Patton Oswalt commenting on comics and superheroes is not a new thing. He’s worked superheroes into his stand up over the years and even gave a rousing improv-style mega-crossover speech in a scene from Parks and Rec. In fact, check out that clip below because it’s well worth a look:
His latest stand-up special “Annihilation” premiered on Netflix this week and superheroes are brought up for a portion of it. Given his encyclopedic knowledge of heroes his ideas are well worth a look and in this case, he tackles the ridiculousness of superheroes dealing with grief and lost loved ones. His comments were in reaction to how comics failed him when his wife unexpectedly passed away.
“Everything failed me”, as Oswalt put it, “Especially superheroes in comic books, out the window. Every superhero, all these action heroes I worship. It’s always–it’s always a widower; someone who has lost a wife or a child or their whole family. And they do the thing that everyone does the minute you lose a loved one. You know what I’m talking about, CrossFit and martial arts. That’s the first thing you do. You get really cut.”
Certainly, that’s not helpful to anyone looking for answers on how to act after losing a loved one. He went on to talk about the outrageous depiction of heroes standing over graves saying, “The Batman and the John Wicks of the world. Uh, they’re always shown, like, standing over their wife’s grave at night, in the rain, in a trench coat, looking grim and focused. Cemeteries close at 6:00. I know this. That’s bullshit. If they’re doing that, that means they climbed over the fence like an asshole, there was some guy in the security hut looking at the monitor. ‘There’s that douchebag climbing over the gate again. We’re open nine hours a day. I don’t know why he comes here at night.'”
Batman took the most ire from Oswalt however in a hilarious rant where Oswalt said, “Batman can go fuck himself. That guy–he’s nine years old, his parents are gunned down in front of him, and he travels the world becoming this super powered ninja fighting. What the–at best, at best, Bruce Wayne would have grown up to be Gotham City’s most annoying slam poet. That is the best he would have become. That’s the best–he would have been one of those trust fund–he would have been a fat vegan, I know that. He’d be on stage with his poems, ‘Bang, bang, in the alley.’ Everyone, ‘Boo!'”
Oswalt is certainly not wrong! You can watch the entire hilarious standup streaming on Netflix right now. We highly recommend it.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login