(techno music)
- Last week we talked about Batman and whether or not
he should be considered a hero or superhero
and we talked about Luke Cage and his alter-ego Power Man.
You guys had a ton of stuff to say,
so let's get right to it.
So the very first thing that I think we should address
is what a ton of you guys had commented on,
the Batman video about whether he should be considered
a hero or an actual,
full-fledged superhero.
And that is that a bunch of you guys said
no powers,
no super,
Batman's not a superhero.
And to that I almost wonder if you watched the entire video,
or just the first half of it.
Because the second half I specifically
started by saying,
alright, cool,
assuming that he doesn't have powers
can he still be a superhero?
And then we talked about a bunch of other stuff
not related to superpowers,
which I was more interested in hearing your thoughts about
than the whole superpower thing.
But, I mean, this was kind of expected.
But I do want to offer a rebuttal here,
because a lot of you guys were saying things like
anything Batman could do could theoretically
be done by a normal human.
And to that I want to wholeheartedly disagree.
But before I jump in to why I think that way,
I want to just knock something else off the table right now
and say that I am not a Batman fan boy,
I'm not the kind of person that just ends every argument
with because he's Batman.
I simply want to point out that I do think Batman
is at least a little bit super human.
So, there was an article written not too long ago,
that dove into what would happen
if Batman existed in real life,
and how long he could be Batman effectively.
And in that article it talked about a bunch of stuff like
how long his training would be.
It was somewhere between like 12 and 18 years
to acquire all the training to become Batman.
But the most interesting part came
at the end of the article where they said
You know, effectively,
Batman could only be Batman in our world
for three years before his body gave out.
And that three year term was based off of things like
comparing him to other athletes,
and just, you know, taking in the sheer punishment
that Batman would have to endure every single day,
and the lack of sleep that he'd be getting,
all of that, all those factors combined,
about three years.
But, we know that in the comics,
it has been pointed out
that Batman could actually be Batman for 27 years.
Effectively.
That's how long he could be Batman
and effectively fight crime.
So that is nine times longer than any human could,
and that's not any normal human,
that is the peak level of human.
That is if Batman existed in our universe three years,
compared to the comic book 27 years,
that to me is superhuman.
At least it's superhuman compared to us.
Us humans that exist in our world.
And that's something that the comments
also started talking about
was it's all about perspective.
Benjamin Abruzzo brought this up in a really great comment
about, ya I mean, Superman is only superhuman
because you're comparing him to us humans,
but compared to other Kryptonians,
you know,
he's just like a Kryptonian.
Or, compared to, you know, other heroes,
are just normal versions of themselves
that just so happen to be better than normal humans.
The direct quote here I want to read,
it is "So why call him a superhero when what he does'
is natural to his people under the yellow sun?"
He goes on to say, you know,
same with Martian Manhunter and Aquaman
and all those characters and more
are just doing what is natural to them.
But it's just because we're comparing them
from the perspective of us humans
that that's what makes them super.
And when we're talking about perspectives
that same argument could be applied,
not just to the super part of superhero,
but to the hero part as well.
Take Poison Ivy for example,
when I was sitting down with Dr. Rosenberg,
and we were having our discussion,
she brought up this interesting case of Poison Ivy.
Now Poison Ivy we might instantly recognize
to be a Batman villain,
but to her,
from her perspective,
she is not a villain,
she is a hero,
by saving the plants,
saving the Earth from what us humans
are doing to destroy it.
So, is Poison Ivy a superhero?
Well, I think we would all say that she is super,
sure,
but hero?
Again, depends on our perspective.
And so, of course,
back to us being narcissistic humans,
we take everything from the human perspective
and we see her as being a villain,
when, from a completely different perspective,
from her own perspective,
from the perspective of plant life,
she is the biggest and greatest hero they have ever seen.
With the exception of maybe Swamp Thing
would also fit in there.
Other plant heroes,
in general.
Same thing could be applied to Lex Luthor,
who thinks that he's just trying to save the world
from the threat that is Superman.
You get the idea.
Both the super and the hero part of superhero
is all based off of perspective.
And of course the perspective we tend to take
is that of our own.
And this is actually a topic that we talked about
in greater detail on our podcast
that came out today, actually.
Further discussing this idea of Batman being a superhero
and, yeah,
we talk about perspectives a lot,
because it seems almost narcissistic of us humans
to want to compare everyone to us
to decide whether they are super or not.
Which is why,
as Silvershire points out,
perhaps there should be a distinction
between superhero and superhuman.
