My website is down, but I wanted to comment on this morning's horrible news in Colorado. I know there will be a lot of voices echoing the same sentiments, but I feel compelled.
I haven't really been all that anxious to see The Dark Knight Rises, so the idea of a midnight showing was laughable. Still, I know a lot of people who were at movie theaters at midnight last night, waiting on pins and needles for the curtain to rise. Thousands of people across the country repeated this scene. Regular folks. People just like me and you who just wanted to see a film about heroes.
In Aurora, Colorado, regular people like you and I walked into a theater to see Batman. But instead of seeing a hero, they saw evil. A young man in his 20's (reportedly named James Holmes) burst in the back door of the theater and started tossing smoke bombs. He then lifted his AK-47 assault rifle and opened fire. The reported death count comes to 14, including a 3 month old baby and a 6 year old. 50 people are injured, with no word of their condition.
The really sad part? At first, the people in the theater thought it was somehow part of the show. They didn't react for a few moments. We've gone so insane as a nation that the lines between reality and fiction have blurred. Had I been there, would my common sense have prevailed? Or would I simply have believed it to be a marketing stunt?
In comics, villains run the gamut from goofy to horrifying, but they never really scare you. We know it's fiction. The Joker isn't real. The Red Skull isn't going to lead a Nazi army into the 21st century. Reality is a lot more terrifying. No one could predict some dirt bag opening fire in a crowded theater. No one could predict that people would leave their houses to see a movie and never come back.
The man holding that military assault rifle is evil.
Part of me wonders if this was a joke to him. Killing people in a movie theatre showing Batman? The symmetry seems planned. And that would make me sadder than anything. I love comics. To see them perverted this way would pain me. I know that's not important in the face of this tragedy, but it bothers me.
Over the next few weeks we're going to see constant reports. We're going to know this evil's face, name, background, sob story and motivation. He'll be infamous, like a real life Joker. But we won't know the names of all the dead an scarred. Maybe one of the women sells insurance. Maybe one is an old man who grew up reading Batman. Many are probably people in their teens and twenties. We won't get to know them. They'll be lost in the sensational story of this monster and the politicians who hope to capitalize on it for their own benefit.
That's the real tragedy.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the people who are gone and the people who have to keep on living with this for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes I wish there really was a Batman to save us. But Superman doesn't exist, and there are no capes for the fallen.
