"Specific Superhero Question" or "Pink Seil Needs Booze Badly"

[Seil]

People may or may not or may've been noticing that I've not been puttin' out as many threads as my reputation merits. It's because I don't own a computer. My laptop died on me. Now I have no top for my lap. In other news, I love Titus!

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For those of you that don't know, Christopher Titus is a comedian whose comedic sketchings are based off of his own life. He's got a violent alcoholic schizophrenic bipolar mother, a chain-smoking alcoholic five times-divorced dad, and a comedy act (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvINZZnEJCU) that turned into a TV show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqkephUH4zU).

Here is a guy who turned childhood trauma into laughter. Here's my specific superhero question:

Every superhero, even every superhero movie, has some form of degradation. Batman is a villain at the end of TDK. Superman flees Earth. Hell, Iron Man, the womanizing alcoholic superhero superstar, goes into politics. And that turns out so well.

I read that Iron Man Ultimate Armor Wars thing ambiguous name a few days ago, and I still like the ending. Spoilers for anyone who wants to read ambiguously titled Iron Man comic volume 4, but he ends up killing his grandfather, his love interest and the Iron Ghost or some silly suoerhero name by bringing out his head in a box from an alternate universe. It works in context.

Anyway, after he's killed everyone, he's shown sat at a bar, with his alternate dimension head in a box, delivering the monologue:

Here's to killing things. Here's to stamping out evil. Heh. Here's to liars and cheats and what they deserve. Here's to the life of a bachelor and an orphan. Here's to saving the world. From me. Oh, God.

Here's the thing. I understand. I understand the hero. The anti-hero. The tragic hero. (I've been hooked on TV Tropes for most of the Christmas season. Help me.) With good writing, I understand all that. Hell, I even understand in the X-Men movie, Hugh Wolverine Jackman says:

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"The whole world's full of people who hate and fear you, and you're wasting your time tryin' to protect them?"

Please note that I can continue to pull evidence out of anything. Evidence of what, you ask? Monologues, thoughts, ideals, symbols, whatever; a reason for the hero to fight for people who "hate and fear" them. Why? I'm not talking about an author's reasoning, I'm not talking about the human race needing a saviour. I'm not even talking about why superheroes need a cover when we could worship them as gods... or maybe not, as the Hulk did that (http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/10/104620/1947281-harem.jpg) and it kinda defeated my question in a way.

Why do heroes fight for us, try to save us, pull us out of car wrecks? Oe could argue that it's part of being a hero, one could also say that having God-like powers enables them to leave us to die. Not why do we write the heroes that way, but in real terms, why do the heroes fight for us?

[Amake]

Pity the country that needs heroes, as some dead white dude said.

But as to the question, why wouldn't they? Most people like to help other people. It's not even a particularly unselfish instinct. Doing something that someone thanks you for gives you a nice warm feeling of being owed; saving someone's life is psychologically as satisfying as buying a slave. And if you do develop any kind of conscience or adult sense of responsibility on top of that, you're going to help people also because it's a nice thing to do, and you'd want them to do the same for you in their place.

[Bells]

Because they can.

It is the choice that makes a hero. It is easy to be a villain, harm and don't care. To be a Hero, you must effectively understand that it's a selfless choice.

A Hero stands because he sees himself holding a tool that others cannot hold in his place. A Knowledge, a source, a power, an ability, a weapon. They have something in their hands That others cannot have, and they see purpose on applying that to protect.

A Hero cannot rise where there is no evil, evil must exist first. It's the need for the call that makes the call exist in the first place after all. And at that point, you have the people capable of making the choice, and someone will simply feel compelled to do it. You can see it that they don't do it because "they must", but they never really "have to", Superman doesn't have to care for the human race... but he can. That's represented by growing into a loving family and being well educated on morality and uprightness. He can care for us and do for us things we cannot do. He has power in his hand that others cannot have and that he can't pass along, it's his own. So he must choose to use it or not.

In the end, a hero is someone who chooses to get their hands dirty (sometimes bloody) just so everyone else won't have to. That's the burden of heroics. Just so that people who don't want to fight, don't want to fear, don't want to hate, don't want to kill never have to. Because they don't have the power to stop the evil that will force them to do those things or die. That's when the hero steps up, cause he can do those things, he can concentrate that burden on him and take the load.

