Being a Super-Hero isn’t all marvels and mights. There are hard days to pass by. Carrying the world on your shoulders can, at times, be a burden of sorts. Dual identity often means double troubles… and then some.
Although we don’t all do it, and that it IS a hard thing to achieve, compartmentalizing your self from your alter-ego is of a utmost important for the Omega Super-Hero.
Not only does it act as a buffer to shield your ego from the corrupting gratifications of the stardom that comes with Super-Hero life, it also serves, as it is traditionally recognized, to protect your loved ones from retaliation from enemies, I.E. villains.
What is much less discussed is that it mostly serves to protect YOU, the Hero, from the stigmas of ridicule that is, still too often today, attached to the Profession.
Even though it is apparently acceptable to come out as homosexual, as a country drummer or as a fan of Donald Trump, coming out of the closet in a colorful spandex suit is still viewed as eccentric by some people. Go figure.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against gays or boring musicians, each person is his own, as long as you don’t impose your will on others you’re alright by me. I’m just saying that since Canada is a country, so free you can even legally have oral sex with animals*, it would be a minimum to have super-hero treated with at least as much respect than overly-loving pet owners.
Things being the way they are we have to admit that it takes some courage to put on the tights, secret identity or not. Maybe it is only for the few proud who are ready to sacrifice everything they have to further the cause of justice. It is certainly not something to be done lightly, without some preparation.
Wearing tights in public can be a humbling experience for a lot of people. Especially for men. Even more especially for the average north American man. As much as his learned aesthetic tastes prescribes the slim beauty of the youth’s body, he himself seldom brings justice to the skin-tight symbolic uniform often carrying much extra fat, thanks to the industrially produced nourishment from which he feeds.
It is why we are taught, at The Omega School for Super-heroes, that it is preferable to start your super-heroic career with a more mundane look that you will slowly modify to reflect your experiences. Strengthening your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses relative to your own style, your own abilities.
Looks are of no absolute value when it comes to Super-heroism, except maybe for marketing it could be argued, but it is still a central value, sadly, in our consumption based civilization. So it is in a lot of beginners. This is why not every one is encouraged to put the tights on early in their career.
It is also why only the most dedicated of us get the recognition that is necessarily a prelude to the adoption of one of our most recognized distinctive trait: Only the realest of super-hero have the wits, the self confidence and self-determination to wear his under-wears on TOP of his pants.
Now I understand some of the youngest wont understand that. Having being raised under the tyrannical reign of Randian objectivist Zack Snyder * they have come to mistake his bleak anti-heroic cinematographic dystopia for the actual heroes those evil movies take their titles from.
Yes people today actually think it’s acceptable for super-heroes to be murderers. No wonder they put their undies under. To be honest Snyder is just articulating the degenerated image of the Super-hero that came out of the decadent 80s. It was really Alan Moore and Frank Miller who destroyed the Super-heroic silver age ethics.
Although others did participate, dating back to the 70s Neal Adams Green Arrow and Steranko‘s deconstruction of classical comic tropes in the pages of Nick Fury and the Agents of Shield, it was really Alan Moore three super-hero’s comics Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Miracleman and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns that really destroyed the remnants of that classical era’s ethics.
The pirates and monsters that were kicked out of the pages of comic books in the early 50s by Wertham’s Seduction of the innocent and the ensuing Comic Code Authority, had taken over the Super-heroes who took their place three decades before. The Silver Age had been gone for ten years, we later learned. It was now the modern age. The monsters were back. They now wore the tights.
Initiative Oméga 