You know why I don’t like Superman?
The narrative is too perfect.
The only survivor of a doomed planet, found by the perfect parents, grows up to be the perfect kid, then as an adult has abilities that basically makes him indestructible. He even gets the girl of his dreams.
You know what Superman’s biggest issue in life? He’s too nice. That is the only problem he really has. He doesn’t have to worry about getting shot or stabbed. Even his dead parents can talk to him from the grave.
It is nothing personal against Superman, but he is bland. Yes, he is great, and when you need someone to save the world from a nuclear strike or something, he’s your man. However, he didn’t give you much to talk about at the barbershop.
Now, Batman is a man with problems.
His parents didn’t get killed while he was traveling in a spaceship. His parents were killed in front of him in an alley by a thug (not Cam Newton) with a gun, an alley they were only in because he was scared of a play and asked to leave early.
Bruce Wayne has money but not happiness. All his relationships are strained to the max. People he cares about gets murdered. He can’t keep a lady, most them have tried to kill him and his only friend is his butler.
We can’t even be sure Batman isn’t as crazy as his arch-enemy, The Joker. In fact, it is quite possible that Batman is crazier.
At least costumed criminals have a goal of committing crimes or are just insane. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, who with NO POWERS at all dresses up like a Bat and puts his life in danger every day. He wasn’t bitten by spider, doesn’t have the speed force, no secret government experiments, doesn’t have iron suit with a bunch of tech in it or a power ring.
He’s just a guy obsessed with being perfect at his craft of being a superhero. He wins so many battles just with his mind. He’s just smarter than the other people he is dealing with, superpowers or not. He’s so paranoid he keeps ways to kill his superhero friends.
The NBA had its Superman. It was Michael Jordan.
The perfect narrative: kid doesn’t make varsity as HS sophomore sparking his drive to take his game to another level. He then goes to one of the greatest college basketball factories of all time in North Carolina and hits a game winning shot to win a National Championship his freshman year.
After that, he takes the NBA storm, and because he didn’t play in the social media era, the narrative around him as always been perfect.
So many people don’t even remember it took him 7 years to win his first championship. He’s universally recognized as the GOAT. Even in retirement his legacy looms over everyone. His Bulls career ended with a walk off jumper. It was better than any Lifetime movie.
It isn’t so much boring as it is perfect.
Kobe Bryant wasn’t perfect, far from it. He was always fighting against Superman’s shadow. He didn’t quite jump as high, hit as many game winners as people wanted or win as many titles in the dramatic fashion as Jordan.
But what makes Kobe’s story interesting is that it isn’t perfect. It is flawed, deeply flawed. At the beginning you couldn’t see it. The PR machine was at work.
They wanted Kobe to be the next Jordan. He had the game, the smile, the wife and, unlike Jordan at least early on, he had the rings.
But, if you looked deeper you saw that there were issues that were hidden. Sadly, it took a rape accusation to bring out the REAL KOBE.
The real Kobe has an obsession similar to Batman, but his obsession was being the best to ever play in the NBA. He was so obsessed that it was a detriment to himself and sometimes he own teammates.
When you have such a single-minded focus it is hard at times to even care about anything else that is going on around you, and your patience with people runs really thin.
It killed Kobe to watch Shaq, who was just naturally gifted, be so lazy. It drove him insane, and while he didn’t make the final call on Shaq leaving, he wasn’t shedding any tears when he left. Like Batman, who doesn’t cares if he can’t stop bullets, Kobe felt he could take on 20 gunmen alone just because he was Kobe.
Unlike Superman, Batman can get shot, and even Batman couldn’t get Smush Parker and Kwame Brown to be proper Robins.
But Kobe’s singular focus on being the best on a court didn’t just put stress on his teammates, but also on his personal life. His wife almost left him twice, and he and his father have struggled to connect for years after he made it to the league. His relationship with his teammates and coaches are well documented. If you didn’t work as hard or love the game as much as Kobe there was going to be problems. Batman hated when his sidekicks had personal lives, what was wrong with them, they needed to be focus on the missions 24-7.
You won’t see Kobe having dinner at an opponent’s house like D Wade & Bosh did with Carmelo. There won’t be any boat rides with CP3 & LeBron in the offseason.
At his core like Batman, Kobe is loner. His circle is tight, and even that circle knows that you have to be a particular type of person to get close to him. You have to accept his insanity as normalcy.
In the Batman Beyond mythos, an aging Batman who has been through many wars over the years is still fighting crime in a high-tech batsuit. He is using the new batsuit because his mind is still working fine, but while trying to save someone, he has a heart attack and has to resort to use a gun to hold off his attackers.
At that moment he knew while his mind was still sound, his body had enough.
Unlike Superman, Batman ages. His bones break, and his organs fail. Kobe’s body has failed him from the time he tore his Achilles years ago.
But, Kobe’s 20-year journey from being that kid throwing up air balls in playoff games to 5-time champ and one of the greatest NBA players ever to lace them up will always be one of the greatest stories of all-time.
So, while he will never been seen as the GOAT by most, there will always be a part of me that hopes at some point in this final season………..
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS