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“Which superhero would you be?”
Normally, an innocent question, but not when Caitlyn Howe is asking me. Caitlyn is both my partner in entropy and mirror to my muse. I’ve learned that the more spontaneous her questions or intimations, the more likely she’s unknowingly musing on my soul’s behalf.
Standing outside the Austin theater, having just finished James Gunn’s Superman, I found my mind blanking…I didn’t have an answer for her. This surprised me. I’m a big superhero guy. From a Jungian lens, for better or worse, Marvel & DC are our modern Sophocles and Euripides, and they are giving form to the gods of our time. These stories are our Pantheon.
When I was a kid, my favorite hero was Batman. I come from a generation of absent fathers, and so the orphan Night King was my first symbolic guide. Puberty hit and symbols became less interesting than sports and cleavage. It wasn’t until dreams of professional athletics were killed by injuries that I slowed down enough to care about symbols again. My depression, nihilism, and grandiosity pulled me to Dr. Manhattan. God bless the lost boys who love Dr. Manhattan.
I grew up enough to realize Dr. Manhattan was how a kid protects himself from love and responsibility. V from V for Vendetta became my next heroic symbol. I cared again. I wanted to help change the world, but the world was a place I resented, and so I’d rather die for a new world than find a way to change it such that I’d be willing to live in it.
The adolescent finds the story they’re willing to die for.
The adult finds the story they’re willing to live for.
Iron Man and Dr. Strange came through my mind as I contemplated Caitlyn’s question. Both of them being the favorite answer of kids with big brains and shelled hearts. But standing before Caitlyn’s amused stare, I felt no affinity for any of those characters.
