Who could forget the first time someone looked up at the sky and wondered whether it was a bird or a plane that flew over his head? Only moments later, someone else answered that it was a man. The next morning, people would read in the newspaper about the extraordinary deeds this flying man had done. Of course, this man was in fact a superhero and as we all know, superheroes do not exist in our world. Still, there is no harm in imaging a world where superheroes are not condemned to living between bound pages of comic books. Every once in a while, we all dream of looking up at sky, wishing we see someone fly over our heads, but our dreams never come true.
In truth, the world created in comic books does not differ all that much from our reality. We might not have the colourful array of villains who possess superhuman powers, but that does not make our world any less filled with dangerous people. Our world has its own set of threats and its own set of supervillains. As it is often said, art imitates life and therefore the world that has been established in comics is based on the real world. Whenever the fictional city of Metropolis is in some kind of peril, it can always count on Superman or one of his Justice League friends to come and save the day. But what about our cities? Who was there to help New York when the Twin Towers came down? It did not have a superhero to rescue all those people. When the train bombs in London went off, there was nobody who could move at the speed of light to remove the bombs before they went off.
In comic books, the world is always saved from destruction in the nick of time, whereas our world, Earth, located in the Milky Way galaxy, has to fend for itself. We have our victories, but we also have a lot of losses. That doesn’t mean we do not wish for the odds to tip in the favour of victory and if that means escaping into the world of comic books every now and then, so be it.
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