Gerald W. Johnson Quotes

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously.

Americans have a profound longing for heroes - now perhaps more than ever. We need our explorers, our sports icons, our Medal of Freedom winners, our Nobel laureates. We need our Greatest Generation warriors, our 'Sully' Sullenbergers, our Neil Armstrongs. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat.

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older.

I've always written about heroes and wondered who they are.

To me, superhero movies are like Greek myth.

Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them.

There's something about the superheroes and the idea behind their relationship with humans, whether it's a metaphor for the better part of ourselves, or the more flawed part of ourselves. So it seems to really be our own pop-culture version of Greek mythology.

I know people like Jon Snow a lot.

America's popular heroes have seldom been its great thinkers, and even less its scientists. The success of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' which seems to give the lie to this claim, is more the exception that proves the rule.

Athletes tend to have less of a sense of humor than most people. They are heroes to so many. That might be part of it.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

I like superheroes. I like the drama of it, the stirring, larger-than-life aspect.

I doubt if the public thought of me as Christ when they next saw me as Temple Houston on television.

I am very big into superheroes.

I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.

A lot of people... kind of make heroes that are separate from us, people who are, you know, like... John Wayne and Errol Flynn and, you know, Denzel Washington... people who are different, who are larger than life.

As a kid, you just like anything fanciful that you're into, but as an adult, I really love that kind of place where the super hero mythos meets life, where it has that human story; that's what I think I was really drawn to when I started getting into the X-Men.

As the immortal Washington lives endeared and engraven on the hearts of every white in America, never to be forgotten in time -- even such is the immortal Philip honored, as held in memory by the degraded but yet graceful descendants who appreciate his character.

Woe to the people that fails to honor its heroes!

Creating heroes and history are often at odds.

Note the startling regularity through history with which society martyrs the rebel in one generation and worships him in the next.

Not being white has never prevented me from enjoying Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. These are heroes of mine.

'Star Wars' was the mythology of my youth. I longed for adventure.

Comic-book movies are mythology, in a way, and there are a lot more parallels in them with what's going on in the real world than people want to discuss.

I feel, since 2001, this huge need for Americans to have superheroes on the screen. This idea that a super-being will protect you. That this being can go above the law but, at the end of the day, would be a good force and defeat the evil. This idea that this half-god exists. This need in the subconscious of America to find these gods.