Whatever happened to heroes?

KTown writes:

I'm sorry, maybe I was raised in naivete but I miss the days when the good guys were good (not winning by playing nastier than the baddies). When Superman is held in contempt by society because he is a "boy scout," what does that say? And why all the promiscuity and oversexed storylines? It is assumed Batman is sleeping around. Black Cat is getting raped, and the X-Men are having crazy super human sex with each other.

I think it appeals to some aspect of our nature that enjoys seeing the tainting of something that is supposed to be good and pure. Like hearing a little kid curse. Of course there is something of the otherworldly spectacle of it but it just feels wrong.

Heroes are supposed to be pillars and models for what is good. But with our recently acquired cultural ideal that sex in any form and in any situation is good and natural combined with our taste for the pornographic, we all say, "Hey, why can't Batman get a piece of a__!"

I've been ruminating about this, but every response I try to write keeps getting longer and more convoluted. Ergo, since I'm already out of time this morning, I'm going to give up trying to cram it into one post and just declare it an open topic. For the next week or so — leading up to Independence Day, fittingly enough — we're going to talking about heroes, heroism, and whatever the heck it was that happened to the heroic in fiction.

But first, meet Lance Sijan. He was my neighbor.