Imagine A Cave
where those inside never see
The Outside World.
Instead, they see
shadows of that world
Projected on The Cave Wall.
[MONKEY CHATTERING.]
The World They See
in The Shadows is not
The Real World.
Three, two, one, liftoff.
But it's Real to Them.
If you were to show Them
The World as it actually is,
They would reject it as incomprehensible.
Now what if, instead of being in A Cave, you were out in The World,
except you couldn't see it.
[OVERLAPPING VOICES ON PHONE.]
Because You weren't Looking.
[PHONES CHIMING.]
Because You Trusted that The World You Saw through The Prism was The Real World.
[CLUCKING.]
[CAMERA CLICKS.]
[TYPING.]
[PHONE CHIMES.]
[TYPING.]
But there's A Difference.
[PHONE CHIMES.]
You see, unlike
The Allegory of The Cave,
where The People are Real
and The Shadows are false, here,
Other People are The Shadows —
Their Faces.
Their Lives.
This is The Delusion
of The Narcissist,
who believes that
They alone are Real.
- [PHONE CHIMING.]
- [TYPING.]
[PHONE CHIMES.]
Their feelings are the only feelings that matter because Other People are just Shadows,
and Shadows Don't Feel.
Because They're
Not Real.
[HORN HONKS.]
But what if everyone
lived in caves?
[LAPTOP CHIMING.]
Then no one would be Real.
Not even you.
Unless one day you woke up
and left The Cave.
How strange The World would look
after a lifetime of staring at Shadows.
[TYPING, PHONES CHIMING.]
[PHONE CHIMES.]
[THUNDER CRACKS.]
[THUNDER RUMBLING.]
“We end the Golden Age as it began, with Superman—one of the last survivors of the initial brief expansion and rapid contraction of the DC universe. It had been too much too soon for the superheroes, but although many of them would lie dormant for decades, no potential trademark truly dies. The superheroes, like cockroaches or Terminators, are impossible to kill. But in 1954 a sinister scientist straight from the pages of the comics tried to wipe them all out and came close to succeeding.
As the lights went out on the Golden Age, characters such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, who’d achieved a wider recognition thanks to serials and merchandising, survived the cull. Because of their status as backup strips in Adventure Comics, second stringers like Green Arrow and Aquaman weathered the storm—perhaps undeservedly—but the survivors did not always flourish.
For instance, a popular TV series (1953’s The Adventures of Superman) had cemented Superman’s status as an American icon, but budgetary restrictions meant that its star, the likeable but ultimately troubled George Reeves, was rarely seen in the air. At best, he might jump in through a window at an angle that suggested methods of entry other than flight, possibly involving trampolines. The stories revolved around low-level criminal activity in Metropolis and ended when Superman burst through another flimsy wall to apprehend another gang of bank robbers or spies. Bullets would bounce from his monochrome chest (the series was shot and transmitted before color TV, so Reeves’s costume was actually rendered in grayscale, not red and blue, which wouldn’t have contrasted so well in black and white.)
Reeves, at nearly forty, was a patrician Superman with a touch of gray around the temples and a physique that suggested middle-aged spread rather than six-pack, but he fit the mold of the fifties establishment figure: fatherly, conservative, and trustworthy. The problem with Superman was more obvious in the comic books. By aping the kitchen-sink scale of the Reeves show, Superman’s writers and artists squandered his epic potential on a parade of gangsters, pranksters, and thieves. The character born in a futurist blaze of color and motion had washed up on a black-and-white stage set, grounded by the turgid rules of a real world that kept his wings clipped and his rebel spirit chained. Superman was now locked into a death trap more devious than anything Lex Luthor could have devised. Here was Superman—even Superman—tamed and domesticated in a world where the ceiling, not the sky, was the limit.
