And I turn out to be Easy Reader's sidekick. Awesome.
As a kid weened on Saturday morning Filmation and The Electric Company, Spider-Man was my favorite comic hero. Given all the other cool choices around, it was no contest.
I'm sure every comic book chronicler will be happy to tell you--Spider-Man was a hero with problems just like us. He wasn't a god-like Man of Steel, nor was he a rich gentleman with every gadget known to humanity. He didn't have just one cool power like The Flash, nor did he spend his days leadng a bunch of other supers like Captain America. Spidey was Spidey--an average kid (later, Joe) who just happened to be a hero with amazing strength, the ability to climb walls before Velcro, and a few toys he built from odds and ends. To comic book readers, he was closer to them than anybody else, and the problems that Peter Parker faced in his everyday life were much worse than theirs. I mean, who else has a boss who not only rides you everyday and fires you every other, but also uses your best work to make your own life harder?
Still, the thing I loved the most about Spider-Man was that the hero was the alterego. In Superman, Clark Kent was a guise with glasses, Supes pretending to be a somewhat bumbling reporter. Bruce Wayne was an act; the Batman was the personification of Wayne's true soul. But in Spider-Man, the real hero was Peter Parker; he just happened to swing around town in red and blue pajamas once in a while. That's what the stories were about, and that's what Sam Raimi got so right in the first movie--the story of Spider-Man is a story of sacrifice, of how somebody decides to use his special abilities to help others and the cost that selflessness takes on his life and loved ones. A cost Parker doesn't want M.J. to bear.
Now you know what it's like to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a rescue worker.
My father and his father were volunteer firemen for the Germantown Volunteer Fire Department in Danbury, Connecticut. I remember going to the department's Christmas party every year as a kid, getting to climb up on the trucks and later watch Santa come in on top of another one, which always was mysteriously missing from the firehouse. A fireman was one of the first things I wanted to be, but I never could because of my eye problems back then. I always remembered them, though, especially what they do for us.
What many people forget is that many if not most firefighters have families. Wives, husbands, children...they're the ones most affected by the selflessness, but they accept it, maybe even understand it. They're also the ones who get left behind when their loved ones never come home. And that's the cost of great responsiblity.
Over in the right column, you'll see a few links. With one, you can go and create your own superhero, complete with amazing powers and strength. With another, you can go to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, where those who through amazing strength gave the last full measure for someone they probably didn't know.
And that's a true superhero. One among us.
Your results:
You are Spider-Man
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz
Oh, and F.G.? Green Lantern's not that bad. You could have been Aquaman.
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