Epiphanies and Superheroes
I’ve had two epiphanies regarding superheroes.
One: Geoff Johns and Mark Waid for one thing and both of them plus Smallville for another aside, I don’t think people are as attached to the original “Superman-as-a-boy” Superboy or Clark and Lex Luthor having been friends back in Smallville as Johns, Waid, and the makers of Smallville like to think. I mean, really think about it. The DCAU, Lois & Clark, the DCEU, Young Justice, and the current DCU on film, they all present Clark as starting his superhero as an adult and likewise not meeting Luthor until they’re both well into adulthood and starting right off the bats as enemies.
Hell, the first Christopher Reeve did those — and that was all the way back in the 1970s, when Superman starting his superhero career and even meeting Lex Luthor when they were both teenagers was still canon. In fact, in the Golden Age, that’s exactly how it was, too: Clark became a superhero and met Luthor as an adult, with them being enemies from the get-go.
The chief reason most people lament the loss of the original “Superman-as-Superboy” is because of how it affects the Legion of Super Heroes — and that was because, like a lot of things post-Crisis, DC didn’t think things all the way out and plan ahead, thus half-assing it and leading to the various convoluted retcons that just made things worse until the post-Zero Hour reboot.
Two: The cancellation of the early 1990s Justice Society of America series due to thinking “People aren’t interested in senior citizens superheroes” and people thinking Spider-Man wasn’t relatable because he was married to Mary Jane Watson due to making him seem too old aren’t just ageist bullshit, they’re also BS if you look at the pop culture landscape of the time. First off, this was also the time of The Golden Girls and Murder, She Wrote, which are and were popular with young people despite the respective protagonists’ advanced ages. Secondly, I point to another superhero who was popular at the same time.
RoboCop.
I mean, think about it. If Peter Weller’s actual age during filming of the first film is any indication of where Alex Murphy’s in-universe age was, Murphy was nearing (if not already) 40. And you know what else Alex Murphy was before his fateful meeting with Clarence Boddicker and conversion into RoboCop?
A husband and the father of a son who was a bit shy of being a teenager!
Yeah, it’s kind-of BS to argue people wouldn’t be interested in older superheroes in the era of Dorothy Zbornak, Blanche Devereaux, Rose Nylund, Sophia Petrillo, and Jessica Fletcher, and it’s also BS to say kids wouldn’t relate to a married man when one of the other popular heroes of the time was a guy in the early part of middle age with a nearly teenaged son.
