This next blogger is one whom I think of as someone who is refined and classy - yeah, I do wonder at times why he reads my blog since it’s far from refined and classy J I have the up most respect for Nota Bene from Don't panic. RTFM. He’s the kind of person I’d like to be when I’m a little older. The first thing I always think about when I read his blog is how intelligent this man is - sometimes his blogs just blow me away. His blog is one filled with stories of his life with his teenage son and some of the things they go through. I enjoy it because not only are his stories real, but they give me a glimpse of what life is on the other side of the world. Thank you sir, for the guest post ********


No more superheroes

By: Nota Bene

I’m desperately worried.  As worried as worried can be.  The world is going to rack and ruin.  We have terrorists hiding under the beds, we have global warming accelerating, we have bankers pilfering our wallets, we have earthquakes here there and everywhere,  and we have more bent coppers (that’s police to you) than we know what to do with.
 
In times gone past this would not have been a problem.  After all with the likes of Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Thunderbirds, I knew the world was safe.  Not that I was ever allowed to read about these Superheroes…strict middle-class parenting meant that I was restricted to educational comics (Look and Learn and World of Wonder – but I somehow doubt they crossed the pond), and only occasionally allowed to watch Batman on TV…when it starred Adam West and Burt Ward.  My vague awareness that there were Superheroes floating around in far off places like Gotham and Metropolis was sufficient to let me drift off to sleep in blissful comfort.
 
The boy was allowed more access to the world of Superheroes…well when I say allowed, I don’t think there was much choice for me….TV is a 24 hour phenomenon now, and the internet has fundamentally changed how we access these things.  So for a few years, we had Batman and Spiderman cartoons and films.  We had Superheroes that I had never heard of.  Electra, Daredevil, X-Men and more.  We had all sorts of toys to be thrown around the room as the goodies beat the baddies.  And they were consumed with relish by a wide-eyed innocent who understood there were goodies and baddies and nothing in-between…the boy also thought they were pretty cool too.  I’m not sure why, but Superman was not part of his repertoire.  He never quite got into the comics – but more recently has taken to borrowing friends’ Manga comics – I don’t get these…they all just seem to be baddies.
 
But back to Burt Ward.  He has a lot to answer for.  After all, once the Batman TV series finished he struggled to find work and ended up in a porn movie.  Everyone knew this; I don’t know how.  And from that moment Superheroes were a tainted breed.  The world was no longer black and white…it was shades of grey.  And so our Superheroes changed too.
 
We walked out of Hulk…we were there for the bangs and crashes, and all we got was two hours of soul-searching and human frailty.  The boy was devastated.   Bangs and crashes should have been the order of the day. We watched The Incredibles…amused, perhaps bemused by the thought of Superheroes living in suburbia hiding away from the lawyers waiting to bust their asses.  We liked The Spirit…but he was as weird as they come. What about Hancock? Erm, well, erm.   And we watched the latest run of Batman - Christian Bale - movies, closing our ears and eyes to the humanisation of the character and only opening them when there’s some real Superhero action.  That’s what we want.  That’s all that we both want.  We want Superheroes to be Superheroes, fighting and very nearly defeating deadly villains – but not quite because we want them to come back for another round.  We want a simple life knowing who is good and who is bad.
 
With the media masters giving human frailties to our Superheroes, it’s no wonder that they have tried to give Superhuman powers to humans.  So Tony Blair was elected in 1997 to change Britain, if not the world.  And indeed he did…but not in the way we were expecting.  He is now arch villain.  And poor, poor Barack Obama….a world has held its breath in anticipation of him donning a cape and solving every problem we can think of.  And all within a few weeks of being elected.  For some reason that doesn’t seem to be happening.  Evidently no Superhero.
 
I’d like there to be a new Superhero.  The boy would like there to be a new Superhero.  And  I suspect a good many people would too.

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