Back in the early 1970s, when
I was just a wee tyke,
the superhero game was a rather violent let's
pretend sort of
game where a group of friends who had congregated in a
playground or someone's
backyard, would
suddenly begin jumping up and down and
announcing we were all
superheroes, and everyone picked their own hero. This experience was exceptionally good after the
ice cream truck came by, and we were all strung out on sugar.
The superheroes were first come first serve, and the less creative newcomers to the game would always announce the well-known heroes like
Superman. All Superman ever did was stand around with his fists on his hips and boss the rest of us around.
Batman got to play nasty, and he grumbled a lot. We rarely ever let anyone play the tv show version of Batman, cuz he was corny. It always had to be the morose and skulking Batman that hid in shadows and actually damaged people. We used the sound effects though. Biff! Pow! Zowie! Well we didn't use Zowie too much cuz it sounded stupid.
So we're all running around the playground making woosh noises pretending we could
fly. Sometimes kids would wear their coat or sweater like a
superhero cape, or in the summer we'd maybe use large bath towels. Even Batman would run around pretending to fly until we told him to quit. Then he'd ask why and we'd say, "cuz Batman can't fly stupid!" Then he'd get mad and want to be
someone else. Flying would have to be kept to a minimum however, because it often led to climbing up high places, jumping into the air, and falling, all to the chagrin of any
grownups who happened to be around at the time.
Those of us who were more creative would jump for the lesser known superheroes.
Green Arrow was always fun, because I got to use an imaginary bow and arrow that could do anything.
Green Lantern was even easier. You'd just stick out your fist and announce you made a big hammer and hit everybody on the head with it. For awhile I got into the habit of wearing green when I'd go out to the playground, thinking that wearing green would improve my performance.
If
a girl came by, she became
Wonder Woman on the spot. We rarely had girls hang around though. They'd always wanna
play dolls. Or
spin the bottle or dumb games like that.