Hawksmoor
Amazing Spiderfan
If anyone's read Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen, they might understand what I mean with the title.
I'll summarise the plot here, though. Basically, in a world devoid of heroes, almost identical to ours, there's a kid called Clark Kent (and he hates his parents for naming him that); one day he is unwittingly and accidentally exposed to a mutagenic substance leaked from a chemical dump. He suddenly develops the powers of Superman. Goes on not to practice as much as Supes does, since the public want him dissected; they see him as a curiosity.
Anyway, the other side of it is that Clark's inherent separation from humanity becomes more and more apparent; he is a writer, but told by his editor that his work "is all head and no heart"; he has the ultimate outside perspective, and as a result seems to have no real mental or spiritual connection to the rest of humanity.
This got me thinking; it was a wonderful treatise on superhumanity and its effects on the individual. So why haven't more people explored this link? Most superheroes identify enormously with the very "flatscans" (to use a term borrowed from Fabian Cortez) they protect, which isn't, as far as I can see, a valid psychological perspective, given that the heroes would all experience a very real separation from humanity, so would have no mental links either.
Any thoughts, guys?
I'll summarise the plot here, though. Basically, in a world devoid of heroes, almost identical to ours, there's a kid called Clark Kent (and he hates his parents for naming him that); one day he is unwittingly and accidentally exposed to a mutagenic substance leaked from a chemical dump. He suddenly develops the powers of Superman. Goes on not to practice as much as Supes does, since the public want him dissected; they see him as a curiosity.
Anyway, the other side of it is that Clark's inherent separation from humanity becomes more and more apparent; he is a writer, but told by his editor that his work "is all head and no heart"; he has the ultimate outside perspective, and as a result seems to have no real mental or spiritual connection to the rest of humanity.
This got me thinking; it was a wonderful treatise on superhumanity and its effects on the individual. So why haven't more people explored this link? Most superheroes identify enormously with the very "flatscans" (to use a term borrowed from Fabian Cortez) they protect, which isn't, as far as I can see, a valid psychological perspective, given that the heroes would all experience a very real separation from humanity, so would have no mental links either.
Any thoughts, guys?
