New Heroes for a New Generation

Marvel Creates Hearing-Disabled Superhero
With Children's Institute In New York

I saw this article posted on Facebook, read it, loved it, and then broke the cardinal rule of the interwebs by reading the comments on the FB post. They both made me very sad, and very angry.

For the most part, the reactions were positive... if you can call back-handed comments positive. I refuse to name and shame, or even screenshot. I will, however, paraphrase. So many of the comments were preceded with lines such as:

“I’m not belittling these new heroes in any way, but....”
“I think what Marvel is doing is awesome, but....”
“This is a great thing Marvel is doing, but....”

It’s that ‘but’ that brought about the sad and angry reaction. Because it was inevitably followed up by some form of complaint about Hawkeye and Daredevil being ‘forgotten’ or ‘over-looked’ or ‘ignored.’ Well, guess what my fellow Marvel fans: YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!

Sapheara and The Blue Ear are superheroes created for a comic designed to appeal to a specific target audience. A much  younger target audience than comics featuring Hawkeye and Daredevil are. Also, think about it for a minute: how many of these younger children are even going to be familiar with Hawkeye and Daredevil as comic book characters? I know if I were a parent, I certainly wouldn’t be introducing my children to those particular series until their teens, at least.

The movies, perhaps. I’d have to re-watch Daredevil as I’ve deleted much of it from my memory banks, but the Avengers films, certainly. And in the films, guess what? Hawkeye hasn’t lost his hearing yet!

Maybe your parenting choices are/would be different. Fine, whatever. Not the point. The point is that we, the adult Marvel fans, are not the ones for whom these heroes have been created. It's not about us! It’s about the next generation.

Think about it another minute: how many of our heroes were/are our parents’ heroes? How many of their heroes were their parents’ heroes? And yes, this goes beyond comic books and into the realm of all heroes.

So instead of complaining about Hawkeye ‘getting the shaft’ because it’s Ironman who’ll be getting the honour of introducing these new heroes, how about just simply being supportive? Because while this comic is targeted at children, it’s our voices that are the ones heard. And maybe, just maybe, instead of tearing this apart, we could be building this up into something even better. Because you know what would be cooler than a one-off comic? Sapheara and The Blue Ear getting their own full series.

New heroes for a new generation. And it certainly doesn’t have to stop with hearing-impaired heroes. We don’t need to re-invent or modernise Daredevil or, skewing over into DC for a moment, Oracle. Creating new heroes and heroines in no way invalidates the old ones. In fact, I personally would say that it validates them; they paved the way, so let’s walk down that road they made us, eh?