the head and chest until he grabbed the wheel and helped me guide us off the freeway and into a parking spot. I tried flushing my eyes, resting them, forcing them open so whatever was in them would simply fall out, but none of it did any good. I would soon come to find out the dust had scratched my corneas, which left me blind for almost 48 hours.
Now, I learned pretty darn quick how much I had been taking sight for granted up until that point, and how much everyone else had been taking it for granted as well. My mother ended up picking me up about an hour later, and as we were navigating our way to the nearest medical center , she kept asking me where to go. So I’d tell her what roads to turn on or what intersections to look for, but she kept getting frustrated and telling me to just point out which way to go. The dilemma there should be obvious.
After all that muss and fuss, and with a little more help, I made it home and plopped down on my couch. That was when everything went all Altered States on me; I’d been in complete darkness for almost 8 hours at this point which was a new experience for me. Now, my mind often drifts about when I have full command of my senses, but without sight (and now alone, so no noise other than the low hum of the refrigerator) I began to drift right along with it. As I floated through a sort of psychosomatic Small World consisting of the geographical denizens of my own mind, I decided this was a perfect time to really root through some thoughts and see if I couldn’t gain some new perspectives on them. I thought over my personal ethics, my opinions on current events, even touched upon a little metaphysics here and there, but that was the sort of stuff I usually thought about. No, as the popular meme goes, I had to go deeper. (Cue Hans Zimmer)
Close enough.
I decided to confront the monolithic stratum of my nerd beliefs. This isn’t to say I don’t do this pretty regularly as well: I withheld judgement on 4th edition D&D til I actually played it (I hated it), I reconciled the fact that my Warhammer 40k army’s update was released in Games Workshop’s monthly magazine instead of having its own book (It was awesome), and I embraced the fact that cartoons are just plain more fun to analyze, even if a lot of my literature-minded friends refuse to discuss them. However, once those final thoughts come to rest they rarely if ever change, and that was why I wanted to take this opportunity to reexamine them. I reaffirmed much as I continued to float down that river of thoughts, but then I came to a dark, dank swamp of a place, one which had only small pockets of understanding jutting up from the inky depths of my subconscious like ruins of a time gone by. I had come to my love of comic books.
I used to love reading comic books, and I devoured whatever I could get my hands on. This was until my old man caught me, took my collection, destroyed it, and forbid me from touching such cesspools of immorality again. So, for many years I fell out of touch with my favorite heroes: Lobo, Iron Man, Judge Dredd, Batman, even those kooky X-Men had a special place in my heart. However, there stood in my mind one monument to distaste, carved like some immutable commandment into the very bedrock of my mind...
“I don’t like Superman.”
I swear, it says it right there.
So I sat there at the foot of that ancient ziggurat, puzzling this axiom which seemed to have gone unquestioned for so long. Mind you, by this time I must have been at this for over 24 hours, I had heard the morning birds call in the distance, heard the paper strike my doorstep, heard the sounds of the waking world, but as if through some distant speaker: a radio left back on the shore where I had first set off from. I had more or less checked out of reality at this point, and was more than willing to stir discord and chaos inside of my own head. So, I called out “Why the hell not?” and suddenly, as if I had angered the old god to which these ruins were once dedicated, a cynical roil began to churn with answers beneath me.
Superman is a cure-all for any form of villainy the universe can throw at him. From natural disasters to evil pan-dimensional beings, Superman will hand them their asses with all the powers at his disposal, and if he can’t he will suddenly create new ones. He can fly, he has x-ray vision, he has super breath, he is impervious to bullets, he has super speed, why am I even listing these things, since we all know them all too well. On top of all this he has no weaknesses save for the mineral kryptonite, which his powers give him nigh infinite ways to dispose of, should he ever come into contact with it. He’s the man of steel. Perhaps his only other weakness is his romance with reporter Lois Lane.
Now my biggest exposure to Superman as a kid was the old color cartoons they used to air, which besides being racist with startling regularity, seemed incredibly dull to my young mind (much more entertaining now for the shock value of such stirring tales as “Japoteurs").
They're Japanese AND Saboteurs, isn't that clever?
The formula was incredibly simple: someone does something evil/stupid/misguided, Lois Lane goes to write a story about it, she gets captured or otherwise put in peril, word gets to Clark Kent who changes into Superman and saves her whilst wrecking everyone and everything involved. It was like a precursor to the Power Rangers formula, but with far less martial arts and thus far less interesting. At the time I found the entire idea incredibly dull, and for years I was set in my ways in thinking that as far as DC was concerned, Batman was the be-all-end-all.
The formula was incredibly simple: someone does something evil/stupid/misguided, Lois Lane goes to write a story about it, she gets captured or otherwise put in peril, word gets to Clark Kent who changes into Superman and saves her whilst wrecking everyone and everything involved. It was like a precursor to the Power Rangers formula, but with far less martial arts and thus far less interesting. At the time I found the entire idea incredibly dull, and for years I was set in my ways in thinking that as far as DC was concerned, Batman was the be-all-end-all.
Superman had super-human abilities like laser eyes, while Batman had super human-abilities like not giving a damn.
He’s not human.
On a planet of beings who look like him, talk like him, but aren’t at all like him, Superman is absolutely alone. Batman still has the comfort of Wayne Manor, Superman has his Fortress of Solitude; Batman has Robin, Alfred, and Catwoman while Superman has Lois Lane who may be in love with him, but does that give her the power to truly sympathize with the plight of a being who feels compelled to protect a world that is not his own simply because the power he possesses obligates him to. Even the villains Batman fights enable him to forge some sort of Holmes/Moriarty-esque bond, Superman just descends upon his foes with a flurry of inhuman force, wiping away their attempts at disrupting the peace of his home. An exterminator has.about the same chance at forming relationships with his quarry as Superman.
At that moment I began to see the old cracks in this once great temple of opinion. I liked Batman because his conflicts were obvious and easy to pick up on. I didn’t have to get to know him because he wears his entire personality on his cowl while there stands Superman in his brightly colored suit, with his handsome and chiseled features all concealing an unknown tumult of loneliness, ego, and sense of duty. And no matter how many talking dog side-kicks or alternate reality cousin/love-interests you throw at him, Superman will always be alone, because at the end of the day why does he fight? Is it for the humans he has grown to care for, is it because of his love of truth, justice, and the American way, or is it just because he can? Is he like a child burning ants in the sun, staving off the boredom that would force him to confront the truth of his isolation? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but that I have raised them tells me one thing: Superman is bad-ass.
That journey showed me something I could only see once my own short-sightedness had been taken away: I had a lot to catch up on. After almost 48-hours of blindness I attempted to open my eyes, and after peeling apart the gunk that had collected, I was greeted by a gentle choir of sights: blinking lights on the cable box, the spears of retreating daylight coming through the blinds, and even the ugly plaid design of my couches all flooded me with a renewed appreciation for what it means to be able to see. And the first thing I did once I could see again? Well, I think you can guess what that was, and I’ll be sure to let y’all know how that turns out.
Happy Trails
-Dross
