Skip to main content

The downside of adultised superheroes

I know there's no such word as 'adultised' - but it matches what I have in mind. When I was a kid, I read DC comics (for some reason, Marvel didn't seem to arrive in Rochdale til after I grew out of them). I enjoyed Superman, but Batman was far better. This was because an important part of reading these comics was role play. It was hard to emulate Superman without, for instance, being able to fly. But, trained though he was, Batman was just human, and so far easier to feature in pretend play. And most important of all, he had his utility belt.

Oh, that utility belt. (I was spurred into writing this, by the way, after passing a police officer as I came out of Temple Meads station, thinking that her gadget-bedecked high vis jacket looked like a utility belt.) How I wanted a utility belt. And, inevitably I made one of sorts, though it didn't carry quite as impressive a collection of items as did Batman's own.

I know the move of comic books to shades of grey in the spread of 'graphic novels' (they really aren't novels, guys, I'm sorry) has made superheroes more attractive to an adult audience. And though I share Stephen Fry's doubts about the genre having such a hold on the box office, I do enjoy some of the modern reboots. But what a loss. There is no way that the modern Batman is a sensible role play option for children. The utility belt now seems far too tame for Batman writers. So while I have nothing against 'graphic novels' per se (apart from the name), I am very sad at the way they have deprived today's young people of an exciting part of their innocence.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope