Last month, the Marvel Comics superstar SpiderMan, came to a boy's rescue in the form of firefighter Somchai Yoosabai. He had to don the outfit to coax an autistic boy from a window ledge on the third floor.

Somchai normally uses his SpiderMan costume while giving fire-prevention lectures at schools or leading an aerobics routine.

Then, came Songkran Day, when Bangkok turned into Gotham City and Batman showed up to rescue residents at the Din Daeng flats from a possible gas explosion.

Red-shirt protesters had parked an LPG truck in the Din Daeng flats compound and threatened to set it on fire. The situation became scary, infuriating residents and prompting clashes with protesters.

But help arrived seven hours later, when a man - dressed as Batman - jumped out yelling "Here's comes Batman."

Smiles came back to people's faces as Batman ran around, distracting one and all, before the military took over and drove the truck away. Later we discovered that this Batman was Pichit Chuekaew, who sells Talking Dictionaries at B2S in Central Bang Na.

Both Somchai and Pichit are, in fact, ordinary men who did something to ease situations - if only for a short while.

Sadly, in reality, we can't rely on superheroes to come to our rescue, especially in terms of the current political situation. As the divide between the Thais gets deeper and deeper, it is difficult to even hope for a way out of this chasm.

A superhero's job is to make the world a better place, but it is not easy for the country's leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to successfully protect his people from evil.

Abhisit was applauded for successfully, and peacefully, dispersing the red-shirt crowds during the Sonkran mayhem. Instead of handing things over to the military when he declared a state of emergency, like his predecessor Samak Sundaravej did, Abhisit assigned the job to his deputy Suthep Thaugsuban.

However, we should not blindly believe that Abhisit would be able to bring peace and win this battle against evil because, after all, he wasn't born on Krypton. --The Nation/Asia News Network