Welcome to I Am Your Target Demographic!
And welcome to Heroes Like Us!
Today we are covering heroes that have a disability.
Now before we dive into this...
This is a very sensitive topic
and something that I don't take lightly.
So I want to apologize, if I unintentionally
use the wrong language
I know words carry a lot of weight
so if I mis-speak about something
or use the wrong verbage or the not appropriate verbage
...know that it was not intentional.
I also want to preface with...
There are going to be some heroes that I'm not going to talk about.
I've done some reading about heroes with disabilities
and there seems to be a concensus
...that some heroes... have like...
How do I phrase this?
They have a disability but their superpower
enables them to almost ignore that disability.
Or that disability has no impact on their life.
Such as Daredevil...
who is blinded but his superpower
is the ability to see everything around him
to a degree higher than anyone else.
So he's not very relateable for readers that are actually blind.
I'm going to do my best to include heroes here
that have a disability but that is not
part of their power
or that does not...
...It's just part of their identity.
They live with that and they also have a superpower.
The one that I want to talk about first...
kind of fits in this category
that I was talking about, where their power
kind of trumps their disability.
This is a DC hero named Vengeance Moth.
I'm only talking about her because I think she's really interesting.
It's not a permanent...
Her ability doesn't permanently cover up her disability.
Her disability is that she has muscular dystrophy
and she has a wheelchair that she uses to get around.
Her power is that she can use psionic energy
to create this glowing moth
that allows her to control her body
so that she can move and walk around
and fly and she can shoot out these blasts of energy.
But it IS temporary so it's not a permanent fix.
She uses this ability alongside an activist group called the Movement.
This is an "Anonymous" kind of group
that goes out and deals "street justice."
So Vengeance Moth or aka Drew Fisher, is her real name.
So super interesting but kinda fits in that category.
We're also not going to spend a lot of time on amputees
because there are a lot and in MOST cases
heroes that lose an extremity
What they get is better than what they had before.
So Misty Knight is a police officer.
She loses an arm and she gets an arm that is made of vibranium.
Is she relateable for people that are actual amputees?
Same thing with Flash Thompson
who becomes Agent Venom.
He's suited up with this symbiote
that not only allows him to walk
but allows him to shoot through the skies with web.
He can do crazy things. Not super relateable.
Another one is Forge.
His ability to create technology allows him to create...
It's a hand and a leg that are now cybernetic
and they can do crazy things.
Again, not super relateable.
People in the real world don't have prosthetics
that can do crazy things like that.
One of the best examples of an amputee is actually
a character called Karma.
I talk about Karma in my video
about Lesbian characters, so you can go there if you want to learn more about her.
Her ability is all mental.
She can possess other people's minds
She happens to have a prosthetic leg.
It's not part of her ability...
but it is part of HER.
Now I want to shift for a second
and talk about a hero that has a learning disability.
And that is Jubilee from the X-Men.
Jubilee has gone through a lot.
She started out as a mutant that had these firework / explosive powers.
And then she was turned into a vampire.
She's kind of gone through some weird arcs.
Interestingly, she was always painted as this academic underachiever.
And it turns out she has something called "dyscalculia."
And again, I apologize if I mis-pronounce that. Dyscalculia.
Which basically makes it difficult
or impossible for her to do mathematic equations in her head.
That math is just very tricky and tough and sometimes impossible.
So she struggles with this
and people always just perceive her as just lazy
but really it's a learning disability that keeps her...
from succeeding in the arena of math.
Up next I want to talk about Professor Xavier.
Professor X is one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet.
Marvel Comics. Charles Xavier.
Founder of the X-Men.
His powers are all mental, so he can communicate via telepathy,
he can project himself in other places,
he can take over people's minds.
He is very very powerful.
He happened to, in one of his first battles,
lose the use of his legs.
So now he uses a wheelchair to get around.
Sometimes it's shown as a standard-looking wheelchair
and sometimes it's this super high-tech wheelchair
that kind of floats off the ground, like if you're a fan of the cartoons. Very different.
While he is paralyzed from the waist down
it doesn't have to do with his mutant ability.
It's just part of him.
Similarly over at DC Comics...
We've got a character called Oracle.
Oracle is a hero by the name of Barbara Gordon.
She began as a vigilante called Batgirl.
She was caught up in this whole mess between Batman and the Joker...
The Joker ended up shooting her and she lost the use of her legs.
She stilled wanted to fight crime
so she found a way to do that by becoming this character called the Oracle.
Oracle, her skillset is finding information and then relaying that back out
to other heroes in Gotham City.
So she would find out about crimes and find out mysteries
and uncover things and send that back out to people out there on the streets.
For a while, she was DC's most prominent hero with a disability.
Now why I say used to...
DC Comics recently did the New 52 and they relaunched everything
and they decided to undo what had happened to Barbara Gordon.
So they made her into Batgirl again, where she could be this vigilante.
They got rid of their most prominent hero with a disability
so a lot of people were very upset by that.
Lastly, for this list, we have a hero named Echo. Maya Lopez.
Her parents were killed and she was raised by the Kingpin.
And Kingpin taught her that Daredevil was evil and horrible...
He basically manipulated her into hating him (Daredevil).
See Maya has something called *"photographic reflexes."
Which means... when she sees someone fight or when she sees someone do something physical.
She can replicate it perfectly.
So similar to the other hero Taskmaster.
She can copy someone's fighting style exactly, just by watching.
So for awhile she went by this name "Echo."
She had this white handprint over her face which signified that persona.
She also fought for awhile under the guise "Ronin."
No one knew who she was and she wore this body suit to make her look like a man.
And she fought crime that way.
She eventually confronted Daredevil, found out he wasn't evil,
and united with him to fight the Kingpin.
So she's now been a good guy, for awhile.
Now why Maya is on this list... Maya is deaf.
So while she's an incredible fighter...
she does rely on her eyesight to even the playing field.
Especially knowing that her ability is to see things and replicate them perfectly. But yes, she is deaf.
So those are probably the most prominent heroes...
And again, those that I did not talk about might fall into that first category
of their disability basically being erased by some sort of superpower.
So if there are other ones you want me to talk about... let me know in the comments.
Hopefully this helped.
Some of you out there might have one of these disabilities and you wonder...
You know, "Are there heroes like me?"
And hopefully this video showed you that "Yes there are."
So let me know in the comments if there is more you want us to talk to about.
Thanks for watching, see you next time!