I haven't met a kid yet that doesn't want to be a superhero. My own daughters love to pretend they are Jedi (I have trained them well) or princesses with magic powers.
Superheroes are meant for kids. Yes, there are large numbers of nostalgic adults – my own particular penchant for Star Wars included – that love the adventure and lore of fantastical worlds, but the target market is and always has been children.
You might one of a few adults who will buy that $300 Captain America shield replica, but there are 50 million kids who will beg their parents for the $20 plastic version.
The rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has further brought nerdom into mainstream culture, making it cooler and thus more desirable for children to emulate their favorite heroes in real life. If Superman punching Hitler in the 1940s seemed cool to a 10-year-old, today's menagerie of on-screen and in-comic superheroes is more appealing to kids than ever before.
Now that I've cemented this point in your head, let me present you with this headline:
Yes, Star-Lord Peter Quill – played by actor Chris Pratt – is now cool with whatever sexual fantasy floats your boat.
In the most recent comic issue, the superhero finds himself teleported to a mysterious dimension named Morinus after everyone thought he had been killed fighting the Greek god Zeus and the Olympians (because why not?). Morinus is seemingly a place of "rebirth," where Star-Lord spends 150 years with an alien man and an alien woman while only a few short months pass in our world.
(Wasn't there already a movie where Chris Pratt spent a lifetime adrift in space with Jennifer Lawrence?)
Twelve years into this rebirth experience, Star-Lord accepts his fate and declares his love for his two companions, saying, "Time to accept the truth... Morinus is my home. You're my home."
As he embraces his two lovers, the male alien tells him his old identity is gone and his new life is ready to begin, which totally isn't symbolic in any way.
"Congratulations, Peter Quill. The you-that-was is over. You're newborn, and ready to learn our ways."
Before we continue, let's take a moment to consider my original point:
"Superheroes are meant for kids."
The next question: If superheroes are meant for our kids, what message is being told to our kids through this comic?
And finally, if this is easily published about one particular superhero, what other messages have and will be sent to our children through hundreds of other superhero stories about polyamory, polygamy, pornography, bestiality, or any other sexual flavor of the week?
I guess I won't be surprised when people readily celebrate Superman becoming a pedophile 10 years from now. #PrOgReSs
To my knowledge, the story arc of this newest comic issue is a way of bringing Star-Lord's original origin story into the new Marvel Universe. His experience in "Morinus" is supposed to an expansion and rebirth of the character that blends the origin story of the current cinematic universe with his original 1975 debut.
Why that had to include polyamorous bisexuality is beyond me, but hey, I'm just an old fashioned weirdo who likes good characters and doesn't need to know the sexual behavior of my favorite cartoon sponge.
There are plenty of Woke fans who are super pumped about this news, of course. "Star-Lord" was trending on Twitter after the news broke, with most tweets mocking Chris Pratt for his Christian faith and his attendance at LA's Hillsong Church.
For reference to Pratt's beliefs, here's a screenshot of an Instagram post he made when people started cursing him for believing even the most basic, vanilla Christian teachings:
"Love one another?"
What a radical lunatic.
"Make our children's cultural icons sexually promiscuous with all sorts of fetishes in a slide toward abject debauchery?"
Heroic.
What a time to be alive.
