Oct 11, 2008 07:00 AM
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Wed Feb 10
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Many people have compared superheroes to gods, but few have taken the route of San Francisco's Justin Lamb, who's trying to make the point through comedy in his new one-man stand-up show, Hero Worship. Ahead of tonight's premiere, we talked to Lamb about where the show came from.
Described as "[using] multimedia and original standup material to explore everything from Darkseid to dreidels," Lamb's show takes one of his childhood fascinations to its logical conclusion... or somewhere close to it, at least, as he explained to us:
It's a lighthearted look at religion and other aspects of superhero culture that we find reflected in our daily lives. As a kid, Spiderman and Superman seemed more accessible as gods (mostly because their books had more pictures) and their lessons were pretty much the same - don't kill, don't steal, stay away from evildoers.
Well, maybe not "stay away from evildoers" as much as "get close to them and punch them until they see the error of their ways," but you can see his point. Such moral lessons led to the creation of Hero Worship's investigation:
I wanted to do a show exploring why superheroes and comic book culture have gotten so popular lately. I started researching it and started finding a lot of weird little similarities between superheroes and religion, which has a nice little nerd following of it's own if you haven't noticed. I wondered if subconsciously, do the things that attract people to these religions also attract people to these heroes.
Not that the show's all dry intellectual exploration, of course:
The show is definitely comedy... It's perfect for anyone who like superheroes, religion, or getting drunk while laughing with a nerd as he obsessively talks about something he's really into.
Hero Worship (performed alongside Sammy Wegent's Hell to the Chief) runs tonight and on the following three Saturdays - that would be October 11, 18, 25, and November 1st - at the Historic Purple Onion in San Francisco at 140 Columbus Ave with performances at 8pm and 10pm. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online or at the door.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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