"Well, sometimes kids need role models" - Officer Murphy in the first RoboCop movie.

This blog is in response to @cbishop's blog from AGES ago! My first tv series was Flash. It was actually scary. They tied a guy to a bike and blew him up. Fuck! There was a lot of killing involved, and as violent as a child i ALREADY was before i started watching any TV, at least because someone put this expected fear into me, i was a little scared. I was also watching a few other shows like Tropical Heat, Renegade, eventually something called Highlander, starring Adrian Paul, (you know, guys in ponytails,) and later on Lois & Clark, and I was also watching Star trek: Next Generation + RoboCop, the series. The Ninja Turtles came in later, but they were there too.

All these shows share one theme in common. Cops. Except Highlander, but there were episodes featuring cops. I wanted to be (or imagined myself being) a cop from the earliest days, because I loved action, and i loved that blue uniform. It's nice to see 2 of my earliest shows, RoboCop and Flash, making a come back on the same year. Of course, I was discouraged heavily and I was/am a reeeeally wimpy person. Still my first superhero character reflected a lot of these elements, being a cop in his secret identity (lab and street), being artificial (and a mutant, and a clone, because everything cool those days were about mutation and clones) and amnesiac, which was more RoboCop than Savage Dragon, because I hadn't run into Dragon yet, but Dragon and I immediately clicked.

Lawmen. Actually, censorship and stuff made everyone (even the Street Fighter gang, as I just found out today -_-. Totally kills the original characters. Now the Street Fighters are a strike team? Under Guile? wtf America? Mortal Kombat wasn't bad enough? Idk, pre-pubescent may have still gotten behind that. Heroes, are those who fight for the good)

Even Superman, though not a true cop in legal occupation, lived for those 3 core directives RoboCop received; Uphold the law, protect the innocent and you know, cop stuff. The Thundercats had their code of honour, Truth, Justice, Honour and loyalty (in such a great order too, Loyalty being the dumbest, but still a good quality when used right, honour is a personal thing that should be considered later, but definitely a motivation for a good guy, Justice being one of the highest good guy things, as long as there are beings interacting, and the truth, which is eternal, regardless of humans existing)

The Ninja Turtles,... omg. On Fred Wolf and the movies, the law enforcement part was stressed pretty heavily. In the Image cartoon, which was, as I think, the closest to the actual thing, even though I haven't read much of the actual, what the Turtles really are, catching bad guys on their own but not too high on the moral scale. But the cop element was still there.

Even Tarzan on Filmation, a wild man raised in the jungles, among animals, was made to be such a wise, honorable role model. Talks perfect, gives great advice, takes responsibility over his territory, upholding the rights of his subjects,... corny, but at the same time not too wrong. Tarzan, and most wild boys (inspired by Tarzan, the original template), tend to dare to fight against an oppressive predator and free the "innocent", implying a) a messiah complex and b) a sense of justice existing within the primal being of the human.

I keep repeating this, but I'll keep doing it no matter who gets tired, but yeah dude, being a hero has to do with a couple things. Being able to perform acts that a normal human could probably not, (actions, feats, performance, an outwardly thing) and not being a dick. Being a nice, caring guy. When I say "caring" he doesn't have to be too soft, just as long as he's compassionate, sympathetic, and stuff you know. The internal, moral aspect as opposed to the physical. Superheroes have always been given jobs, but compared to the JSA era, or Avengers, where people had a lot of doctors, archaeologists, "adventurers", even astronauts, random railway/radio related jobs (wtf GL?) military men, newspaper boys, tech geniuses,........ stupid jobs. Stupid jobs, that don't excite me. Even military men. Oh they got action, yes, but they're not as clean cut and lawful as cops. I grew up in the middle of a war, I knew many soldiers growing up, frequent visitors in the household, but not as cool as cops. I'm guessing it's a question of Domestic vs International levels of protecting/enforcement. They all use guns, but cops are just, nicer guys. War is also an extreme case, that's relevant at some times, but not always.There's also that moral scale, as in whereas cops are on the lawful-good side, soldiers could (and sometimes have to) be on the neutral or chaotic sides, of good or evil. But anyway, even if their day jobs are reporters, astronauts, doctors or some other stupid shit like that, they either all end up fighting for the law (or at least innocent people) or rampaging around on their own causes, as adventurers, like Batman (there's your answer to why I called batman a D-bag, Bishop). The Apollonian hero gives people hope and something to believe in. And cops are the Apollonian, (well, ideally) In fact cops and the military might be the anti thesis to each other.

But every good superhero story has a cop in it, that's all I want to say. Either intentionally. like RoboCop and Flash, or by accident, like... well, RoboCop and Flash?