The Comics Professor

On Spider-Man, torture, and character in comics

Inspired by my friend Colin Smith's post on his blog, Too Busy Thinking about My Comics, regarding our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man's questionable actions in Amazing Spider-Man #685, and then further spurred on by a vigorous debate with Spidey editor Stephen Wacker on Twitter this morning (joined by Colin and several other stalwart discussants), I need to put my thoughts on this matter down for whatever counts as posterity these days.

Although my comments will much be broader than this specific instance, here is the page-of-interest:

While Colin was firmly against what Spidey did in this issue, his larger concern (as I understand it) is with the lack of context and discussion of what Spidey did. No more reflection, no consideration of the principles or consequences involved--he just "did what he had to do." (Another concern of his was with the increasing proliferation of acts like this, one of which I mentioned in an earlier post, and is also related an another post on DC Comics' devolving views on killing.)

One issue that arose in the Twitter discussion this morning was selectivity when applying moral standards to characters. I was accused of sanctioning Batman's practice of child endangerment over the last 70 years, but not Spidey's recent transgression. I replied first that I wasn't sanctioning or condemning either hero's actions, and then elaborated on two points:

1) Batman's actions towards his various Robins have been discussed extensively in the comics--for instance, in Devin Grayson's wonderful Gotham Knights run, as well as Peter Tomasi's current Batman and Robin, which also deal with Damian's penchant for killing. (There is also a chapter titled "Is It Right to Make a Robin?" in Batman and Philosophy.) It is not the controversial nature of Spidey's actions, so much as lack of recognition of any controversy, that is distressing to me.

2) Batman and Spider-Man are different characters, with different moral codes, implying different limits and lines they won't cross, as well as different processes of judgment. The Punisher is different, as is Captain America, and Superman, and Daredevil. Even within the Batman family, we see Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian all making moral decisions differently--and the fact that we can read that in the comics, that the characters are so well-defined that these differences come out, is a testament to comics storytelling.

It is this second point about character on which I want to focus here: not only is the lack of reflection or context in Amazing Spider-Man #685 troublesome, but it seems out of character for Spidey to do what he did. (To be fair, he does acknowledge this briefly--see the panel in the lower right-hand corner in the image above--but then seems to dismiss such concerns.)

Despite this long legacy in the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man is perpetually represented as the kid among grown-ups, representing a still-developing moral idealism alongside the more solidified moral positions of Captain America and Iron Man. We see this when he sided first with Iron Man and then Cap during Civil War (which I described in my chapter "'My Name is Peter Parker': Unmasking the Right and the Good" in Spider-Man and Philosophy, edited by Jonathan J. Sanford, as well as in this blog post). He also serves as the point-of-view character for events like Civil War, and he has gained the status as the moral center of the Marvel Universe--not in the sense that he is always right, but rather that he hasn't got everything figured out, and therefore he considers his actions like a conscientious young person would. For example, he makes idealist pledges like "no one dies," which makes his all-too-easy acceptance of torture all the harder to reconcile with his character.

Torture is a hot button issue to be sure, and deservedly so. You could say it's the ultimate "trolley problem," in which grave consequences will follow if one adheres to cherished principles. Several years ago, I compared Batman's continued struggle over whether to kill the Joker to a trolley problem and to the contemporary torture debates. Among its other lessons, the trolley problem (which Spidey has also faced, of course) shows us the difficulty of adhering to moral absolutes. It is too easy to say "I will never kill" or "I will never torture," no matter how high the costs, until you're actually in a position--as a government official or superhero--to have to accept those costs on behalf of those who will bear them, in order to maintain your principles. (For a magnificant academic treatment of these issues, see Michael S. Moore's paper "Torture and the Balance of Evils" in his collection Placing Blame.)

For that reason, I am no moral absolutist when it comes to torture (or anything else). As a Kantian I am a strong devotee of moral duty and principle, but no matter how firmly we adhere to a moral principle, there can always be another moral principle can that be judged to be more important--and this importance can be based, in part, on consequences. But this is a decision that everyone has to make for himself or herself--including fictional characters like superheroes that find themselves in these situations much more often than the average Jane or Joe.

