Making heroes super since childhood

The topic of Superheros came up at work. And namely, if a light-sabre can cut through anything except other light-sabres, and Superman can only be weakened by kryptonite, what would happen if we hit Superman with a light-sabre?

Superman never really did it for me, because as a hero he has it easy; he can punch all his problems into the sun.

Look out! That man has a gun!

Boof! Into the sun!

Here comes Lex Luther!

Boof! Into the sun!

How come we never go out anymore? You go out, you save the world, you come home and you sit your arse on that couch! Why don’t you take me flying anymore? You never take me anywhere! Why did I leave Clark Kent for you Superman?

Boof! Lois into the sun! And that’s why Superman is a bullshit superhero. Not because he hits women, but because he is boring. (The “hitting women” thing is not cool either. And maybe made up by me for educational purposes. I do have it on good authority that he gets a little punchy when he’s drinking whiskey though)

I did not want to be a superhero growing up. I loved what they stood for, but did not want to be one for two reasons

1.      I'm allergic to taking punches to the face (I break out in swelling), and

2.      My favourite superhero was The Phantom, and even as a child I knew the social consequences of looking for fights in purple tights. See reason 1.

For those who had normal childhoods, The Phantom is “the Ghosts who walks”. He is not really one man but 21 of them over the course of history. It has been a family business for 400 years, and father passes on the responsibility to their son so that the rest of the world thinks of him as immortal. He has no super powers, but he can shoot the guns out of your hands and deliver whopping punches to the face. He is a man who trained hard to be who he was, and he fought for good. The Phantom is a fine moral compass to any young man finding his place in the world.

When the time comes for the new Phantom he would swear an oath on the skull of his forefathers and the symbol of his mission, “I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice in all their forms, and my sons and their sons shall follow me”. This pledge happened more than 400 years ago when piracy was piracy and his mortal enemy was the pirates the Singh Brotherhood. Not some knob from New Zealand who changed his surname to DotCom.

Is that the face of piracy today? People who host peer to peer sites? Piracy is certainly getting rounder in the face and more acne. There are the attacks on ships along the coast of Somalia I guess, but they are not rocking the skull and crossbones either. At least they get the point, but I digress...

What would happen if you hit Superman with a light-sabre?

Nerd forums explode. That’s your answer.