CHILDSPLAY AND HOW I KILLED SUPERMAN
I grew up watching a lot of cartoons. Most of the cartoons I watched made children, so they often featured anthropomorphised animals; Atom Ant, Super Ted, Mighty Mouse, and so on. The storylines of the humanoid superheroes where often too grownup to make into children's cartoons on TV.
I did have some DC and Marvel comics though. I loved Spiderman! Spidey is probably still my favourite of the lot. I was always really excited when the heroes clashed and battled each other. I remember reading the fight between the Incredible Hunk and the Iron Man for the first time.
Fun fact: Superman, Spider-Man and Iron Man are the correct ways to write these heroes' names.
Since the DC and Marvel universes never met, my friends and I would make it happen. We would each pick our hero from one of the universes and face them off against each other, based on their powers. I had a friend who would reach for Superman immediately, and claim he was "invincible" and hence win by default.
One day I was able to think around the invincibility of Superman. I picked Firestorm! One of his powers is the ability to manipulate inorganic matter. So he could turn silver, for example, into gold. How useful! So my Firestorm simply changed his Superman's costume into Kryptonite. The End.
Following that incident, we banned the gods from the bouts. These included Superman, Thor, the 10x Incredible Hulk (the juiced up one with the magnified strength), Captain Marvel, all the titans, Firestorm, and so on.
Many people, men and women, are reliving their childhoods right now with all the Marvel and DC comic series movies in the cinemas. The technology is finally there to make them convincing. It's so cool to observe young people discover these characters for the first time wondering why/how their (usually uncool) parents already know so much about them.
Who's your favourite superhero?
Peace & Love,
Adé
