Thursday, April 16, 2009

Riddle Me This



I went to the Y today. First time in a week-ish...and by "week-ish" I mean nearly 3 weeks. Anyway, I'm doing the treadmill. I like it because I can listen to my meditation tracks on my iPod...you know...because I think of this when I'm about to work out and realize I can 'birth 2 birds with one egg' by doubling my workout pleasure and meditate to "positive thought training." So, I'm on the tread and this guy walks by...early 60-ish... with a gut and he has these sort of weird goggles for racket (raquet?) ball, but they don't look like actual goggles; more like a strange mask, like the Riddler used to wear on the old Batman....I mean JUST like it and I couldn't even see a plastic shine in the eye holes....just the mask. I'm thinking, "Ha! He's still hiding his old persona, when he was who he used to be.

I start to day dream a bit and I think what if that guy were a ponchy old Riddler for real. A former elite, top-of-his-game villain who had seen better days, but who still wanted to sort of keep an edge, so he works out and plays raquetball. Even though he wasn't "super" he still was crazy enough to wear bright-colored tights and was considered a super-genius.

I know we have seen the new incarnations like Batman Beyond and The Dark Knight of the comics age. It's not a far stretch to see others have given life to this kind of idea, but I don't think anyone outside of "The Watchmen" and Brad Bird's "The Incredibles" have actually fleshed out the what-if scenario of superheroes and villains existing in our world; not TV or movie world, or CG world, OUR Earth. I think The Incredibles came as close to ours as any could, even though it was a retro-futuristic, sci-fi, James Bond-ish kind of 1960s take. Okay so it wasn't that close.

Kinda crazy....so who else would we see trying to maintain their aged super-self. Would we see Flash on a treadmill; The Joker working at a Novelty Shop?

End of ramble......temporarily.

1 comment:

Linda S. Socha said...

Love your writing style Scudder. Enjoyed this post......I am visualizing the scenerio:>)
Linda