I need a hero

[Substack post, Authorstrator – July 21, 2025)

I’m mostly excited to see the dog.

Ok, so its 2002/03, and I’m home alone with my younger brother. He’s somewhere downstairs, doing whatever little brother’s do – I assumed gaming. And I was in the kitchen, sneaking ice cream while my parents were out. And then my brother started screaming for me. I ran down to the basement to see what was wrong and – first thing you need to know, is there’s a really big mirror down there. And I found him, in front of this mirror, sitting on the floor with a big metal spring exercise thinger (a quick google search tells me this is a chest expander). Whatever this device is, it’s definitely old, kicking around our house since the 80s and as far as I was aware, no one had ever used it. So anyway, this thing was stuck to the top of his head. His hair – appropriately emo shaggy as was all the rage at the time – was tangled up in the coils. So tangled, so tight, he’s crying and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t untangle the mess.

“How did this happen!?” I asked, completely baffled as to how this crisis could have unfolded.

“I don’t want to tell you,” he whimpered.

“Well now you have to tell me.”

His explanation – I was not prepared for. Though I should have been. It was very HIM.

“Ok, I’ll tell you,” he said, as I picked and prodded at the snare. “I was pretending I was Superman. And I was in jail, and these were the bars. I was bending the bars with my super strength to escape….I got to my shoulders and it just kind of snapped back.”

Ouch.

Objectively hilarious, and I did laugh – not only did he feel compelled to do this, but he had to do it in front of the mirror, to really SEE his super strength unfold. But I also didn’t judge. In his defense, Smallville was one of the hottest shows at the time, and we’d crushed a lot of Lois & Clark in our younger years (DON’T JUDGE).

The guy just wanted to be Superman.

Smash cut to 2025 and that aspiration in our collective society seems gone. Everyone – the adults anyway – seem to idolize a new hero… Lex Luther.

Before we go further, I should clarify something: I have not seen the new Superman movie. YET. As a mother of three, I really don’t know when I’ll get a chance to find two free hours to go to the movies, but I know when I do, it will be to see Superman. (Probably in its dying weeks after everyone has seen it and the patrons have slowed to a dribble and if I waited a week I could get it on streaming but ITS NOT THE SAME).

This isn’t a movie review.

This is a hope and prayer for what the new Superman is going to be.

Because I need it to be great.

I didn’t know this was something I needed but ever since I saw the preview, I knew in my bones that the movie needed to be incredible or my soul would be bruised. Maybe it was the dog, maybe its Rachel Brosnahan as Lois – but something about the preview made me see Superman the way he lives rent free in my heart. Bright. Fun. Hopeful.

Superman is the idealized hero. Aspirational. The type of hero we want to believe in – the kind who always does the right thing no matter the personal cost, who has the courage to put others before himself. Who believes and upholds a greater good.

“Exactly,” a friend argued when we were discussing my excitement. “Superman is perfect. Which makes him so boring.” I had to disagree that his unfailing goodness makes him dull. Especially now, in this moment. As power seems ever further away and the powerful ever more greedy, I yearn for a hero who’s values are the ones we’ve been taught since childhood are what’s right and good. Heroes that demonstrate selflessness and serving humanity rather than sucking away from it. Values that remind us of the heroes all around us and working right now - healthcare workers, climate scientists and environmentalists, civil servants and more. The values we were told society believed in.

Now, it feels like we were duped. Like the adult world around us not only fully celebrated a Lex Luthor ethos but spawned a whole bunch more of him. And no one seems to stand in the way.

As everything falls apart and the pillars of truth crumble around us, there’s a sinking feeling that valuing good and truth and justice was never real to begin with. A sucker’s game. Empathy and respect are attributes of the lame, weak, pathetic, while private yachts hosting geriatric foam parties and hysterical chainsaw flailing are markers of strength and power.

What would Lex Luthor do? The question muraled on the walls of corporate headquarters everywhere.

So in the midst of all that, here comes yet another superhero movie. And not just any superhero. THE superhero. The Übermensch himself. James Gunn’s Superman. While I hunt down a babysitter and spend my one free night out at my beloved movie theatre that, as a mom, I get to visit so rarely, I need this Superman to do something for me:

I don’t want Superman to just be the Superman we were introduced to - the pillar of good and truth and doing the right thing no matter the personal cost. I need that, but ALSO:

I need Superman to look on 2025 and just endure. And I think of that little boy bending bars in front of the mirror. A boy looking for a hero to emulate. To show him how to face the world.

Here we are, all grown up now, and I need a hero too.

And I don’t need explosions and expansive fortresses of solitude to feel like the new Superman is the one I’m looking for.

I don’t even need to see him catch planes from the sky or stop meteors in their tacks, wrestle godzillas and leap tall buildings. What I need to see him do is confront a private equity takeover of a crumbling Daily Planet and struggle to stay on staff. To fight to tell the truth as corporate interests infect the newsroom, catching and killing important information that should inform the public. To have his job taken by a robot. To try to opt out of an AI assistant automatically loaded to his computer and feel hopeless when it seems he can’t. To sit and watch a fleet of private jets head off to their latest space tourism stunt while he sips from a paper straw. I need to see him just survive it all. And stay optimistic and good and loving while he does it.

Because if anyone can survive it, its Superman.

And hopefully show us all how.