Children, Comics, and Captain America

All right, you're walking by a bench, you see a kid completely engorged in a comic, probably thinking about how cool it would be to be one of the characters, to have some sort of super powers or crazy awesome gadgets so he could fight crime, ward off evil, and protect the innocent. Then, you notice something odd, this kid looks like he's about 18 years old.That would be me and a couple of friends of mine. Last year (our senior year of high school) me and some friends of mine began reading comic books, which may sound lame to you, but we didn't care, we are just a few old kids reading our comic books and having a great time.

One particular character especially caught my imagination. Captain America is by far my favorite super hero. Every now and then I'll get asked "why Captain America? He's not that great, the Hulk could rip him to shreds, Iron Man could fry him with his lasers, he's got a shield but that's not that cool." Yeah, that's a completely understandable question, Captain America is really just a regular person who was given a "super soldier serum" that gave him the greatest strength, speed, and agility that any person could possibly get. So really an olympic athlete could probably get the job done physically. No, it's not his power as much as his ideals that inspire me. Steve Rogers was an artist who desperately wanted to join the U.S. military to fight off the Nazis in World War II, but unfortunately, he was small and all skin and bones, nothing impressive and the military recruiter said that they would be unable to use him in the fight. Desperate to do anything to fight the Nazis, Rogers signed up as a test subject for the super soldier serum created. The scientist who gave him the serum was killed so Steve Rogers was the only super soldier. He donned the stars and stripes from the American flag, and used a red white and blue shield as his weapon of choice. He led a group of super heroes called the Invaders during WWII, then later became a leader of the Avengers and New Avengers.

This is where it hits me: why was just a man, granted a very strong, fast, and agile man, able to lead these super-beings with powers unimaginable? It was his ideals. Captain America believes so much in the virtues of America such as patriotism, loyalty, and truth that it inspires others for good. He wears the symbol of his ideals to show that he will not change who he is even though ideas of patriotism may be a bit outdated these days, and he uses his ideas as a weapon to show that his convictions are strong and they will fight anyone who opposes them.

This amazes me! That a man can be so morally strong that he can destroy any opposition and inspire others who are much stronger than him to fight alongside him. What if we had this sort of moral conviction. What if I was so morally strong that I could inspire and lead others into almost impossible situations? What if I used my ideals as a weapon to break through any challenges? What if I wore my ideals so as I walked by people would know what I stood for? What if you did that? So that's what I want to do, and it's what I want you to do, I want us to look inside ourselves and contemplate our morals and use them to inspire others, lead those who need a leader, and to destroy any obstacles that we face.