*Blog from mythology.com

The good thing about writing these things is that I get to think about all this stuff that doesn’t exactly come up often in conversation. I mean, when was the last time you and your significant other sat and discussed the origins of vampires or the links between gods and aliens?

But, while thinking on which culture to write about next, it hit me: Americans don’t have mythology, not really in the traditional sense anyway. Then something else hit me. We do, we just haven’t sanctified them. We have television and movies and comic books. All of which have their mythological components. Whether it’s Jack Bauer saving the country from terrorists in a day, or the X-Men fighting for peace and equality, they are our mythological heroes. The Greeks had Achilles, who would be the determining factor in battle, and we have Captain America, our very own super soldier (God rest his red-white-and-blue-Nazi-killing soul).

Our heroes teach us lessons. Thanks to Spider-Man, every kid in my school knew that with great power comes great responsibility. After watching the havoc it wreaked on Bruce Banner’s life, we learned the seriousness of controlling your anger. Batman taught us that one person can make a difference.

And the players, just like in the myths of the cultures to come before, were not all moralistic good-guys wrapped up in tales of candy-canes and lollipops. The Judeo-Christian god destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because it was filled with degenerates. We have Ghost Rider and The Punisher, who kill criminals with about as much thought as brushing their teeth.

Just like Lazarus, Jesus and Osirus, our heroes have a tricky little habit of not staying dead (see also, Superman, Green Arrow, Jason Todd, Elektra, Jean Grey, Aunt May, ad nauseam). Those are just a few, the list is longer than Mr. Fantastic’s… well, you get the point. Yet another typically divine feature from ancient myths is the ability to change form, like that tomcat Zeus was so notorious for. But, we have that one too, a la Mystique, Morph and Martian Manhunter.

All I’m saying is that our comic books teach us lessons. I know that I only superficially scratched the surface and mentioned just examples off the top of my head, and that some hard-core fan-boy dressed like Darth Maul would probably come up with a laundry list of other good ones. That is if he can drag himself away from his busy schedule of World of Warcraft and Emma Frost fantasies.