In the events of great catastrophe, we rely on what is real as oppose to fantasy. Marvel superheroes play an important role in our everyday life but when real tragedy strikes, the fact remains that they are still only comic book. I am writing about a picture that was published on page 6 of the marvel "Heroes" book that is a 65 page book filled with illustrations from all of the artists of several marvel comics, dedicating art in homage to the events of September 11, 2001. By the end of this essay I hope that the reader will be able to glance at this illustration and hopefully feel the same way that I did when I paid attention to the details of the picture that gives it the feel and emotion that it gave me.
In the scene, there is a boy and a girl centered in a small room with yellowish walls staring through their window at the catastrophic events of 9/11 and a spotlight that shines light on most of the room. The left side of the room consists of marvel comic books, posters, and action figures all thrown together in an unimportant order that still gets the message across. There is a poster of spider-man in his most famous pose of him swinging from his web, under that is the classic poster of Captain America in his fighting stance, while the hulk and wolverine lay upside down against the pillow. On the edge of the bed is a Black Panther comic book that is half open and laying half way off of the bed. There are two more action figures and both of them are practically under the bed, the two action figures are the daredevil and Mr. Fantastic from the fantastic 4. As you pan to the right a little bit there are 3 toy vehicles on the floor, those of which our modern day heroes use to save lives, these vehicles are a police car, ambulance, and a fire truck. The boy and the girl are dressed up in their best efforts to represent our modern day, real life heroes. The boy is wearing a red shirt with the word "fire" scrawled on the top of it, a fire hat and rubber boots, while the girl has a blue jacket with the word "police" is taped to the upper shoulder blade and a police hat. Through the window, the children gape at the dastard events and commotion of September 11. As they gaze you cannot help but notice the way that they are clutching multiple dolls of a variety of ethnicities.
When I look at the picture I feel the desire to play along with the children so that they know that they are not alone. The way the two children are positioned show a visual feeling of despair and helplessness that the kids are feeling. It is obvious that they are doing everything that they can in their power to help, but at that age all they can do is watch. The two of them have the best intentions and obviously understand the meaning of unity and courage by the way that they are clutching the many dolls of several different race and ethnicities, along with the American flag. The children are obviously bright enough to know the difference between fantasies and real world by the way they choose to be a police woman and fireman over the likes of a super hero like super-man or wonder-woman, while also understanding how important it is to keep everyone together from every ethnicity
The way that the fantasy heroes are obviously, carelessly placed as oppose to the main focus of the picture which is of the two children dressed up as the "real" heroes of today. It illustrates that as much as we look up to those "fantasy" heroes saving people's lives every day, is still just a fantasy and all takes place in a fictional world. But when it comes to real life tragedy taking place such as the events of 9/11, we must rely on our actual heroes to help and do what they can as regular average humans, and let the comic book heroes sit aside. With a picture like this it somewhat takes value from our comic book heroes that we ever so look up to and makes them seem much smaller than they already are. It is both positive and negative because it is always good for a child to look up to a superhero as a role model to do the right thing or be a little bit heroic, but at the same time elaborates to children in general that those fantasy heroes can't really do anything but inspire those that have a good imagination.
Personally I think that this picture relays one of the strongest messages out of the rest of the 52 illustrations in the book. Although every one of the pictures give great meaning, and show strength, unity, love, great tragedy. I feel that this picture speaks for itself to any and every type of person, and to me, for a picture with such a message to be able to be understood by anyone from the simple age of 5 to 95, African American to Russian just makes the picture all that much more to write about.
prolly my worst one yet..ha but damn..i just dont care..
its been a month++ since my last blog..haha but SO FUCKIN MUCH has gone on since..i just havent had the time to sit down and tell all...well.
im not even gona tell all. but. alot went down man.
ive changed a bit sinec the beginning of nov..
and also..haha the end of this year is going by SO FUCKIN fast!!!!! im not down....
ill post for the people soon. thanks for tuning in america.. feel free to comment i guess
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