As much as I admire the character of Captain America, I find it more believable that he, compared to Spider-Man, would engage in torture, with a tremendous heavy heart, when he judged it to be necessary. Ideally, his struggle with such a decision would parellel America's struggle with it. It would rip him apart inside, representing a betrayal of his core principles of respect for human rights and dignity, and he would only do it if the costs of not doing it were unacceptably high, as in the "ticking time-bomb scenario." (He would not, however, be as flippant about it as he was in Secret Avengers #21, shown at the right.)

As I understand the character of Spider-Man, he would be far less accepting of the "inevitability" of torture in whatever few circumstances Cap would. Spidey would want to look for another way, not stopping until he found it, no matter what the costs to himself (as with his "no one dies" pledge). If anything, he may be guilty of ignoring the costs to others of sticking to his own principles in the face of the "Ends of the Earth," and a thought process like this may in fact explain why he resorted to torture in Amazing Spider-Man #685. But we don't know this, because it wasn't fleshed out (at least not yet). As it stands, it appears that Spidey adopted this morally extreme course of action too easily, and that seems out of character.

Why does this matter? (This question was at the core of much of the Twitter discussion this morning, and is a point I explored in my other chapter in Spider-Man and Philosophy, "The Sound of Fury Behind 'One More Day.'") It matters because the character of Spider-Man has been around for 50 years now, and for the most part has been defined very precisely, to the credit of the dozens of writers that have told his stories over the years. He has changed and he has grown, but organically within the stories, not suddenly or abruptly--except in cases like the deal with Mephisto in One More Day or the incident that prompted all this hubbub.

That rare cases like these stand out is because they are exceptions to the "rule," or in this case, the character that is Spider-Man. If you've read his stories long enough, you feel you know him and you come to care about him, despite his being a fictional character. (This is the problem with the ciphers walking around in familiar costumes in DC Comics' New 52.) Just as we call out our friends for doing this that are out of character ("this isn't you, Jimmy, it's not who you are!"), we can think of our fictional characters' action the same way--even moreso, actually, because fictional characters, no matter how complex, are much simpler and well-defined than people in the real world.

If comics publishers and creators want our loyalty to their characters, they have a responsibility to portray the characters consistently--and if they choose to have a character do something surprisingly, they should deal with it in-story so it feels organic. The backlash against One More Day is a obvious example of readers' feelings of betrayal at out-of-character writing based on editorial fiat. On the other hand, the frequent back-and-forth between Cap and Iron Man since Civil War, each calling out the other's hypocrisies, is fantastic, because it deals with issues of character and consistency in-story--between the characters themselves, even!

To me, and to many other readers, Spider-Man never seemed like a character that would accept torture as an acceptable means to an end. If that is a true representation of the character as he's evolved, then I hope the creators will draw that out--that could make for some thoughtful and enjoyable superhero comics. But I also wonder what other lines he refuses to cross, and that fills me with despair.

My reflections on the post-Flashpoint DCU (and an unexpected walk down memory lane)

So here we are, in early October--New York Comic Con is several days away--and I realized I had written a lot about the new DCU before anybody had actually read the books, but I had yet to comment on it after reading September's big batch of #1's. Rather than give a book-by-book review, I'll just share some thoughts on the enterprise as a whole. I make no claims to originality, nor to any special insight--I just wanted to give at least one "postgame" wrap-up after I commented so much pregame.

Simply put, I hope some readers, new and old, embrace the new DCU as theirs, because it certainly isn't mine.

My love of DC superheroes started with Adam West's Batman and the Super Friends and soon spread to comics. The first comic book I remember reading was Green Lantern/Green Arrow #110 (November 1978), which introduced me not only to Hal and Ollie, but also to Alan Scott--and started my love for Earth-2. Soon I was plucking comics at random off the spinner rack at Betty Jay's soda shop in my small Ohio hometown, including Justice League of America #168 (July 1979), containing the pivotal mindwipe storyline that begat Identity Crisis (and featured a very buff Ralph Dibny on the cover), and an innocuous-looking DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), featuring Superman and Green Lantern, and also a special preview of New Teen Titans, which started a legendary run on comics that I was lucky to have read from the beginning (and now look forward to rereading in the beautiful Omnibus hardcovers).

