Heroic Ideas
Some people striving to stand out as “Creative” sit by in meetings or during their entire career at companies waiting to be inspired with that one big civilization-saving idea to contribute. They even let other smaller, more mundane ideas go by unspoken because they just weren’t “big enough” to make a real impact on the company.
Not every idea needs to save the world.
The most interesting, popular, and award-winning super hero comic book stories aren’t the issues with Superman saving the world from some outer-space menace (that seemed to happen in every issue, every single month). The stories that had the most impact on readers and critics were those that dealt with seemingly less global issues — but in reality were of the most important to real people living in the real world.
The classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow storyline that dealt with race probably best illustrates the point. Green Arrows tells his friend Green Lantern that while he’s off saving alien races on other planets, he’s forgetting about the people on his own planet that need his help the most (I get chills thinking about the panel sequence even as I type this).
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