I know, red sun, yellow sun, lower
gravity, blah blah. So he's lighter than air on Earth. He
can float up off the ground. But where is the forward motion
coming from? Does he kick his feet like a swimmer does and
the artists just don't draw that part? Is there an intense
flapping of arms at the beginning, to get him going? Maybe
he opens his supermouth and sucks his way forward. If Einstein
met Superman, I think he would have a lot of questions. And
after 50 years of doing whatever he wants with the laws of
physics, Superman better have some reasonable answers.
What about Wonder Woman or She-Hulk
or Caitlin Fairchild? What does their skin feel like? I wonder
because, in case you haven't noticed, any of these delicate
flowers is very capable of smashing her fist through a brick
wall. So, if their hands can be smashed against bricks and
obliterate them, I assume their skin is tougher than bricks;
otherwise a girl like Caitlin would withdraw a bloody stump
from the hole in the wall. Am I wrong? Can you have a creamy
soft complexion and smash it against the road without damage?
And why isn't Witchblade arrested for indecent exposure when
she's in public? In New York they do have laws about women
walking around naked with bionic armored pasties on their
end of their boobies.
And why doesn't Batman get therapy?
The guys a case! And why doesn't somebody just shoot the frikkin'
Joker? I mean, page one, Joker walking in the Arkham garden.
BAM! Dead. No more endless crime sprees. I mean, really, the
Joker kills a million people with an atom bomb, Batman 'arrests'
him. The Joker could kill everybody Batman loves and the Caped
Crusader would 'arrest' him so he could escape later. The
Joker could kill every person on the planet with only Batbite
and him left and Bats would 'arrest' him and put him in a
flimsy containment hut with an open window.
Didn't fed-up son Scott ridicule this
kind of syndrome in Austin Powers?
For somebody who's supposed to instill
fear in the hearts of men, Batbreath looks like a push-over.
Do anything you like as often as you like, if Batbutt catches
you, no worry, he'll take you to the nearest jail cell. There's
always tomorrow. Ooh, scary. After 40 years of reading about
Gotham's weird pair, I'm beginning to suspect that Batman's
as evil as the Joker (or more so) and this is just a sick
little game they play, a twisted courtship of sorts, and the
rest of the world be damned.
I guess if I want instant retribution
there's always the Punisher, but the guy wears a big skull
on his shirt and carries more firepower than a tower sniper.
Take away his guns, his black clothes, shave his head and
put him in a dress and what do you have? Zippy the Clown.
Why don't we see that particularly dark side of the guy's
life?
I'm just tired of characters based
on the old 1940's days of science, where the axiom 'let's
pretend' was enough to carry the story. Let's face it, we
are a smarter generation, we require more than 'let's pretend.'
Let's pretend Superman has all these
powers because he's under a different sun. Okay, but why does
that give him X-ray vision? How does that work? And how can
he turn it off? Maybe he doesn't. Little known fact: we all
look like skeletons to Clark Kent. Does using his heat vision
give him a headache? Think of all the energy! What about the
law of Thermonuclear Dynamics? The guy's generating serious
heat out of his brain. Does it give him migraines? And why
isn't the end of his cape all unraveled and frayed from flying?
Even for invulnerable Krypton clothe, have you ever held a
towel out of a car window traveling 100 kph? And when he's
flying at superspeed, say an easy Mach 3, does he realize
it is 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the tips of his fingers
(a fact we know now from the air force test pilots and NASA)?
So if Superman zips across town real fast at Mach 3 and lands
to help somebody, he's glowing like a fiery ember, right?
He lands, starts a ground fire with each step, grabs the girl
to save her from the big fall and *POOF* she's toast, literally.
Also, it's against the law to break the sound barrier over
a metropolitan area. I think Superdupe must be doing it every
day on a regular basis. Has the city just given up enforcing
this or do they issue him tickets and fines daily?
Where is the common sense in our comic
book stories? Is this why comics are at the bottom of the
literary food chain? Maybe if our beautiful fantasies just
made sense, the rest of the world would see the sense in reading
them.
Just a thought.
Terry Moore is de bedenker, schrijver
en tekenaar van de comic Strangers In Paradise. De column
heeft hij exclusief geschreven voor weeklydose.com. Voor meer
informatie, zie www.strangersinparadise.com.
why can
superman fly? - terry moore feeddate:
11.05.01