Soon I was riding my bike up to City News, a newsstand/cigar shop in the same town, which carried the full DC and Marvel lines. (I didn't buy any Marvel books at the time, which was more an economic decision than an aesthetic one--I loved the idea of a shared universe and wanted to read the entire line from a company, and what can I say, I loved the DC heroes "first.") I lived for the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, and my favorite titles soon became All-Star Squadron and later, by subscription, Infinity Inc. The Earth-2 heroes were the "other" to me, and by implication cooler than the "normal" Earth-1 characters.

And then came Crisis on Infinite Earths, the first major reboot/relaunch of the DCU (unless you count the introduction of the Earth-1 Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, and Hawkman in the 1960s, which some do). I never regarded the idea of multiple Earths, with independent yet overlapping timelines and histories, to be complicated, but as the same time I thrilled at the idea--soon to be realized with the post-COIE Justice League--of having heroes from various Earths on the same team. (To me, Dr. Fate and Batman on the same team equalled awesome.)

The changes after COIE were just as selective as those following Flashpoint, although some of the former were dictated by the logic of merging the various Earths. Specifically, "duplicate" heroes, such as Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Speedy, and Aquaman, who existed in roughy identical forms on Earth-1 and Earth-2, had to be collapsed into one (always the younger, Earth-1 version). But the changes went even further: Superman and Wonder Woman were given hard reboots, while Batman and Green Lantern were left mostly unchanged. (Sound familiar?) And since Barry Allen died during COIE, Wally West stepped up as the new Flash, but the world somehow remembered Barry's death (but not Supergirl's).

For reasons that I do not recall (but probably having something to do with getting my first guitar in high school), I dropped out of comics around the time Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns wrapped up. (Maybe I wanted to leave at a high point!) I didn't walk into a comics shop again until 2004, just in time for Hal Jordan and Jason Todd to come back from the dead--and for Sue Dibny and Ted Kord to replace them--and also for the huge ramp-up to Infinite Crisis, the successor to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I missed everything in between, including the deaths of Superman and Jason Todd, Batman's back problems, Hal Jordan's breakdown possession, and all the events like Zero Hour, likely the most thorough line-wide retcon other than COIE and Flashpoint (and the one which most closely resembles the revised "five-year" timeline of the new DCU). But through the magic of trade paperbacks and online comic book shops, eventually I caught up with what I had missed.

Admittedly, I was much much younger when COIE happened, but I don't remember having the same sense of loss, abandonment, and betrayal as I do now. (Who, me, overdramatic? Never!) Most of the changes after COIE reconciled the five most significant Earths (1, 2, 4, S, and X), the key word here being "reconcile." Redundancies were eliminated, with some minor casualties (such as Helena Wayne and Lyta Trevor), but most of the histories of the two main Earths, 1 and 2, were retained--with the notable exception of those of Superman and Wonder Woman. But even those hard reboots didn't seem so drastic to me--Superman was slightly depowered, his supporting cast changed a bit, and he no longer had a past as Superboy, and Diana no longer had a past with the Justice League (or anybody, for that matter). But their underlying characters were unchanged, or at least so it seemed to me at the time. Most importantly, they were still recognizable as essentially the same characters that they were prior to COIE.

But despite what the now-ubiquitous Purple Glowy Woman said at the end of Flashpoint about reconciling the DCU with the Vertigo and Wildstorm universes, the post-Flashpoint DCU is more about selective reinvention than reconciliation. Once again, Batman and Green Lantern are relatively untouched, while Superman and Wonder Woman are rebooted--along with most of the rest of the DCU. The extent of the changes vary, of course: Barry Allen is in the same job he had before Flashpoint but is no longer married to Iris (and apparently no longer has other speedsters to run with), Carter Hall is a different sort of Hawkman altogether, Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch are now brand-new Firestorms, Jamie Reyes is the first Blue Beetle, and Ollie Queen is just a blonde--and bland--archer with a half-assed goatee and no personality to speak of. The full changes to Wonder Woman have yet to be seen (other than the recent revelation of her parentage), but the new Superman is a travesty, edginess replacing nobility and cynicism replacing hope. The histories of the Justice League and Teen Titans, traditionally bedrock institutions in the DCU, are completely up in the air; thankfully, the Legion is little changed from its reintroduction during Brad Meltzer's and Geoff John's JLA/JSA crossover. (I did mourn the JSA most of all, but its planned resurrection on a new Earth-2 is a bright light in an otherwise dim new universe.)

