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A Boomer’s Journal

By Tom Anselm

The entertainment world is obsessed with superheroes. This may be a sociological statement of the longing for competent leadership that seems so very lacking in today’s society. Or is could just be for plain old fun and profit. Either way, one can find movies, comic books and TV series’ for Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Spiderman, even Antman and Aquaman.

The list goes on. Each hero (or heroine) fights evil entities, some who come from this world, some who hail from beyond our planet. It is a phenomena of the last century starting back in the late 1930s, with Superman being arguably the first and most famous.

When I was a young lad, my guy of choice was The Krypton Kid. I’d pin a bathtowel around my neck and fly around the house, much to my mom’s “delight”. It was a small way as a Cold War-child to “fight the never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way.” Whatever that was.

At 10 years old, I didn’t have much in the way of geo-political sensibility. Except I did dream of streams upon streams of Russian bombers droning over Bissell Hills. Like they’d come over North St. Louis County, right? But apparently, my fear was real, and so I felt the need for a superpower, thinking how cool would it be to be able to ‘fly’. If even just to jump off the garage roof onto the neighbor’s hill. (Once. Then, I realized that hurt in the “special areas” way too much._

Which, by the way is what sets Superman apart from all the other guys. No, not that he hurt himself, but that he could fly. Batman hung out in a cave and had a weird side-kick. He was nothing without his hot car and special weapons. Spiderman was a freak-of-accidental-radioactive-insect bite. Aquaman… not so hot on dry land. Antman… no fun at picnics.

None of them, not one, could actually defy gravity merely by jumping into the air. None had a girl friend like Lois Lane. (Okay, Spidey’s MJ was pretty cool, I will give you that.) But no one was “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

And never, ever, did he have to say… “I’m Superman.”

Everyone found that out, soon enough. Especially the bad guys. Especially after all their bullets bounced off his chest, and they were so frustrated that they just threw their guns at him. Losers! They knew he was Super, man.

The other cool part of the Man of Steel was that his human persona was so, well, nondescript. Not a hip photographer like Peter Parker, or a high-society rich kid like Bruce Wayne. Nope, he was just “disguised as Clark Kent, a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper.”

So I feel a certain affinity to the guy with the big red ‘S’ on his underwear. You know, reporter. Great metropolitan newspaper (read ‘The Independent News’). And in my better dreams, I am flying faster than that speeding bullet, soaring up, up and away, into the wild blue skies.

“Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane. It’s… Column-Writer Man!”

Hey, a towel-wearing kid can dream, ya know.

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