Some crack, some find out that weren't really ready or actually really wanted to answer the call... some flat out don't want to do it, but do it anyway, cause they can. If they don't, who will?

If you ever want to question a Hero, understand the evils he chose to oppose. That's the only reason he exists. Many could try to do what Batman does, but no police officer would be able to invest the amount of time, life, mind and body to be Batman. No matter how good they are. That's what makes him "god like" to us, cause we can't understand how he does it, but we know he does. And we are left in awe that someone would be capable of doing that.

Not much unlike how a firefighter leaps inside a Burning building to rescue someone... in reality he doesn't have to. Most people wouldn't condemn a person for not jumping into blazing fire to try and rescue someone else... we even have laws worldwide that establish that these people are not Obligated to accept overwhelming risk just to do their jobs, even when it's to save other's lives... and yet, some of them do just that. Because they have the mental readiness and the training, and they chose too. They can, so they will.

[Nique]

The behavior and motives of characters in contemporary fiction in some way reflects modern values I guess, but of course that becomes distilled through the specific writers, and also through characters that are products of their time.

Batman is an interesting example in that the most iconic parts of his history have remained relevant Originally he was pretty campy but Batman has always dealt with crime in a way that other heroes don't, which increasingly becomes described in terms of missions and wars. Also, Batman is a rich person fantasy/ idol. He's committed to protecting 'his city' ie the institution that supports him. Like every super hero this is more or less done to protect people but if you look at heros in the context of their MO and their rouges gallery, you can pick out some more specific cultural metaphors. With Batman, sometimes he's progressive-ish but in terms of iconography he's pretty much a counter-terror metaphor.

[Bells]

and with that, TDK Harvey Dent's words ring quite true... you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Cause heroes take in a lot of baggage over time. And they are constantly putting themselves on the line, and villains use BOTH of these things to break the hero down... what makes a character heroic is pretty much his ability to outlast the villains attempt to break him from inside out.

So, as the hero gets older and lives through more... it is quite possible to see a hero shift away to anti-hero, to villain over time.

[Nique]

I don't know if Batman is really a villain in as much as he exists in a fictional world that is comstructed to male his actions justified, but his politics are pretty contemporary right-wing.

[Bells]

Mostly on the "hyper gritty Grr grr" universes like Alan Moore's The Dark Knight Returns and stuff like that.

I believe the concept is that if someone like Batman removed all his major foes from the scene, he would eventually start dealing with petty thievery the same he deals with Mr Freeze's doomsday devices and that escalation would eventually turn him into a Psychotic murderer, which would trigger someone else to be a hero and take him down, thus feeding the whole "Harvey Dent" cycle thing.

[Nique]

Frank Miller?

[Bells]

Crazy-Potatoe, Crazy-Potato...

[Magus]

Batman is a Federalist except when he's an Anarchist except when he's a Libertarian except when he's a Liberal except when he's a Fascist.

[Premmy]

Because the Super-hero is a post-Hero's Journey narrative. In every sense of the word. The origin story is the Journey and the actual part you watch/read/play is the end, when they bring back what they've learned to society for the betterment of all. We start at the end of when the superhero has transcended humanity and see what happens next. Super-heroes fight for us because they're beyond our understanding. They're not normal people anymore and their reasoning, even if explained within the narrative, isn't quite the same as ours.

On a narrative level, Super-heroes fight never-ending battles. A Hero who starts out with the goal of "beat guy x for y reason" will go on a Hero's journey to beat guy X and then stop. A Super-hero is a modern thing wherein someone essentially takes up a "job", a thing they intend to do for the rest of their lives.

Batman isn't out to solve a problem, he's out to Fight Crime. Spider-man isn't out to solve a particular problem, he's out to live up to his responsibility. Superman isn't out to solve a particular problem, he's out to protect people and uphold values.

It's why Batman retiring is the dumbest shit ever, Frank Miller and Chris Nolan.

P.S. The Hulk's not a super-hero, and that panel was from Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine and thus is invalid by virtue of every non-spider-man ultimate comic being shit..

[Professor Smarmiarty]

That's called being a villain.

[Magus]

The only version of Batman retiring I liked was the Batman Beyond version where he just realized he was too old to fight crime anymore, physically. He does it vicariously through Terry.