Not Even A Superhero Lasts Forever

The pages are old now, slowly falling to pieces in yellowed flakes. The covers are fading, too: Colors that once leapt vibrantly off the paper now shrink timidly into it. I am losing my heroes.

But the inevitable creep of decay is only part of the story. Something else is robbing me, too, some shift in the ether, some movement in the air. My heroes have become irrelevant and dated. My heroes are … corny.

I know this because Marlon, 13-year-old son of mine, tells me so all the time. He keeps his nose buried in books of four-color fantasy like his dad used to do, only his pages are crisp and slick, the colors strong enough to make your eyeballs ache. He says the heroes I used to esteem are dated. That truth and justice stuff, that thou-shalt-not-kill honor? Yesterday’s news.

I am losing my heroes. In the next few weeks, New York-based Marvel Comics will pull the plug on four of them - Captain America, Iron Man, the Avengers and Marvel’s flagship, the Fantastic Four.

Marlon, for one, won’t miss them a bit. I read the books he loves sometimes and barely recognize the medium. His heroes are leg-breakers and life-takers, grim avengers of a shadow-haunted world where right is relative and woman flesh is flashed by the acre. Marlon says his heroes are more interesting because they are not - his word - “goody-goody.”

I find myself wondering when it was that good became bad. Worse, contemptible.

I mean, I always knew my music would fall out of favor. My fashion sense, too. But my heroes? I thought my heroes were forever.

Turns out, they are not.

Marlon could have told me they were doomed. Sitting in the cafeteria over their chocolate milk and mystery meat, the boys in his posse talk ceaselessly about Wolverine, Xombi, Spawn and all the bloodletting berserkers of the age. But he says they wouldn’t give the time of day to Captain America, square-jawed relic of some world war nobody remembers. After all, when’s the last time Cap looked a bad guy in the eye and killed him without flinching? Cap is not tough.

But tough is not everything. I try to make the case for truth, justice and “thou shalt not kill.” Increasingly, I find myself singing solo.

Even Marvel seems to have jumped out of the choir. Its cancellation of four of its core titles is, after all, part of a summer-long promotion designed to adapt old heroes to tougher times. Said heroes will spend two months off the stage, defeated by a scoundrel named Onslaught. Then they will return, updated and redesigned.

It is, of course, a gimmick to reverse lagging reader interest. Not that I begrudge the fantasy-makers - everybody’s got to make a living.

But I’m losing my heroes here, and I fear what they will become. A morally relative Captain America? A down and dirty Fantastic Four?

Somebody say it ain’t so. Somebody say this isn’t what you have to do to find relevance in the ‘90s.

And it’s not just comic books, either. “Adam-12” becomes “NYPD Blue,” John Wayne becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Laugh-In” becomes “Def Comedy Jam.” The cult of tough draws new members and we find ourselves enmeshed in a world where ambiguities cross each other like the strands of a spider’s web. The moral compass is spinning like a roulette wheel - which way is right? - and clear-eyed certainty is a luxury too expensive to indulge.

Righteousness itself has grown old. Old like yellowing pages, flaking apart on a closet shelf.

I am losing my heroes, but more to the point, we are all losing heroism. The fundamental nature of the thing has changed, the idealism that animated the idea has curdled and corroded.

Used to be, heroes were the embodiment of sacrifice, nobility and good. Now they embody the cynicism and expedience of the day.

So I guess Don Henley was right when he sang that we have reached the end of the innocence. It’s a bitter pass for those who aspire to simple decency. Or who just remember it with longing.

The compass spins: Which way is right? Our heroes can’t say, because they are lost themselves.

xxxx