So you want to be a stuporhero?

I never really got into superheroes. Or supervillains. That whole hidden identity thing, and then having to put on the silly spandex costumes before doing battle. What kind of freakish mythology is that anyway?

I have no problem with mutant powers. In fact, they could be a lot of fun, when they're not a complete curse. So the X-Men were a bit more realistic, except that they turn funny colors or dress in cool tailored leather to show the world how different they are, while trying not to be different. Yes, they'd probably be hunted down by the silent majority if they ever got too public.

Right now, Smallville has is doing a fine job of showing life as a young superhero. In fact, it's more effective for me if you don't know who has powers. Well acted, too.

Then there's "So You Want to be a Superhero", which I promised I wasn't going to watch one minute of. But it's cute, a bit satirical, and as Fermius said, Stan Lee really is a legend to those people, and they really do appear crushed when they let him down. But I don't want to be a superhero, and those folks are mostly just posers, and I can't believe one of those bums is going to get a saturday night movie of their own.

So we have a media engine that creates celebrities, and a mass audience in a stupor waiting to be told what to think, who spend more time watching other people's lives than living their own -- I think this is the point in history where the only thing that can save us are a bunch of bright blue mutants. But nobody wants to step up and drink the toxic goo, or zap themselves with gamma rays, because 99.999% of the time it kills them.

So Big Brother kicks our asses, and the mythos endures.