Sat Sep 20, 2008 — by Martha Thomases

Everything I Need To Know About Politics I Learned From Superman, by Martha Thomases

Brilliant Disguise

For the last few weeks, most ComicMix columnists have been writing about politics. I can understand how you, Constant Reader, who came here to read about comics and movies and games, might think this is self-indulgently off-topic. Most of us have an intense interest in politics, and we think this is the most important election in a long time. People’s lives are at stake. But I can understand you frustration.

And then I had an epiphany. Not only did I grow up in a household where we discussed politics over the dinner table (and walking the dog, and taking in the dry-cleaning), but even more important, I gained my political perspective from Superman. The goals, strategies and tactics I discovered reading comics shaped my view of the world. Here’s what I know:

• You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone, whether that’s the planet Krypton or the ozone layer.

• Solar power makes you stronger.

• Drilling for oil in the ocean can upset the homes of your dearest friends, including your first love.

• Billionaire industrialists should not be trusted with positions of power. At best, they are obsessive loners with a mission to avenge their parents. At worst, they try to take over the world and destroy you and everything you believe in.

• Just because you can have a lot of money, either through business deals or squeezing lumps of coal into diamonds, doesn’t mean that’s the right way to live.

• Major metropolitan newspapers are the best vantage point to learn the truth, or at least give you the information you need to discover it for yourself.

• English is not the only language in the galaxy. Learning another language makes diplomacy easier.

• People who come from different worlds, with different values and different skills, can be important allies.

• Mixed marriages (and the children they produce) can be a good thing, whether between humans or humans and Kryptonians or between a human and an Atlantean.

• Families are wonderful, but they don’t have to be traditional. Superman was adopted, and he knows that Wonder Woman was raised by a group of Amazons and she turned out okay.

• People who pry into your private life deserve to have tricks played on them.

• Violence should only be used as a last resort. If then.

• Women can be just as powerful as men, with just as many amazing abilities.

• Just because someone is weaker than you doesn’t mean that person doesn’t have something unique and special to teach you.

• We each have different weaknesses. Something that hurts me might not hurt you. We’ll all be better off if we watch out for each other.

• The people in the future are our friends, and we need to keep the world safe enough for them to be born.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess of ComicMix, wonders if Marvel fans have different political perspectives.  

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