TRUTH, JUSTICE … AND BRUTALITY
RIGHT AROUND THE time my three-year-old son started having behavioural problems – kicking, hitting, biting – at daycare, I stupidly took him to the comic-book store for the first time.
That’s when, rifling through back issues of Batman, I realised that my favourite childhood superhero was kind of an asshole. Even though the Bat vows never to kill anyone, he does do almost everything I was trying to teach my son not to – using violence to solve problems, holding in his emotions, and employing an elderly butler my wife and I clearly couldn’t afford.
Regardless, I bought my son a few books that day, and I told him that it’s all pretend. His behaviour did not improve – maybe because I was too late. Fifteen or so years ago, superhero worship was a subculture confined to those dusty comic-book stores, Comic-Cons, and other geek gatherings. Now it’s everywhere. Credit in 2008. Since then, the MCU has kaboomed into 27 movies and five TV shows and brought words like Groot, Mjolnir and Thanos into the average guy’s lexicon.
