THE HERO COMPLEX

In a biosphere where people strive to survive within the normal and uncrossed boundaries, people who were made to stand out do more than stand out. They become freaks, oddities, aberrations, completely unshaped from the same mold.

And then some become heroes.

We all know the story, we’ve read the comic, we’ve heard the tale. But in a fast-paced world where everyone seems to be coerced to be ordinary, to be in the norm, there will always be a vexing curiosity in each one of us to break out of the perfect, plural mold and become something greater than what we were dictated to do. For instance, fulfill a prophecy made eons ago, or add another element to the otherwise lengthy list of elements in the periodic table.

To be clad in skintight, yet surprisingly supple leather bodysuits and jump to and from indeterminable heights and hop in vehicles that Top Gear would pay millions to photograph is somewhat the ultimate yet irredeemable dream some of us have. Yet, what fuels the normal to strive to be something else? What could be so undeniably rewarding about the ability to save lives or be saved by someone donning a symbolic costume and cape? I investigate more about the perplexities of the Hero Complex.

Everybody needs a hero. True or false?

This particular statement has been stated and restated so many times in the past, it lost its meaning and took up other definition. But does everybody need a hero? And if they did, what did they need saving for?

An average person starts and ends with simple thoughts, and progresses with complexities as the day passes by. Encounters with people, strange, estranged and familiar, are often experienced, and a day often has a singular goal to fulfill, with many other miniature goals tied with it. Students go to uni or career people have to wake up and walk the same street with other people going to the same business district. Not only are we average people with average goals, we oft share the same directions and pursue the same aspirations.

A superhero’s day, on the other hand, starts off in a pretty similar way, only deep inside, they’re hyper aware that they have powers inside of them that are waiting to be unleashed. They strive to finish the day, with just enough time to spare to chase a robber or rescue sixty-four civilians from a burning twelve-story building.  Their day ends with closed, tired eyes, their usually flawless face peaceful in deep sleep, and their chests heaving up and down with heavy, lulling breaths. Yet underneath the peace lies the powerful tiger ready to led a rip, so to speak, and fight evil without batting an eyelash.

Superheroes in comic books dealt with massive destruction, and their alter egos, with unpaid hours and unrequited love. Superheroes were worshiped and applauded by toddlers, their little eyes shining with admiration for the big, tall super person, whereas their alter egos would often shy away from the slightest social interaction brought forth by strangers. Superheroes were cool and awesome and radical, and their alter egos, well, you get the picture.

That’s not to say that other superheroes, sans alter egos, live a picture-perfect life. They have their own demons to battle, internally and externally, and are haunted by the same thoughts that keep us awake at the most inopportune times. I’m pretty certain Edward Anthony Stark would agree with that.

The reason for our adoration for superheroes is the underlying fact that we need an exit from our own lives, and the idea of harboring another identity, one more powerful, popular, appealing and robust, holding greater pleasure for us than living our ordinary lives. Because let’s face it: who would turn down an opportunity to be a millionaire, build empires while battling monsters in downtown New York? I surely wouldn’t, and if you said no or something else just as absurd, I’m certain I wouldn’t believe you.

Not one bit.

Superheroes are bred by the similar kind of imagination that jumps around in our brains, the one that propels us to be creative and find aesthetic in the simplest of things. It’s also the very same kind that fuels us to find greater purpose in life and self-realization in the midst of a breakdown. Furthermore, superheroes, the ones we put on a pedestal and crave to be, are the creations of a mind much like ours. They’re entities crafted by the same minds, entities that provide a semblance of escape and reality.

But just like most good things in this world, superheroes and comic books are as unreal as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

I’m sorry, kids.

If comic books were true to the letter, everyone would be talking using only their voice and literally hands-free, perhaps with only a microchip to help communicate with a digital representation of the person talking. We’d also have cars in the air and less traffic on land, but definitely a greater volume of vehicles up in the sky. Comic books were a form of guilty pleasure that conveyed of better, newer, greater promises to and by humankind, only to have them unfulfilled or purported for necessities with greater zeal for invention. Comic books delivered the escape we sought from the trivial, numbing realities of life, and somehow, we wanted ourselves to believe that if we stuck it out as the awkward, bumbling kid in thick glasses and railroad tracks, we’d eventually get bitten by a spider or doused in a vat of radioactive waste and survive unharmed, but given hyper normal powers beyond our control. Comic books were the drug to a druggie that sought an escape in the form of fallen meteors and missions away from Earth, or crises so huge, it would require the collective action of humanity to resolve. Comic books were the kind of pleasure brought by smudged ink and neon colors, a beautiful mishap made by skillful imagination and absurdity reborn as words.

