Batkid is a super story about change, growth

The legend of Batkid grows greater with every telling for me, and not even the cynical news media Jokers can ruin this story of a little boy’s journey from junior leukemia survivor, to the savior of Gotham City.

Try as they might to darken the doorstep of this pint-sized Dark Knight, the continued reporting of how granting 5-year-old Miles Scott’s wish of becoming Batman cost the city of San Fran some $105,000 does nothing to diminish what has been the most snot-bubble-inducing story I’ve heard all year.

This was a Make-A-Wish Foundation job that took granting wishes to a whole other level. Involving 20,000 spectators, multiple sites and a real-life comic book adventure that ended with Miles getting the key to Gotham City, Miles raced around town in a tricked-out black Batmobile, defeated the Riddler and even came darn close to smooching it out with a damsel he saved from distress. Awesome doesn’t come close to describing his big day out.

For one day, what felt like an entire city — an entire country — got behind the adventure of a lifetime for a kid who had been going through leukemia treatment for four out of his five years on this rock, who just wanted to be Batman.

How are you going to deny Miles a few of your happy tears?

Batkid was a choreographed event meant to trip that relay between eyes, head and heart. The sheer number of resources, the scale of the production and the volunteers assembled to watch this all go down immediately made the enormity of it all resonate in that place in your stomach where emotions churn.

All that talk of “restoring faith in humanity” is so casually tossed around these days, but it’s hard to get people out in those numbers for important issues, let alone some little boy they don’t know; I know I wanted to be a part of that.

But I get hung up on other angles, as well, and I can’t get over the transformative power of superheroes as icons of renewal, salvation, triumph of adversity, and a little boy judo-chopping cancer.

It’s the right type of metaphor for the right type of kid, who emerged from the darkness of four years of cancer changed, stronger, ready to move into a new phase of his life. Like Bruce Wayne dealing with the messy and still-unresolved trauma of his parents’ murders only to become the ultimate vigilante crime fighter and symbol of dread, the Batman, so too would Miles Scott become Batkid.

Comic superheroes endure over the decades for very specific reasons — they always involve some sort of change. That speaks to the human experience on every level, whether that change is for the good, only cosmetic, deep and soul-shaking or for dark and sinister ends.

Human beings are moving, fluid, ever-evolving creatures not able to stay still. We’re capable of intellectual and spiritual growth, or we regress through stagnation, which is another change. Either way, staying frozen in time does not exist.

Superheroes tap into that human odyssey, and while we might not relate to crawling up walls in a leotard and shooting webs from our wrists, we know what it means to feel unnoticed, be thrust into a role of responsibility and find ourselves adapting to the task at hand.

Last time I checked, I didn’t turn green and grow to 10 feet tall, but the change that comes over me when I become angry or annoyed has very Incredible Hulk-like tendencies, and I’m not alone.

Superheroes are ever-present images in Aja Hood’s classroom at Southwest High, where she maintains a faithful little altar to all things Dr. Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk-related. She even sports what I like to call Hulk Pants Hair, a deep shade of dark purple, a la the Hulk’s pants.

More important, though, Hood recognizes the duality that exists in the Hulk and the superhero genre in general.

“I am fascinated by superheroes because superheroes don’t start out super. Each and every one of them have an internal flaw that they have to overcome. They don’t feel like they belong. But a superhero takes that flaw and turns it into a strength. We all feel weak sometimes, but the key to being a superhero is turning that weakness into something powerful,” she said.

Superheroes were the perfect vehicle — foil might even be a better term — to address Miles’ victory over leukemia, one where a rebirth occurred out of tragedy.

This was the feel-good story of the year, and it took a 5-year-old channeling the world’s most famous introvert in tights with huge mommy and daddy issues to be fully realized.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Nov. 22, 2013.