James Griffin: Kapow! What flavour of super are we?

Opinion

Hoorah! Auckland is to become a Super City. Whatever that means. It'll inevitably end up costing us more in rates because everything always does, but we should all take to the streets in celebration anyway, where we will dance and sing long into the night, just because we're super.

And then, when we've finished doing that, we - those of us who actually live in the new super-sized Auckland (do we get fries with that?) - should sit ourselves down and ponder the most important question that can be pondered on becoming a Super City.

Actually, all of New Zealand should sit down and ponder this question because it will determine, forever (or until a future government decides to un-super Auckland) the relationship between themselves and the Super City of Sails.

And the question is: now that Auckland is a Super City, which super-hero will it take after? Will Auckland become, for example (and to start with the obvious), the Superman of Super Cities? In our rather gay super-lycra suit of invincibility we would be impervious to the sneers and jibes of other, less super, cities.

When the sheer weight of our Super City responsibilities gets too much for us we can retreat to our own Fortress of Solitude, at the top of the Sky Tower, where none of our enemies would think of looking for us. The only thing that could bring Auckland to its knees, as a Superman-inspired Super City, would be the kryptonite of the ineptitude of our own local body politicians. Or we may turn out to be more of a Batman-inspired Super City - i.e. not actually super in any real sense of the word, but with lots of cool gadgets that make us appear super.

A harbour bridge that transforms into a crime-fighting jet with clip-on wings, a Metrolink bus that turns into a Batmobile capable of almost 17km/h in rush hour traffic. The Batcave could be underneath the Aotea Centre, its whereabouts masked by the tepid architecture above.

A Bat-themed Super City is a very real possibility, especially because Aucklanders just love to dress in black. On a more colourful note, there is a distinct possibility we could become quite Spiderman-ish in our Super-ness. Certainly the rest of the country tends to regard Auckland with all the love and respect we accord to our eight-legged, white-tailed friends, just before we crush them with rolled-up papers. But that aside, we could do a lot worse than emulating Spiderman, especially as that cool swinging-from-building-to-building thing he does could do a heck of a lot towards easing our traffic congestion.

Also, Peter Parker seems like a nice chap, once you get past the arachnid tendencies, and it would be nice if we were, at heart, a kind and honest Super City. This, I would suggest, is not how the rest of the country will view the new and improved, super-duper Auckland. To the citizens of the non-super parts of New Zealand, we will probably come across as a latte-powered Incredible Hulk; hideous and deformed after over-exposure to too much caffeine.

A Hulk-inspired Auckland - or Hulkland as it would inevitably become known - would rage against all those who call us greedy and arrogant and uncultured. Then we would smash them with our super economic strength, thus effectively proving them right. But if a Super Hulkland is too much testosterone, too threatening, for the nation to handle then how about a Wonder Woman Super Auckland?

Surely the image of Wonder Woman, in her little hot-pants outfit, rollerblading down Tamaki Drive, is one every New Zealander can get behind? And if that doesn't do the business we can always go to the Powerpuff Girls as a fall-back option. Obviously, a Super Auckland comes with super dilemmas on the superhero front.

Iron Man is kind of cool but probably a bit too militaristic for a Super City that includes notoriously peace-loving suburbs like Titirangi and Grey Lynn. Captain Marvel is too American in connotation and also too gay, even for Ponsonby.

The Flash would focus things too heavily on Auckland's tendency to show off and may also lead to nationwide aspersions on our love-making abilities. And Swamp Thing just sounds plain wrong, even though he might be entirely appropriate for our leaky buildings and dreary inner-city apartment complexes.

All of which leaves Auckland, the Super City of the future, in something of a quandary. It's like we're stuck in the Bonnie Tyler song of our own making, needing a hero "til the end of the night" - or anytime, for that matter.

And like Bonnie says: he's gotta be strong; he's gotta be fast; he's gotta be fresh from the fight". Oh crap, it's Winston Peters.