So comic books and superheroes and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real. Big *sniffle* whoop. What now?

Well, in the fair interest of the hero complex, there is something that we’re still to shed light upon. If everybody does need a hero, and why they need one.

The darkest recesses of our souls are the places we should grow to be most afraid of. This is the reason why we’re hesitant to spill our guts or tell the whole story, everything unrefined and unchanged, for we can readily be haunted by the ghosts of our mistakes and the apparitions of our repercussions. We need heroes to save us from the darkest thoughts we have at two-in-the-morning, when we’re holding the bottle of pills in our hands, when we’re eyeing the sharp edge of the blade, when we’re all but ready to fade away.

We need heroes to give us the pep talk we need when we’re about to enter a particularly taxing class, ace an audition or finish a task that we’re not predisposed to liking. We need heroes to tell us that everything will be fine, even as the pillars of our life are falling apart and crumbling to the ground. We need heroes to motivate us to kick some backside, as we stand up and away from heartbreak. We need heroes to remind us that we have a chance to get better every passing day, and that we’re only on our way to becoming the best version of ourselves we can be.

So do we need a hero, to chase away the thoughts that plague us? Do we need a hero to make us feel alive?

No, we don’t.

What we seem to forget when we become completely encapsulated in the thought of someone rescuing us from our droll life, from our past mistakes, from ourselves, is that we have no one else, no hero to seek, no one to rely upon.

But us.

We don’t need a hero to chase away the plaguing thoughts and crisis, because we’ll have something better than a fictional hero interspersed between volumes and volumes of comic book paper. We have real friends and real people who love us enough to exhume us of the weight we carry. They might not be billionaires or equipped with supersonic abilities, but they’re the kind of squad we need.

We don’t need a hero to make us feel complete, because a fictional universe where we’re not awkward and unsure isn’t going to make us feel like real people. It’s going to make us feel artificial, like dolls in a Barbiehouse.

We don’t need a hero to make us feel alive, because, in the realest, most tangible sense of the word, we are alive. Superheroes are not. So while they have all the opportunities of shape-shifting into a hundred-and-fifty tons of pure muscle, and we don’t, we have to remember that the people we desire to be the most are living between the pages of a comic book, creations of the human mind. We may live half a life, but there’s something to be said about being flesh and blood than being immortalized in action figures and wax statues.

There are three secrets to being a superhero, as exhibited in the hero complex.

One: The hero complex is just a fascination. An insanity that may or may not last beyond the last superhero film you watched, or the release of the newest look of the Joker. Either way, the hero complex rests on one’s reliance on superheroes, and how pliant one is regarding the viability of true superheroes saving the day.

Two: I’m a superhero.

Three: And coming from a superhero, here’s the last secret: We’re all superheroes.

We’re all the superheroes we could ever wish to be. We’re the only ones capable of shape-shifting into the future selves we want to be, and we’re the superheroes that could save us from the interminable abyss that sometimes we fall to. We’re superheroes with real powers and teammates that are as dynamic as their abilities. We’re the real superheroes, the ones that can solve math equations and cook real food and fend for oneself against the hustle and bustle of the city, and the occasional swamp at public transportation. Yes, our alter egos are often awkward and shy, but those ones usually are the hottest heroes we fall for. And another thing, that every time we fly, we journey to new adventures, as heroes capable of saving lives, altering dynamics and changing the world.

One hero at a time.

Written by Katrina Perolino
Art by Tin Nepomuceno
Additional credits to jrace.deviantart.com for the city background used in the art

Writer twitter: @quatrinaa

          Katrina Perolino instagram: @quatrinaa

Francophilic and bibliophilic cat who loves dogs and furry, fluffy, nipping creatures
Oft lost in a world of etched letters and bleeding ink
Doused in wanderlust, brevity, and a pungent sense of adventure
Lachrymose, crossing delineations and blurring lines

Artist // Writer twitter: @christinedianen

          Tin Nepomuceno instagram: @christinedianen

Five-foot-something with the skinny jeans
A volleybelle who’s a hero of her own world
Frustrated writer and singer