To Stand, To Struggle, To Stop

All Star Superman is my second favorite Superman story and it was my favorite for a long time. (My current, and probably eternal favorite is Superman Smashes the Klan, which despite being another Superman origin story, is probably the truest distillation of his essence ever put to paper.)

Everyone remembers this page and rightly so.

I have it etched on my body.

The only bad thing I can say about it is that it is so powerful a moment that its light eclipses the rest of the story.

Specifically, this part.

What happens when you can't help?

I watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica with my kid. It's....boy howdy, it's hard to explain in a single sentence, but it's a subversion of the Sailor Moon "magical girl" genre, suggesting that maybe conscripting pre-teens into an endless war against monstrous hell demons might be kind of messed up. And it's got a flawless soundtrack.

Sayaka Miki isn't the main character (that would be Madoka), though the creator of the property considers her the "hero".  She's a young girl who makes a selfless wish to heal someone else, only to find that her sacrifices don't lead to a better world. She spirals into despair, convinced that if she isn't useful, she is worthless. She can't find a path to live in a world that isn't fair and in the end, it kills her.

In Encanto, Luisa carries more than just the weight of the world. She carries expectation, obligation, the quiet fear that if she falters, everything falls apart. When her strength begins to fade, so does her sense of self, and for the first time, she is forced to ask: Who is she, if she can’t hold everything up?

And in the Trump era, this pressure only grows. Decent people are being erased, their voices drowned out, their efforts stretched thin. Those without a direct stake feel the need to fight constantly, to throw themselves into the struggle because to do otherwise feels like surrender.  It’s about the fear that if you aren’t fighting, you are failing.

But here’s the truth: utility is not the same as worth.

Superman is Superman even when he’s dying. Sayaka was worthy of love before she ever picked up a sword. Luisa deserved rest before she started losing her strength. And so do you.

This is a battle to the end. But even battles have moments of rest, of retreat, of gathering strength. The hardest and most necessary lesson might be the one these stories whisper to us between the lines: you don’t have to save everyone. You were never supposed to.

Promoted from the comments: Annotated editions of Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and Roadmarks.

I'm elevating this comment into its own post to give it some more visibility. 

Hi Josh, just wanted to mention that Centipede Press has limited editions of three Zelazny novels in production: Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and Roadmarks. I am providing essays as introductions or afterwords to each of these, as well as annotations. The Lord of Light annotations are quite extensive due to the mix of words and characters borrowed from Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions and mythologies, in addition to allusions to literature. I learned a lot doing the annotations and have gained another level of appreciation for the complexity of that novel.

Regards,

Chris Kovacs

Chris Kovacs is one of the authors behind the exceptional six volume Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. I felt that the annotations added so much value to the already brilliant stories they explained. I'm really looking forward to reading these.