If you’ve been reading Plugged In for a while, you might’ve noticed that I write a lot about superheroes. I don’t know why, really. Adam Holz and Bob Smithouser had (and probably have, knowing their hoarding instincts) scads of superhero comics, whereas the only superheroish thing I owned as a kid was a towel and hairnet.
Be that as it may, I seem to review a lot of superhero movies, and over the years I’ve seen enough spandex on screen to cover a small city. I even wrote (warning: gratuitous pitch) a superhero themed book, which you should naturally buy and read and praise highly on Amazon.
You’d think I’d be sick of superheroes by now. And boy howdy, are you right.
But I think these guys still have a lot to teach us. Indeed, I learned many valuable lessons from superheroes over the years. And in honor of The Avengers coming out on video earlier this week (and seeing as how I won’t be writing much about superheroes at all until the Man of Steel comes out next June), I thought I’d share five ways in which superheroes kept me out of prison, made me a better person and inspired the greatest Mother’s Day gift ever.
1. Always come prepared.
Batman is the Swiss Army knife of superheroes. If he needs a special tool to do something, he just fumbles around in his utility belt and, lo and behold, he’ll find some sort of batarang or smoke pellet or miniature scuba gear to get the job done. Perhaps my favorite moment in the 1966 Batman movie (way before Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan made the dude dark and brooding again) is when Batman tells Robin to “Hand down the Shark Repellant Bat-Spray,” which he uses to repel an obviously inflatable shark.
We don’t have many sharks in Colorado (inflatable or otherwise), but I’ve always respected Batman for his Boy Scout-like preparedness. In homage to the Caped Crusader, I’ve always brought extra pens with me to my movie reviews, just in case one runs out of ink or breaks during an impromptu pen-duel with another movie reviewer.
2. Silence is cool.
My favorite show in my early years was The Electric Company—not because it starred a very funny Rita Moreno or a very young Morgan Freeman, but because it featured Spider-Man. He was awesome, in part because he never, ever “said” anything. He talked via comic-book dialogue bubbles, which characters (and the 6-year-old me) would have to read to understand what was going on.
Well, not only did Spidey’s voiceless wordplay help teach me to read, but it also presented me with a powerful figure who never appeared to speak at all—truly the strong, silent type of hero. I took that example to heart. Perhaps too much so: My second-grade teacher suspected I was mute. But I still think there’s something to be said for the example that Spidey set. After all, it’s easy to talk a good game, but it’s our actions that really define our character.
3. Never abuse your superpowers.
When I was about 9 years old, my parents bought me a Spider-Man toy that shot out “real” webs (in reality some white, stringy goo that stuck to everything and was impossible to get off). My Mom made me promise to only spin my webs outside—a directive I promptly ignored. After I had webbed up my desk, bookcase and much of my closet, my new web-spinner was taken away.
Around that same time, I saw the 1978 blockbuster Superman. The big climax features a massive earthquake that kills Lois Lane. Supes, in his grief, flies around the world so fast that it starts spinning in the opposite direction, thus turning back the hands of time and retroactively saving Lois’ life. The movie is considered a classic, and I can see why. But I always hated the ending. Why? Because Superman’s father explicitly forbade him from tampering with human history! Superman—the guy who practically stands for law and order—broke both his father’s explicit order and several laws of physics. And if I can’t spin webs in my room, Supes, you shouldn’t be allowed to turn back time to get your girlfriend back. Hey, bad things happen. We should learn to accept that.
4. Be creative.
When I was a wee boy, Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon Superfriends was my fave. And at the end of every show, one of the superfriends offered a nice life-lesson or showed viewers a nice little craft project to do. One morning, Aquaman taught viewers how to make a cool string vase: You blow up a balloon, wrap glue-coated string around the balloon, let the balloon/string monstrosity sit for a while to let the glue dry, pop the balloon and viola! Instant vase.
I was so impressed with that little exercise in craftiness that I made just such a vase for my mom for Mother’s Day. It didn’t look as good as the one Aquaman made, perhaps, but Mom loved it—so much so that she said she was going to put it away in a secret place so it would never, ever be damaged. I’ve never seen the vase since, which shows you just how much care she’s taken to protect the thing. More importantly, it reinforced that weird joy we get when we do something with our own two hands—stuff that doesn’t pertain to work or school but can be pretty cool in its own right (even if the end product does wind up a bit lopsided).
5. Yay, team!
Superheroes are great alone, but they’re even better together. That was one of the first lessons I learned from Superfriends, and it was reinforced in a powerful way with The Avengers. There’s something pretty awesome about watching Captain America and Iron Man fighting side by side. Because let’s face it: Sometimes the threats are such that not one superhero will do.
And truth is, we’re all stronger together. It’s a hard message for we loner-like, Batman-loving introverts to internalize, but it’s quite true. When we use our skills as part of a team, our strengths are magnified and our weaknesses minimized. When we work with others to serve a common goal, we’re better for it—and almost always, the work’s better for it, too.
So there you have it, five great lessons from the superheroes I grew up with. I promise that I won’t write about superheroes again for, oh, several weeks. Maybe months. And if there’s anything I’ve learned from superheroes, it’s to always keep your promises.
Unless you’re 1978 Superman, that is.
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