# Superboy punched reality into it's current continuity?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superboy-punched-reality-into-its-current-continuity/356180>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [May 10, 2006, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superboy-punched-reality-into-its-current-continuity/356180 "2006-05-10T03:18:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superboy-punched-reality-into-its-current-continuity/356180/41 "2006-05-12T11:14:25Z")

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“widdershins” ?

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**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superboy-punched-reality-into-its-current-continuity/356180/42 "2006-05-12T11:25:34Z")

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Yes, widdershins.

As opposed to deosil.

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**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superboy-punched-reality-into-its-current-continuity/356180/43 "2006-05-12T12:27:18Z")

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[QUOTE=Menocchio]  
Watchmen is the story that definitively proves how silly and unrealistic superheroes are. It presupposes that people actually do wear garish costumes and take to the streets to fight crime. And what sort of people would do such a thing? Neurotics, sexual deviants, publicity-seekers, sadists, megalomaniacs, and outright lunatics. To do something that silly, even if the narrative lets you survive and have some success at it, you’d have to be crazy!  
…

IOW, the point of Watchmen is that the very tropes that define the superhero genre just don’t work when held to the light of realism. These characters weren’t superheroes. Hell, they weren’t even heroes. It’s a deconstructionist work. It’s the anti-superhero story.

And now that Alan Moore has demonstrated just how unrealistic superheroes really are, we can go forward in our genre fully aware of what it means and what it really is.  
[/QUOTE]  
Thank you for being the perfect example of what irks me about fans of Watchmen.

Watchmen, I feel I must point out, didn’t _prove_ anything. Assertion of an idea, however plausible you find it, does not constitute proof. It may have, in its own little world, denied some things while asserting others, but mostly, it just explored a different take on superheroes.

(Which take boils down to “masked crime fighter != awesomely powered hero.” Wow, stunning analysis there, Moore. Now, go & reread _Action Comics_ #1, & explain to me again how the superhero trope would get started as a major trend, _in a realistic world,_ without the influence of the Superman meme? :dubious: )

p.s.: I didn’t set a “fiendish trap.” _I’m_ not a villain from an old Republic serial.

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