blissbat > objects > buttercup

object: buttercup

The thing about superheroes is that they always win. You know that Superman will do some spazzy reverse-the-earth thing if that's what it takes, but you can count on the return of order. Batman might be a loon, and Robin might get killed off, but Gotham will be saved.

I've never thought of myself as a superhero comics kind of girl. When I was packing all our comics into boxes to move to California, I was surprised by how many superheroes of various stripe there are on my bookshelves. Some of them aren't as obviously supernormal as others—no Chemical X—but even John Constantine did the right deal with the right devil, and of course, there're the Frank Miller Batman books. Still, superheroes have never been my thing.

And suddenly, I miss them so hard it hurts.

It might be different if it weren't New York. Comics are just another symbolic language, but I keep thinking about the flight attendants and the firemen and then about the bombs, and it feels like the supermen are the only ones who could ever make any of this right again.

I'm not the only one who's noticed the resonance; our political and military leaders can't stop talking about evildoers and rough justice as though this were a story arc with a beginning, middle, and end. It isn't though, and despite the mythic language of war there is no one coming to save us.

Of course, we had our heroes. The deaths of the people in the buildings and on the planes felt like murder and earthquakes and every kind of disaster. The lives of the rescuers felt like a gift.

Humans like myths. I picked these. The world is weirder than it seems.

I still miss Batman.