The Influence of Comic Books

The Real Life Superhero (RLSH) subculture should make you think of comic books.  People within the community are attempting to emulate heroes from comic books by way of attitude, actions, the presented visual (uniforms), and lifestyle.

The concept of the Real Life Superhero, for those who are unaware, is to do good deeds and help out fellow citizens while dressed in our superhero uniforms.  This means crime and safety patrols, homeless outreach, community service, and issue awareness predominately.  Yes, the influence is directly from comics.

Attitude

The RLSH community takes itself seriously.  When we are out in uniform, we are the extra eyes, the helping hands, and the people who come running when you need assistance.  The community itself does discuss attitude development, morality (what is good?), how to de-escalate, how to interact with various types of people, understanding the difference between heroics and vigilantism, etc.  Our aim is to develop the best possible attitudes that we can personally curate for ourselves.

The comic book influence: Every RLSH has their favorite comic book superheroes that influence them.  Most of the time, the heroes that are preferred are not direct reflections, but have some sort of attitude that we strive to aim for.  Perhaps it's the boy scout personas of Captain America, Superman, or Cyclops; perhaps its the leadership we see from Storm or Cable; or even those with their own firm set of rules like Batman, Spider-Man, or The Tick.

Actions

As stated above, the primary actions of the RLSH consists of crime and safety patrols, homeless outreach, community service, and issue awareness.  There is also RLSH support, which is support for the community (i.e. legal, uniforms, tech, etc).  There are group efforts, such as HOPE events and general meet ups.  Within the community, we discuss training, skills, methods for our actions, how to deal with situations, and more.

Our reasons behind our actions is another hot topic for the RLSH community. For most, there's a desire to right societal wrongs, as a generality. Some have very specific reasons, but most seem to just have a desire to help their fellow man. It seems vague and it is. If you watch 'Mystery Men' or 'Kick-Ass', you'll come to understand that this is indeed a calling. It's the heroes call. The drive to find happiness and completeness in helping others.

The comic book influence: The RLSH community will often look at real life situations, comic book issues, and comic book films/tv to discuss scenarios with the ultimate goal to figure out the best possible solutions.  How do our heroes solve issues?  How do they help others?  What actions do they take that we disagree with and why?

Presented Visual

Our uniforms (not costumes) feature bright colors.  While the colors often express our hero persona, it also draws focus.  We can draw attention when doing good deeds.  We can draw the attention of someone doing something bad, so the bad person(s) turn away from the regular civilian.  We can even draw attention to take the heat, allowing for defenseless people to get to safety.

The unfortunate part of our presented visual is that the news often sees us as comical, something to poke fun at.  It does take gumption to deviate from the social norm.  We dress up, we help out, we purposefully go out on patrol to ensure the safety of others.  If the police could do it all, we would have less crime.  We are out to help, not to make money off of our actions or seek fame or anything along those lines; of course, most RLSH would probably be okay if someone wanted to make a comic book featuring them.

The comic book influence: The influence factor seems fairly obvious here.  The RLSH community has a great deal of discussion over how we present ourselves.  Physique, uniforms, defensive armor, heroic symbols and flair, etc.  Some RLSH have crossed over from the cosplay world, so we do see licensed characters as RLSH here and there. This is a little more accepted now than it was 10-15 years ago.

Lifestyle

The lifestyle of the majority of RLSH includes regular exercising, training, maintaining a work-gym-life balance, education and skills, and participating within the RLSH community.  Most people are familiar with at least some comic book stories and thus understand that a heroic lifestyle begins to form: juggling work and patrols, training, eating better, etc.  It’s all about becoming the best that we can be, not just with superhero work, but throughout our entire lives.

It's important to understand that RLSH are average, typically middle-class people.  We would love to be more like Bruce Wayne with money to burn and time to spare, but we’re not.  We’re a little more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Luke Cage or Peter Parker (Spider-Man) or Jessica Jones or Arthur (from The Tick) - always kind of in need of a better paying job so we can make ends meet, but always thinking about our secret other lives involving heroic duties.  The point here is that despite any hardships we may have going on, we still go out of our way to help our fellow man.

The comic book influence: We often look to comic books for influence.  We may train like our favorite heroes or look to comic books to inspire better ways to live.  We’re constantly learning new tech and new skills that can help our lifestyles.

Are real life superheroes influenced by comics?  Absolutely, in the best ways.  If you gather anything from this, hopefully it's the understanding of what we do, why we do it, and our efforts behind what we do.