Heroes Give Hope

Whether a person looks up to an athlete, comic book character, writer or any person, there isn't an age limit on when he or she stops appreciating that person. Focusing on the comic books and animated series, characters in that genre represent hopes, dreams and ambitions. In a created world, there are no limits to the things that characters can do. Writers and animators can change facts and manipulate variables in order to mold the world into whatever he or she wants and it shows people that there are endless possibilities to what they can do.

Okay, maybe not endless possibilities.
Iron Man embodied the concept of endless potential to me while growing up. To a kid, an extraordinarily intelligent, witty guy who owns a suit that shoots missiles and lasers is the basic definition of a role model. Look up examples of role models in the dictionary and you'll most likely see this picture of Tony Stark.

At a later age around 14 or 15, I learned that Iron Man was a man who had shrapnel in his chest and kept himself alive with the arc reactor that he built himself. This fact alone made me question what I was doing with my life. Imagine a 14-year-old kid reading an article on Iron Man while eating a bowl of soup. Imagine that kid reading the fact about the shrapnel and then being so stunned that he drops his spoon into the soup. The kid then realizes that a guy survived with shrapnel in his chest and that if Tony Stark can accomplish that feat, he can surely grab his spoon out the soup. Needless to say, I was that kid with first-degree burns on my hands and I haven't looked back.
The moral of the story is that heroes give hope. Heroes shed light on the fact that people can do anything if they set their mind to it and pursue their goals firmly. Regardless of how many times Iron Man's suit was destroyed by the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 (great movie), he continually finds ways until he can defeat his enemies and I believe that is the message that animated heroes send to their audiences.
The second moral of the story is that Iron Man is cool and I got to meet a cool imitation of him on the street and now you're slightly jealous.

Iron Man by Christopher Allen Mayuga is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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