An eight-year-old boy in New Jersey tied a red table-cloth around his shoulders and jumped off the balcony of the family apartment.  They lived on the fourth floor.  It would have been kinder if the fall had killed him outright.  Instead it just left him braindead, in a tangle of tubes, with a bunch of machines keeping him plugged into something that had stopped being life.  His mom sued Superman for damages.  Nobody’s seen the Man of Steel since.  Perhaps he finally managed to fly fast enough to travel back in time and go home.

Meanwhile, in Metropolis, Lois Lane fills fat, shiny column inches, reporting on The Sex-Lives Of The Super Villains.

The Question… doesn’t.  Not any more.  He stays at home, reclusive and indifferent, barely moving from one musty armchair.  He orders take-outs every night, but only from places that deliver to the door.  He eats in the dark, blank eyes reflecting silvery twin TV screens, and taking what the television tells him at face value.  He never wonders these days if the government is behind the high fluoride levels in the water supply, if 9/11 was an inside job, whether man really set foot on the moon back in 1969.  He doesn’t wonder about anything at all.

In Gotham, they got Bruce Wayne to open up to a therapist about the death of his parents.  He cried under regression, and the shrink put him on Prozac.  He says he’s doing better now.  He says he’s gotten the closure he needed to make peace with his past and vanquish his demons.  It looks like Batman’s retired too.  Commissioner Gordon - hunched from desk-duty and going blind on paperwork - occasionally still flips on the beacon.  The bat symbol glows off the undersides of the dirty clouds, but no one comes.

The Flash got blasted in a graphic exposé by a kiss-and-tell socialite.  A tabloid paid her an obscene amount for the exclusive, and, after a string of internationally televised interviews, she was elevated to full celebrity status.  She’s currently on location in a villa in the Cayman Islands, doing a reality TV show, the goal of which is to see who out of a handful of media darlings fuck each other and how many times, and whether they want to push their public profile enough to do it on camera.  During a recent episode, she shared an onscreen kiss with a corporate heiress-turned-lingerie model.  People are still talking about it.  That same evening, the Flash aided in a rescue operation following an earthquake just outside of Tokyo.  There were a lot of deaths, but not as many as there might have been, in a world without superheroes.  Coverage of the disaster and subsequent relief was hastily tacked on at the end of the news.  By then, though, most viewers had already switched over for the new episode of Celebrity Romance Paradiso. 

The only show giving it a run for its money in the ratings-wars is Mr. J.’s Hysterical Happy Hour.  It’s broadcast live every Friday night, and hosted by – in the network’s words – “the world’s most audacious and charismatic criminal psychotic”.  Every week, the stars come and sit on the Joker’s sofa (or, in the case of some of the prettier female ones, on his knee), and sparkle and shine and promote their careers, while taking care not to upstage the master of ceremonies.  New movie coming out?  Tell Mr. J.  Another album to plug?  Tell Mr. J.  Want to see your autobiography in the best-sellers lists?  Mr. J. can fix it for you.  Just remember to laugh at his jokes about brittle bone babies, his gay Batman innuendos.  After each punchline, there’s a little drum-roll, and a sign flashes up, instructing the studio audience “Laugh Or Die”.  It’s the hippest show on television.

This world we’ve made is no place for superheroes.  We need them – now, maybe more than ever, we need them – but we don’t deserve them.  This is a world in which mediocrity is venerated, in which the buck never stops, because there’s always someone to shove it on to, in which courage is variously exploited, resented, ridiculed or terminal.  We kill our superheroes: not in dramatic ways using laser beams or kryptonite, but in small, inane, mindless ways; in the thousands of mundane little evils we carry out every day.  By not paying attention.  By not learning.  By not caring.

They showed us justice, and we came up with litigation. 

They showed us integrity, and we watched – interested for a while – until we discovered that indiscretion had greater selling power.

They showed us courage and strength, and we decided to leave heroism to those who were more qualified.

They showed us that we could be more than we were, better than we were, and we invented Botox and collagen and colonics.

They showed us that we had the power to change the world, and we created fifty billion cable stations and the atom bomb.

They showed us sacrifice, and we thought it might be a good idea, until we realised that there was no profit margin.

They gave, without reserve or reproach.  We took, without shame or gratitude. 

We were given the chance to stand on the shoulders of giants.  We chose to sleep in the gutter.