My 4-color heroes

Since I was a little kid, I have loved super-heroes. My Mom has drawings of Batman and Superman and Spider-Man that I drew when I was four or five years old. I had a collection of super-hero dolls (or action figures, if you can’t deal with the word “dolls” for a boy), and I distinctly remember getting my tonsils out when I was six and having my Batman doll with me in the hospital. I think I had a Hulk with me, too, but I don’t actually recall that one.

We had all sorts of adventures. I lost my Captain America figure playing in a flooded ditch out by my childhood home. I melted my Human Torch in an ill-advised experiment (he looked cool for a few seconds though). I almost cry when I see what some of those old Mego Toys heroes go for on eBay these days.

I also had stacks and stacks of comic books (again, what some of those back issues are worth now), and I read and re-read them all. I still have a few thousand tucked away in plastic bins in my attic, and every now and then, I’ll break them out and see if I can get my kids interested in them (to varying degrees of success). I read my comics online now. The digital versions aren’t quite the same, but I don’t even know where I’d buy a comic book in hard copy form these days. They’re not on the racks at the grocery store.

But I wish my favorite heroes were real. I wish Superman could use his super powers to end all the wars in the world, or Tony Stark would use his vast wealth and knowledge to craft a cure for cancer. Maybe Bruce Wayne could run for President… Eh, he’d probably get “can-

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celed” for being too tough on crime (although we have now shown that voters are pretty willing to elect a “billionaire playboy” to the highest office in the land).

But, sadly, they are fictional characters. And you’d think, as such, they would be allowed to simply exist and use their powers to battle bad guys and save the world and stand up for “Truth, justice and the American Way” and all that jazz…

Nope.

You see, American society has always had a peculiar relationship with comic book superheroes. Ever since Superman, Batman and Captain America first jumped off the page and into our hearts in the early 1940s, comic books have been a topic of discussion in circles you might not expect, like being used as propaganda during World War II, being accused of hiding communist messages in the Cold War era and rather famously, posiing in the minds of America’s youth with violent, sexy or otherwise bad imagery and ideas.

Yes, there were even congressional hearing held to determine how badly the kiddos were being corrupted by femme fatales, dirty cops, ghosts and goblins and whatever else comic book creators were filling them work.

There’s a whole book about it called “Seduction of the Innocent” and it led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, sort of like the Motion Picture Association of America that rates movies, only instead of G, PG, R and X, your comic book either got the CCA seal of approval or it didn’t.

The Comics Code Authority was around all the way until 2010, when comic book publishers decided they didn’t actually have to have the seal of approval to publish their books and just started publishing them without it.

Nowadays, there’s a different kind of meddling going on with comic books and their four-color stars. About 20 or 30 years ago, there was a push to increase representation in comic books.

In case you are unfamiliar with comic books, a vast majority of superheroes are men… white men… straight white men. Not that there’s anything wrong with straight white men (after all, I am one and I’m pretty OK, right?), but literally all of the major heroes for all the major publishers (namely DC and Marvel) were straight white men, with the occasional Wonder Woman or Invisible Girl thrown in the mix.

Honestly, I never thought abnout it as a kid, but I do recall in the late 1970s, you started seeing some diversity, with characters like Power Man, Black Lightning, The Falcon, Apache Chief, Shang-Chi, Black Panther, Blade and such, which was great.

But these days, it seems as though there’s what I really think is pandering or (and I hate the term) virtue signaling from comic books to include even more diversity, such as a host of LGBTQ characters, replacing established heroes with the same hero but now Captain America is Black or Green Lantern is a Hispanic woman or Superboy is bisexual. Have you ever heard of Apollo and Midnighter? They’re basically Superman and Batman, only they are a gay couple.

There’s nothing wrong with minority characters but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of other characters. I don’t need a gay Green Lantern or a Chinese Hulk.

Give me an original gay or Asian character. Hey, make him (or her) a gay Asian character! If the story is good, I’ll read it, and if it’s not a good story, making the character (fill in trait) won’t help. Nowadays, we all need heroes that we can all look up to.

For the record, I’d still vote for Batman…