Last week saw the launch of the We Can Be Heroes campaign. It’s an interesting one – it’s a partnership between DC Comics and a coalition of charities working in famine relief in the Horn of Africa. It uses the comic publisher’s well-known characters to raise awareness and encourage donations, with the tagline ‘one small act can make you a hero’.
There’s a couple of things that don’t quite sit right with me here. The images of superheroes laid over the African continent make me a little uncomfortable and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Is it because they’re fictional characters, juxtaposed with all-too-real human tragedy? Is it just that comic book plots don’t generally concern themselves with the gritty realities of the developing world?
Maybe it’s the fact that our superheroes are actually pretty impotent in the face of genuine disaster. What’s Batman going to do in Ethiopia? What can the Flash offer in a famine situation? Re-locating our heroes to Africa makes them look like the costumed cartoon characters they are, and our cultural mythologies start to look a little pathetic. Or perhaps I’m being defensive about Africa, I don’t know. Answers on a postcard please.
Those nagging doubts aside, there’s plenty to commend about We Can Be Heroes. DC cleverly puts its characters in silhouette so they don’t dominate proceedings. Instead, all the faces are real people, captured in the video on the homepage talking about what it’s like to be needed, or a time when they needed to rise to the occasion. It puts the issue back into the real world.
They also also put the heroes together, demonstrating the strength in numbers that is a vital part of any global response to disaster. Your individual donation won’t do much, but when combined with millions of others you can genuinely change things. There’s some smart messaging behind the simple website.
We Can Be Heroes is also likely to appeal to younger people, and 16-24 year olds are the least likely to give to charity and give the least when they do. That’s to be expected when you’re not earning much, but it’s never too early to get people thinking about how they can use their money to make a difference in the world. I’m interested to see if the campaign succeeds in engaging those who wouldn’t normally pay much attention to global issues.
Finally, DC aren’t just making their IP available to a good cause. If you make a donation through through the campaign, they will match your gift 100%. With DC part of the Time Warner mammoth, the potential for cross-marketing is considerable and I imagine this could be a pretty big campaign. A generous offer – good work DC.
The Earthbound Report 
This reminds me of a comic Marvel Comics put out in in 1985. Heroes for Hope was an X-Men comic put out to raise funds for famine relief. In the vein of things like Band Aid, it used work from many of their top creators, as well as non-comic writers like Stephen King. If i recall correctly, the plot showed that the superheroes were very much out of their depth dealing with something like famine. It was probably a better marriage between superheroes and famine relief than this one, but anything that helps is good.
Interesting. I’d guessed that someone would have tackled it at some point, thanks for the link.