Dear Mr. Willingham,
You're a moron.
Coincidentally, you're absolutely right, Superman isn't Mr. Perfect anymore. He certainly doesn't go around encouraging young school children to slap Japanese people just 'cause, or lamenting the fact that Lois Lane must go undercover as a black woman. He still obviously saves people, but he isn't the insanely racist, cookie-cutter hero he used to be, I agree.
I find it funny how creators often lament the loss of a hero's 'heroicness' simply because of the change of the culture's values. Allow me to elucidate. Way back before the Uncanny, X-Men #3 vol. 1 featured the X-Men's first ever attempt to recruit a dangerous but new mutant, the Blob. Professor X, fearing his students safety, silently thinks of Jean saying she is "the one I love" but that he cannot pursue a relationship because "he is stuck in this blasted wheelchair". I'm not sure what past for ethical those days, but a telepath who was both a teacher and a middle aged adult fantasizing about an underaged girl certainly wouldn't fly today. Moreover, the wheelchair was the least inappropriate thing about that relationship and those feelings. She's is your freakin' student!
Although to many people those WASP-y teenagers who couldn't even admit one multi-ethnic character on their team are one of the most racially sensitive, heroic groups ever. Much moreso than the group that reached out to a scared and beaten Nightcrawler in Germany, gave refuge to a Russian Soviet during the heart of McCarthyism, gave a common Cajun theif a second chance, took in an abusive animal and treated him as a friend, allowed a failed teacher and former villain another shot at creating her long lost Hellions. All those incarnations are supposedly, according to Willingham, inferior, because those incarnations have more problems and more emotional complexity -- that is the reason they don't act like heroes.
For me, it's quite the opposite. It's easy to be a "hero" when your moral code is pre-programmed by a societal standard. It's easy to tout the party line, or hide behind a book or an outdated sense of manhood/womanhood. It's much harder to make the right decisions when you have problems with relationships, have anger issues, walk around trying to find your past, or even worse, have been abused and hurt for being different.
Imagine DareDevil, a womanizing lawyer who cannot his personal life together. Or Iron Man, a drunk control freak. Does Willingham seriously want to tell me if we took away those flaws it would make them seem like more of a hero. From where I'm standing, it makes them more of a hero for trying to stand up for what's right in the midst of all that.
If you want cookie cutter heroes find. Don't complain though when their lack of self-awareness offends you. Don't complain when they pull a John Walker and beat a mutant terrorist to death because Henry Peter Gyrich tells them to. Don't complain when go rogue like Hyperion did when he found out the world wasn't as nineteen fifties as his superiors made it out to be. We are far beyond the Justice League that is merely divided by their powers and costumes. Heroes are suppose to bust heads, they're suppose to have personal lives, remember, we were convinced, even back in your day that these characters were suppose to be people just like you and me. Why should you cry foul when they act like it?
