by Kagzrimen Saikaptah

It is no secret that the average boy growing up loves his superheroes. I know I did, of course. Superheroes are who we look up to, who we dress up as on Halloween and who we pretend to be whenever we want to feel strong.  I can still remember getting up early every Saturday morning to watch cartoons like Xmen, Superman and Spider-man. I used to grab a leftover slice of pizza from the previous night and pop it into the toaster oven before turning on the TV. The superheroes were always so cool, saving the day, defeating the bad guys and doing amazing things with their powers. It made me want to be a cool hero, too. I even used to create masks and jump from couch to couch in the living room, pretending to fly and using the cushions of my sofa as bad guys to fight.

But growing up, I never once actually thought to myself, Where do superheroes even come from? What is their origin? To me, they were good people saving the day, doing the right thing, even if they had to get the job done the hard way. What could be more heroic than that, right? But maybe this was just another form of indoctrination, like so many things in the modern system. What if the hero was really just a concept built to desensitize the individual to acts of violence or acts of patriotism? What was it about being a hero that made me feel so empowered?