My Hero.

"There goes my hero, he's ordinary."-Dave Grohl

For as long as I can remember, I've always been fascinated with comic books and of course, superheroes.

But have you ever wondered where it came from? Have you ever wondered who started the revolution that became our modern day phenomenon?

About six or seven years ago, I was up one night and then BOOM! I had a great idea in my head which became my big, top secret comic book story (which I won't talk about over the net) but anyway, there was another guy decades before me who had the same thing happen to him.

Enter- Jerry Siegel, aged 18.

Not long after the murder of his father, Mitchell, in 1932 who was killed by a bullet to the chest, Jerry came up with the idea of "the bulletproof man,"  and as we all know him now as The Man of Steel or more commonly....Superman.

Picture a young, depressed eighteen-year-old whose only outlet after the death of his father, was writing comic books at his kitchen table in Cleveland, Ohio.

Now picture (No pun intended) a world without Superman.

Got a good look in your head, fanboys and fangirls? Probably not and that's because if Jerry Siegel hadn't come up with the idea of Superman, the comic book and video game and movie and television industries would be drastically different.

Picture a world without superheroes, blockbuster action films and the entire genre of comic book-esque media. Hard to picture, huh?

This is something that Richard Nixon called "The Domino Effect" during the Vietnam War. His theory was: If you brought down one Communist state, then the rest would follow.

In this case, let's talk about Jerry Siegel and if his "Superman" was never created.

A World without Superman

1. No superheroes. (Yep! That's right. If there was no Superman then there wouldn't have been a window for Batman and Wonder Woman and Spider-Man or basically any other "superhero" to climb through and they wouldn't exist because the genre wouldn't have ever been concieved.)

2. No video games. (Yep! No Halo or Bioshock, fanboys! Because without Superheroes, the idea of bringing a storytelling craft into video games wouldn't have been thought of. Imagine still playing your Atari from the late 70's! Sega Genesis wouldn't even be in existance because it was primarily storytelling or obsticle oriented.)

3. No Sci-Fi television series. (Appearantly, Smallville wouldn't have ever....well, you get the point. No Supernatural, No Reaper, No Journeyman (Although it basically didn't exist that long anyway) and of course....No "Heroes"!)

So, my point is: When your feeling down or your not as happy as you could be, just think of a world where Jerry Siegel didn't come up with the idea of Superman. I bet you, your problems wouldn't looks so bad afterwards.

Thanks, Mr. Siegel! You're my hero!