(Hint: For a bigger, less blurry glimpse at the intricate glories of the above cartoon, point your cursor [little black arrow on your screen] to any part of the image, then push the button on your mouse [the plastic device that controls the arrow.])Bizarro is made possible today by Ugly Wedding Dresses.
I've always liked to think about heroes and the unpublished details of their lives before they were famous. What was Clark Kent like as a child? How do you control a kid with superhuman strength in the throes of the Terrible Twos? It is common for children of this age to throw a spoon across the room. How did Ma and Pa Kent avoid getting impaled?
As a Catholic kid, I wondered about Jesus's childhood. Did he have friends his age, or was he the nerdy, overly philosophical kid that nobody wanted to play with? Did he ever get mad at another kid for taking his toy, strike him dead, then bring him back to life before anyone found out?
At what age did Mickey Mouse start wearing those big, dumb shoes? Once he was rich and famous he could afford to be isolated from the riffraff, but before that, was he never chased by a cat? You certainly would want better shoes if you were.
I think a Showtime or HBO series about Superman as a small child would be great. The Kents try to deal with a toddler with superhuman strength, the ability to fly, x-ray vision (there goes their sex life), all without letting any of their friends, family or local townfolk find out about his powers. Year by year, as the actor who plays the toddler grows up, we follow his various struggles with typical childhood trauma through the filter of his tremendous powers. The show isn't about him weilding justice or solving crimes, just coping without flipping out and throwing his schoolmates into the next county when they make fun of his new shoes. Or getting caught looking through the walls of the girl's locker room.
If someone does come up with that series, they'd better be ready to prove they documented it before the date of this blog, because I will come after them with a team of Kryptonite-weilding lawyers.
