bam! pow! cliched!

While I was changing after the gym a few days ago..

(first tangent: going to the gym is a fantastic idea. Even if you're training every day at home, lifting weights at the gym gives a nice sense of routine to help stay focused. The extra strength is nice too)

...there were some kids from a summer camp getting ready to go swimming one row of lockers over. Amongst the yelling I heard them talking about superpowers. I remember these imaginary arms races. One of them started out as Spider-Man, then the other claimed the Hulk, then it just went on, then they started

(second tangent: just to make the record clear, the Hulk is unkillable, and if mad enough one of the most powerful beings in the marvel universe. Y'know, if anyone was curious)

...on characters from Watchmen. Nite Owl vs. Ozymandias was the first match, and eventually Dr. Manhattan's ability to make people explode with his mind was brought up. My first thought was that the kid made a good choice. Second was how weird they were talking about it. I mean, Watchmen is hardly for children, though I guess

(third tangent: my love for comics is obvious, and I've stood up for them in the past, so I won't go into that. But Watchmen is an incredible piece of work by any standard. Not that awards mean too much, but Time magazine did name Watchmen one of the top 100 novels--not graphic novels, any sort of novel--of the 20th century).

...the movie adaption has popularized it. Even still the movie, but more so the book, are about a group of washed up, flawed people. They aren't superheroes at the time, some never really were. There is an alcoholic, a sociopath, a disconnected man with the powers of a god.

One character in the book, Ozymandias, goes public with his identity and forges a business empire, with a fundamental piece being merchandising based on his former self. Action figures, cartoons, all that good stuff. The others are uneasy or offended by that move--it feels like a sellout.

But here we are. Watchmen action figures, journals, mugs, t-shirts, even a Nite Owl brand of coffee. All there.

This story, a comment on the myth of the superhero, has stepped into the shoes it criticized. It seems sad to me. Not that crass commercialization and the comic books don't go hand in hand. Many say it's what saved the industry in the 70s and 90s, but I'm still

(fourth tangent: the comic industry, despite having a few million monthly readers, has always been a bit shaky. Seems to be doing fine now, with all the royalties off superhero movies)

...really uneasy. These characters were never meant to be heroes, how can we have missed the point so easily?