To Be An Essential Worker Carrying the Superhero’s Burden

This impromptu era of social distancing that has been thrust upon us has forced us into some difficult and unexpected corners. For me, a writer who has just recently left my day job of over ten years and change, the sudden overabundance of free time has brought me back to the thing that has kept me stimulated and inspired despite the circumstances of the world around me: comic books. I’m basically back to being a 19 year old college sophomore, flipping through old Daredevil issues and replaying Final Fantasy VII (seriously, the remake is out and I am actually playing it…most likely while you are reading this) when I should be writing. However, even though comics are well documented as a form of escapism, lately the fantasy hits close to home. Consider the myth of the superhero. These ordinary people with extraordinary abilities or sometimes, just a will and drive above their peers…they don uniforms and venture out into the world and do the sort of world altering good we wish we could. Not only that, but they do these things in an extravagant way that offers people hope for the future, that reassures people that the world doesn’t have to be such a terrible, unfair place. And then they pull off their masks, go home and resume their normal lives among the unsuspecting populace they’ve guarded so selflessly. Nobody thanks them, no one rewards them or extends a hand to make their lives any easier. In many cases, they’re not even respected. The easiest example of this to point …