CSotD: Appealing to our better side, assuming we’ve still got one
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Wyatt brings a touch of reality to kids' "What if I were a superhero?" fantasy.
There are many ways being a superhero doesn't work in real life, ranging from the now-iconic moment in the 1978 Superman movie where Clark realizes there aren't any phone booths anymore to Larry Niven's classic discussion of his sex life, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," but this one brought me back to being on the wrestling team.
While some athletes deal with stress by vomiting, mine exhibited differently. Which basically meant that, about the time I got my singlet on, I had to take it off again.
I suppose somebody is going to read this strip and point out that Batman is the one with the utility belt and he doesn't wear his unitard under his street clothes, and that's certainly true but it falls under the "shut up and read the funnies" rule, which is to say, it's one thing to add more humor to a situation by pretending to take it seriously, but removing humor by actually doing so makes you neither a nerd nor a geek but simply a dork.
I'm not saying, however, that you can't make a living by taking this stuff way, way too seriously. Obviously.
That 1978 movie was fun precisely because, unlike the "Batman" TV show that simply mocked the source material, it hit a good balance of honoring the story while providing a few winks and asides including the above-referenced moment.
It provided what I refer to as "Rocky and Bullwinkle" humor, such that the kids enjoyed it but the adults also got some extra laughs that went right over the Kerwood Derbies on those little guys' heads.
Times have changed: Last week I offered my young reporters the chance to volunteer for the press screening of "Superman v. Batman," but had to tell them that I was going to enforce the PG-13 rating in assigning this one.
I usually waive it for superhero flicks, but the trailer strongly suggests that this is one of those modern action movies that consists mostly of angry people beating the living shit out of each other in the dark.
There is even an R-rated version slated for home release, according to this spoiler-laden article, and I guess I'm an old fart because I don't see the appeal.
As I have often said before, I don't know why the DC characters can't be preserved for kids and let the comic-creators make up new, different — perhaps even more plausible — characters to appeal to the testostrone-challenged perpetual adolescent market.
Not apologizing for the rant. I had a blast taking my little guys to that 1978 Superman flick. Kids deserve fun and they shouldn't have to leap from Pixar kiddie stuff to mean-spirited near-R movies with no middle ground.
Okay, this one I'll apologize for, a little 
Wumo applies reality to fantasy in a different way, which made me chuckle but which I realize is pretty far off-base, given that 99 percent of the people who play video games are already fantasizing about running around on a physical level that in no way mirrors their own.
Yes, there are exceptions. But, no, you're not one of them.
Again, however, there's a difference between Madden and GTA that mirrors the shift in Superhero flicks over the past several decades.
Digital Natives have a huge advantage over us Old Farts in manipulating characters on the screen, but, at least for me, the real divide here is that, while I certainly understand the appeal of the sports games and the shooting-anonymous-enemies games, I don't get the Grand Theft Auto thing.
Not blaming the kids (who aren't kids anymore, btw). After all, it was my generation that turned Vito Corleone into a good guy.
And, come to think of it, I've been streaming "Boardwalk Empire" on Netflix while I do the dishes.
But, dammit, my hypocrisy isn't the point.
Meanwhile, in the real world
I'm still avoiding US electoral politics, but international human rights issues are a different thing, and Cartoon Movement has begun its annual cartooning for the National 4 and 5 May Committee in the Netherlands, which celebrates May 5, when their nation was liberated from the Nazis.
If you scroll down on that latter link, you'll find a collection of cartoons going back several years, but I particularly like this Enrico Bertuccioli piece, because of the implications of solving the puzzle: It's easy to make the EU logo whole again, by simply shifting the family to the right and sliding the piece above them down. Except that it leaves the family outside and a gap within the EU.
Solving the refugee issue isn't easy, though a major part of it certainly centers on Dylan's question. Even if it's difficult to find a solution, the need to make an effort is indisputable, at least among decent people in civilized countries. Your mileage may vary.
America can take a calm, dispassionate, unbiased look because we're on the other side of the planet. Nobody's suddenly appearing on our shores.
We were also able to be calm, dispassionate and unbiased about entering either World War because of that distance.
Looking back on our history of standing back offers two paths: One is to bend history to fit our needs, which, in the case of WWII, means denouncing the America First Committee as closet-fascists and deriding Lindbergh as a Nazi sympathizer, though an actual look at the membership and history of the group would make that untenable.
The second path is to admit that good and decent people can take positions that will come back to haunt them in the future, and to try to position yourself such that you won't have to invent fairy tales about why you stood aside instead of standing up.
In the meantime, as Spanish cartoonist Pedripol suggests, you can simply deny that it's happening at all.
But for god's sake, don't let them get close enough that you can see their faces or learn their names.
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