I walked into a comic book store in New Jersey a couple of months ago, and when I approached the sales representative at the cashier's desk, I told the fellow, "Hi, I'm Green Arrow, the famous super-archer." Green Arrow (DC Comics) has been popularized by the hit television series "Arrow" (The CW). The sales guy smiled and was amused, thinking I was alluding to Halloween 2014 approaching and commenting as a general fan of the Green Arrow franchise.

However, I thought to myself, "If I was telling him the truth, he would still think I was joking." We're totally comfortable with encountering wondrous aliens from other planets, but if we're told we might find out that Batman or Green Arrow is real, we immediately think we're making tall tales. Of course, such characters are indeed the stuff of fantasy and fun, and while modern era athletes take performance-enhancing drugs to make themselves super-strong, no one believes they are in fact some kind of super-humans with wondrous and delightful appeal (like a comic book superhuman).

I thought that maybe modern society has become jaded in its imagination. We buy and sell and read comic books, but feel cynical towards police officers (real-life superheroes).

Meanwhile, people take images of violence and terrorism and mayhem from Hollywood (USA) movies such as "Natural Born Killers" (1994) and copy their mania to imitate them in some psychotic act of angst self-aggrandizement and the media publicizes such acts.


Why would we look down on someone who dresses up as Green Arrow or Batman to roam the city streets at night or during Halloween to serve as civil order cheerleaders?

Perhaps our view of vigilantism since the publicized days of the Hell's Angels has become very eschewed.


I was thinking of the G.I. Joe (Hasbro) paramilitary fantasy-adventure comic book franchise fictional combat vehicle the H.A.V.O.C. (Heavy Articulated Vehicle Ordnance Carrier) and how it represents society fantasies about the strength of law and order. The word 'havoc' means devastation or damage. Civilians today purchase army-styled Hummer vehicles, so why not entertain notions about why such vehicles are metaphors of the H.A.V.O.C.?

Society needs a re-injection of self-idealization vigor, and Hollywood (USA) movies such as "Daredevil" (2003) reflect this street-talk angst.


The Batman (DC Comics) franchise presents stories about a vigilante who tackles his brooding Gotham City's most deadly criminally insane terrorists such as Poison Ivy (a radical and dangerous eco-terrorist). Batman rounds up these nemeses and places them in a self-rehabilitation and incarceration center known as Arkham Asylum.

We need a real-life 'Vigilantism Arkham Asylum' that speaks to everyday modern concerns about cynicism overload.









Arkham Asylum


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