They talk about how Superman,
to continue using that example,
isn't actually,
or at least shouldn't actually,
be considered superhuman
because he's not human.
He's Kryptonian,
so we should be judging him off of a Kryptonian scale
not a human scale.
Also going on to talk about how different animals
in the world are better at things than we are
but we don't necessarily call them superhuman.
And this almost makes me feel
like the term superhero and superhuman
should be different terms and should be used differently,
because superhuman might mean you're capable
of doing something that humans can't.
Being, going above and beyond what humans can do.
Whereas superhero should simply mean
going above and beyond what a hero can do, right?
So Batman, who occasionally saves the world
from, say, Alien threats,
could be doing something above and beyond
what a normal hero,
like a firefighter,
would do.
Which would make him a superhero.
Perhaps not superhuman, sure.
But superhero, yes.
And I think my favorite argument
that Silvershire brings up,
which might sway my argument from earlier
about how Batman does have super powers,
is that he's still human so even
if he's able to do something
that is far superior to what other humans could do,
so for example,
operating as Batman for 27 years when in real life
he would be three years,
That's not being superhuman,
that's just setting a new limit
for what is humanly possible.
And honestly,
I think that's probably the best argument I've heard
for Batman not having super powers.
But again,
I don't think that not having super powers
means you are not a super hero,
I just think it means you're not superhuman.
We're getting into semantics now,
I know,
this comment section's gonna be great.
But Silvershire, thank you so much
for this insightful comment.
I'm gonna give you this week's NerdSync No Prize.
Congratulations, it means absolutely nothing,
but you get it.
One last comment about Batman before I move on
to the Luke Cage video.
A lot of you guys in the comments
wanted to make a distinction between
superhero and vigilante,
I guess saying that a vigilante is basically
like a non-powered superhero.
I don't really see that distinction so much
because I think a superhero,
even with superpowers,
could be,
and usually is,
still a vigilante.
They're not mutually exclusive terms.
They're kind of overlapping in that sense.
If somebody, if some super,
Spiderman acts outside of the law all the time,
he's still a vigilante,
and he does have superpowers.
So, I don't know,
I don't see that as,
you know,
Batman is a vigilante and not,
which makes him not a superhero.
He can be both.
Moving right along to our Luke Cage video
that we were finally able to put out
for the Netflix show.
The number one comment by far,
from people like Ian Flurry,
Potato Pug,
and so many others,
was that Luke Cage is technically already an alter ego
because of his,
you know,
real name was Carl Lucas.
And so, instead of me responding to this,
I'm gonna go ahead and let the episode's writer,
Angela, respond to this.
- So, as I was writing this script,
I had very similar questions to what you guys
are asking in the comments.
Is Carl Lucas technically Luke's real name?
And is Luke, then,
necessarily an alter ego?
And I found that I had to ask a question
beyond just that one.
And that is,
what purpose does an alter ego serve
in the realm of comics?
And I found that it's not just about
taking on a different name,
it's about being able to swap back and forth
between the names,
depending on what you decide to do.
And the way I figured,
making a permanent change,
like changing your name,
is different than something that is used interchangeably.
Luke Cage is what he goes by all the time,
across the board,
which is a pretty big difference considering other heroes
like Matt Murdock in the same universe,
he is Matt Murdock and he is Daredevil.
The reason that a hero uses an alter ego
is to allow themselves to live two separate lives.
Their regular,
civilian,
joe-scmo life.
And their superhero life,
where they're out saving people,
doing all the cool stuff.
This leads me to then consider Carl Lucas
as more of a previous identity
than a alternate one.
If Luke had his way,
it wouldn't exist at all anymore.
- Yeah, that's an interesting thought,
I personally don't know how I feel about Luke Cage
being considered an alter ego.
A pseudonym, maybe,
but like a code name in the sense of a superhero?
I don't really buy it.
But again, we're arguing semantics,
which is,
I feel,
how every conversation ends with me.
I would love to know your thoughts about all these topics
in the comments down below.
Thank you guys so much for writing some amazing,
amazing comments on all of our videos.
We've got more Batman videos coming up for you
This whole month as we continue Battober,
the long Halloween.
If you missed any of the videos that we talked about here,
you can click on the left to watch the video about
whether or not Batman is a superhero.
Or, you can click over to the right
to see our video about Luke Cage
and his alter ego, Power Man.
Make sure you hit that big,
sexy subscribe button while you're here
and we will see you on Wednesday for another video.
See ya.