This looks like a job for Superman!

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 would use his super-breath or heat-vision to blow this coronavirus to the moon, or Tony Stark would use his vast wealth and knowledge to craft a cure. It would be nice, but I guess I’ll have to settle for watching “Super Friends” reruns in quarantine.