Killin' time, not trees

So, I often have these thought experiments. Oh my, yes, they are terribly geeky, but they're there. And seeing as how I've spent the last two and a half hours fretting about what I'm going to do in New York tomorrow, I figure I'll play one of them out here.

This is about superheroes. In a recent Facebook Note of mine, I wrote, "I love super heroes, and secretly wish that I had super powers only so I can finally find out what being a hero is really like. I imagine that there's a lot more pain and I wonder who actually pays to repair all that senseless property damage." I meant it. My super powers of choice? Empathy and emotion control.

OK, sounds wimpy, right? True, but think about it. Think about the Hulk on a rampage: he's crunching cars, smashing buildings, and walking so hard he might as well be Galactus coming to devour the Earth. He's terrifying-all testosterone and pulsating muscles. Who do you send in? Do you send in the guy with super strength, invulnerability, and really tight clothes? No, silly. Because, though it'd be a helluva battle, you'd want to neutralize him as soon as possible. You send in your psychic. You send in me-a skinny white kid who knows the Hulk's Achilles heel: make him unangry. Suddenly, the Hulk ain't nothing but a box of fluffy kitties.

Kick. Ass.

I'm fascinated with super heroes. What makes someone a hero? Is it willing to die for an idea? Is it the preservation of life over its destruction? What about property damage--if I'm taking out a bad guy and destroy a few buildings in the process, am I still a hero? I'm constantly amazed by the sheer flexibility of the term, especially with the modern introduction of the anti-hero who, although he does good, could potentially destroy and much as he saved. It's also really neat (for me) to place characters like Prof. X and Magneto on the same coin. Yes, they're tactics and end-goals are different, but they're both fighting for their people right? I go back and forth about who I'd join. Magneto, if he didn't insist on losing so much, tends to be the more attractive choice. Freaky, huh?

That's the other thing! What if villains actually won? After all, Doctor Doom has Latveria. Lex Luther was a US President. It. Just. Never. Lasts. But what if it did? What if they actually conquered the world? I always turn to the haunting ending of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (OK, so not exactly a comic book, but bear with me in this similarly geeky vein). The emperor says that once the Sith triumph, the galaxy "will have peace." Peace! Of all things! Not endless wealth, unlimited poon, or all the bad ass starships you would ever want (though no one said they never got all that)--he wanted peace. That stuck with me. We all advocate for peace, but what if the "good guys" were really fighting for continuous flux, which essentially meant continuous danger for all those innocents who just wanted to pop out a couple of kids and die on some moisture farm? Could heroes survive in a world that didn't need them? Or, would they slowly start dying out, like the Aes Sedai in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series?

More on this later. I have to teach a Pilates class now.