Signed, 33

Foreword

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If you stop and think about it, comic book superheroes are very unrealistic. I don't really see how people can get caught up in that stuff.

            First off, to believe that comic books are true in any way, you must be assuming that every town has either a large vat of toxic chemical waste, or does testing on radioactive spiders, or runs tests on cosmic storms in outer space, or plans to create the ultimate military soldier. Even if that was true, and every city had at least one of these impossibilities, you would also be assuming that there are many people falling into these vats, or being randomly bitten by the spiders, or actually thrusting themselves into the cosmic storms, or truly wanting to become test subjects for military scientists. There's also the question of if you would even live through that experience or not. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to be bitten by a freaking spider just to be able to climb walls and stop bad people. Oh, no. I'm not that desperate.

            Secondly, the situations that the superheroes are put through are completely unrelatable. No, Bruce Banner, no one knows what it's like to "Hulk Out". No, Peter Parker, no one knows what it's like to deal with school, girls, and being a superhero wanted by the police. No, Johnny Storm, no one knows what it's like to go into a space cloud and come out being able to burst into flames. No, Steve Rogers, no one knows what it's like to be faster, stronger, braver, and smarter than the average human being. So please, stop pretending that we do. It's really just a waste of time, putting yourself through fake situations that no one is ever actually going to face.

Thirdly, the people that are chosen to get the super powers are more boring than a dead piece of grass. They have next-to-no personalities at all. I mean, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to have someone who is charismatic and likable to be a superhero, and not some boring average Joe off the streets? Even one of the most famous superheroes of all time - Superman - wasn't being put through anything relatable. Okay, sure, we all know what it feels like to love someone who doesn't love us back, but I'm sure none of us have to throw our alternate identity of being an internationally-known superhero into the mix of things.

Lastly, even if all of these things were to happen - you found a city with a vat of toxic waste; someone actually wants to fall into it; it is a person who is interesting and fun to read about, and everything else - how would you know what power you were going to get? What if you were bitten by a radioactive spider expecting to be able to climb walls and shoot webs, but you actually could turn invisible? Or control technology with your mind? How would you know if you were going to get a really cool super power, or if you were going to get stuck with something stupid, like controlling the rate of grass growth? Or being able to make random rainbows appear? There's really no telling what super power you would get, so would it even be worth it to jump into a vat of chemical waste if you were just going to get a really boring superpower, assuming you survived?

I guess that's the main issue I have with comic book superheroes - you never know what power you were going to get. I mean, you don't even get the chance to choose a super power; they're just handed out like a flyer for a business.

But I did. I got the chance to choose.

I got to make that decision.

And that decision put me through hell.