You're reading a post titled “Good.” from the archives of Big Contrarian. It was originally published on April 22nd, 2008 at 06:00 AM. If you enjoy it, you should subscribe to this site’s RSS feed, or its Twitter page.

I’ll never really get folks who weren’t into comics in their youth. Old age, alright, I get the aversion to being a 40-something man walking into a store filled with kids. Chris Hanson lurks behind every corner. At some point, the fantasy of the thing becomes depressing when matched against the reality. Some hobbies just don’t age well.

As a kid, I had every right to believe that at some point I would figure out the proper twitch to send my body rocketing ever upwards. Learn that my family had a dark history involving some ancient power. Discover a pair of gloves locked away in a deserted trunk on some isolated street that gave their barer an instant-spandex costume and a mission. The infinite probability of the universe demanded that at some point it would happen to someone, and who the hell knew it wouldn’t be me?

Loved the anti-heroes. The tragic cases. The guys who had to wrestle with every decision and who gave some folks a raw deal along the way of ultimately giving someone a great one. Seemed to be more realistic than the guys who always did what was right. Even in fantasy, you need to feel like there’s some gravity.

It set a high moral bar that became hard to shake as I aged. Every decision could be wrestled down to right and wrong. What would Spiderman do versus what would Lex Luthor do. An internal barometer of conscience. Even in those utter shit situations life throws at you, it made me kick just a little harder towards the better thing or at least softening the terrible thing.

Some people had Jesus; I had Gambit.

I did not have Superman. Superman is an incredibly boring character. Worse, when I was of age, it seemed every other month they were changing the leotard-wearing perfect-hair alien into something else. One month he was dead. Then he was a cyborg. Or a black guy. Once, he was made of electricity. Superman may be messianic in the films, but in my day he was a more capricious “American icon” than Madonna.

Also, Captain America was a fuckwit. The guy threw a shield. How do possibly fantasize that someday, you too will run around in a giant flag costume and fling a shield about like a frolf player? Made no sense.

Batman? Badass rich boy. I ever strike it rich on some wild internet startup, I’m building a cave and buying some kevlar. The fact none of the Microsoft millionaires or Google billionaires have managed this one makes me think less of them collectively.

The more I learn about the world and it’s workings, the more I cling to these impossible standards of good and incredible examples of evil. The more that inner barometer matters. They are heroes that can’t be sullied by later revelations. Especially if one does not buy new issues.