DeaconBlues wrote:
It has been claimed that those on the spectrum have an unusually high interest in justice, and in seeing it done, which is a superhero's stock-in-trade. Add to that the wonderfully convoluted histories of some of the heroes or hero teams (the Green Lantern Corps, for instance, or the Legion of Super-Heroes - have they gotten a fourth incarnation with the New 52 reboot at DC?), so that there are all these beautiful details to pore over and learn about, and you have a long-term special interest just raring to go!
(And Captain Planet is nothing more than an environmental-extremist ripoff of the Psi-Hawk, from Marvel New U's title Psi-Force. In the comic, five teenagers who had been gifted with psionic powers by the White Event, the event that kicked off superpowers in the New Universe, found that when they concentrated on a medallion given them by their mentor before he was killed, they could combine their powers to summon up the Psi-Hawk, a large humanoid figure that could use all their powers at once. They tried it once with six, after Tom Boyd (Psyphon) joined the group, but the Hawk went crazy; Michael Crawley (Dynamite), who had been doubting his value as a team member anyway, ran off after that, bringing them back down to five.)
I still like him and the Planeteers, anyway. And I suppose it's not really surprising that the idea for the show wasn't original. Nothing really is when you stop and think about it. Before watching the show, I had actually come up with a very similar idea.

When I saw it, it was almost as if my own idea had been turned into a cartoon, with the exception of the superhero and the rings. In my 'version', they're more like a big team with a hierarchy and all that. You have the four Elites(one for each element)who are the most powerful and in charge, you have some specializing in energy conservation, others working on game reserves or zoos, and doing different environmentalist things. Maybe that's why I got to like the show so much. Because I already had an interest in environmentalism, and in my own world, had already created some characters similar to the Planeteers.
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"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat." - Mark Twain