‘Daddy, Can You Tell Me More About the Superheroes?’

I ’d been waiting year for my daughter to show an constituent stake in superheroes , video game , and the other poppycock I write about as a professional nerd . It ’s happening , at long last … but it ’s taking us to some unexpectedly poignant lieu .

It set off , unsurprisingly , with Batman . While have ready for bed more than a calendar month ago , my six - year - old excitedly say me about hearing the “ Batman smell ” form of “ Jingle Bells . ” A few nights subsequently , she giggled through a translation that cease with “ and Robin does ballet ! ” and ask me why , in the Sung dynasty , the Joker go away . When I repeated the lyrics about the Batmobile losing a wheel , she answer by say “ Could n’t Batman just wing and trip up him ? ” I answered that while Batman is an “ incomparable jock ” ( per the old DC Who ’s Who entries ) , he ’s still a normal human who does n’t have superpowers . That led to a discussion of Superman , his origin account and power and , ever since then , her questions about any and all superheroes has been a part of our nighttime routine .

My girl always wants to screw two thing about Marvel and DC ’s most recognizable characters : where they come from and what they can do . She ’s seen some cartoons at school that have featured the Justice League and some of the characters have gotten all chat up up in her brain ; I ’ve been fastidiously stress to separate the Martian Manhunter from Green Lantern . The Flash is a standout for her — she get the coolness of his superspeed right away . I had to disabuse her of the notion that Iron Man come from another planet , as well as differentiate that Thor is a unlike kind of god than the one people beg to in church . These superhero sessions come as I ’m figuring outmy own piece of work in the genreand have been good admonisher about the primal emotional energy that these characters can intercept into .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

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As I ’ve been recount the backgrounds and powerfulness sets of all these crimefighters , I ’ve had to frantically figure out just how much origin tale hurt to recount . She ’s a sensitive kid and any kind of dramatic stress can wig her out . loyal - forwarding past the scary part of Frozen and other movies has been a frequent request . But I ’ve not excise the destruction of Krypton or the dying of Bruce Wayne ’s parents from my answers to her questions . Two days ago , we revisited the Free Comic Book Day effect of DC Superhero Girls , which has a flashback to Supergirl ’s gamy school days on Krypton . My girl asked , “ But where ’s her mom now ? ” and my warmness break a little as I reminded her that everybody on Krypton died . ( Please , no corrections about Argo City . I was n’t about to get into all that . ) It ’s my job to let her know that immorality and tragedy exist in both our imaginations and the real earth , as much as I ’d wish to recite her otherwise .

She ’s been learning those lessons in a very different way at school . Last week , she add up base ask , “ Are those uncollectible hoi polloi still around ? Are they in Texas ? ” This descend out of nowhere so I poke her to figure out exactly what she was talking about , finally learning that it connected to “ the homo who cave in us no school on Monday . ” I stammered through a few eld - appropriate instance about the kinds of unjustness that Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. struggle against and how his arrests mean something different than when the law take bad guys to gaol for steal stuff . I then excuse , as best I could , how things were very different for black people in America a prospicient sentence ago and we could n’t go everywhere we wanted and do the same things as everyone else because of some speculative laws .

William Duplessie

One thing that ’s wondrous and pose about children ’s brains is the way that they keep churning away restfully on ideas . After we talked about Rev. King , she had one of her signature non - sequitur follow - ups : “ why did the bad people drink down Martin Luther King , Jr ’s parent ? ” I did n’t cite anything like that to her in my carefully worded talk and was flummoxed as to where she got that notion from . It was n’t until hours later on that I realized she was conflating our give-and-take about MLK with the superhero origin stuff , imprint Batman ’s childhood loss on the civil rights activist .

It makes mother wit in a way , seeing as how she ’s a kindergartner with broad notions of goodness and iniquity . She ’s got a middling mother wit of what ’s real and what ’s pretend but , nevertheless , she knows that the danger faced by King and the ordinary men and women who fought for civic rights happened in the same world we hold up in . “ Was Ms. Rosa Parks scare away when she resolve to sit in the front of the bus ? , ” she asked me . “ Everybody gets scared . Even Supergirl got scared of consider her final examination test in that funny book , right ? , ” I replied . She respond by saying,“Yeah , but she pick up that she had to be brave because doing her final examination was the right thing to do . ”

All childhood fascination wax and wane so I ’m sample to delight this second of intense superhero curiosity while it last because it plays to my obvious strengths . But , more important than that , I ’m hoping that our talks over the last workweek are instruct my daughter about the unlike kinds of personal braveness that have made real people into superheroes . She cognise that she ’s not move to get bite by a “ exceptional ” spider and get Peter Parker ’s king . I just want her to also know that she can be just like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks .

Starship Test 9