This is why it doesn't feel like my DCU anymore--because it isn't. It's completely new, and in a different way than the post-COIE universe was. Rather than reconciling and retaining most of several alternate histories, Flashpoint replaced a single history with another, with elements retained (seemingly) at random. Like "One Year Later" but on a grander scale, I enjoy being teased with which elements remain the same and which are changed or lost. But now that game is being played with nearly the entire DCU--and frankly, I'm tired of waiting, guessing, being pleasantly surprised and horribly disappointed within the same 20-page story. The treasured history of my DCU, which survived largely intact through several major upheavals since 1978, is gone. RIP.

Am I just being selfish? Do I want to keep my DCU and prevent others from having their new one? Is this like fans wanting to keep Kyle or Wally when Hal and Barry returned? The difference is that those characters all co-existed in some form. But unless the post-Flashpoint world is revealed at some point to be an alternate universe co-existing with the pre-Flashpoint one, the new DCU has replaced the old one, and my DCU is gone. I don't begrudge anyone else the new DCU, and I hope for the sake of the medium that fans continue to embrace it after the novelty of 52 new #1's fades. But I cannot maintain my enthusiasm--this is truly a new DCU, and I simply liked the old one better. And through trades and back issues, the old DCU will say alive for me, while I selectively follow the new one--for there is fantastic work being done. But it's not the same.

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Funny--I had always wanted to write a personal history of my life with comics, but I hadn't expected to write it in the context of a DCnU post. (And there is more to tell, to be sure--later.) But it is appropriate, I suppose, since most of my comics-reading life has been within the DCU. Only in 2006 did I start reading Marvel in earnest, having been enticed by Brubaker and Lark's Daredevil (having loved their collaboration on Gotham Central) and the moral and political complexities of Civil War. Now I count Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and of course Daredevil among my favorite characters in comics, alongside Batman, Nightwing, and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan).

Many have noted the similarity of the new DCU with Marvel's Heroes Reborn period, in which a group of heroes were shunted to a pocket universe and "modernized," only to be returned to the 616 universe a year later in their traditional forms. Other than that blip (and scattered others, such as "One More Day"), Marvel seems to understand the value of stability, choosing to tell new stories with their existing characters rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater and start their characters from scratch, alienating loyal readers (like me) in hopes of attracting new ones.

DC must recognize this to some extent; after all, they kept their most fascinating character, Batman/Bruce Wayne, largely untouched. Countless stories can be told if you build on the foundation of a great character. And Superman is another great character, embodying strength, hope, and heroism, and showing us that humanity in its highest form is more than just DNA. His superpowers amazed us, but his heart connected him to us. Without that, he is not Superman, but rather just another strongman in a cape (and kneepads).

Characters can change and they can grow, but ideally this happens organically and gradually--in the same way that people change and grow in the real world--not suddenly and discontinuously, by editorial fiat. If this is done well, you have a rich, storied character on which a legacy can be built. For the most part, Marvel seems to realize this. DC seems to have forgotten it, but I hope they will remember it soon, but the sake of new readers as well as old ones.

Steve Rogers and Uncle Sam: Different angles on political faith in Fear Itself #1 and Freedom Fighters #8

I was intrigued by the serendipity of having both Steve Rogers and Uncle Sam, the Big Two's respective "symbols of America," commenting on the current state of political discourse and unrest in this week's high-profile Fear Itself #1 and the criminally neglected Freedom Fighters #8.

SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD...

Matt Fraction on the Ethics of Spider-Man and Iron Man

In a fantastic new interview at Newsarama, The Invincible Iron Man writer Matt Fraction discusses the future of the Iron Man title (including the mammoth #500 issue and the reflective #500.1 issue), previews Tony's role in the upcoming Fear Itself event, and--most interesting to me--compares Iron Man and Spider-Man in terms of their ethics.

From the interview:

Nrama: Another interesting thing about #500 was making Spider-Man — and Peter Parker — the co-star of the issue. What led you to that decision, and also, is that the first time we’ve seen Peter Parker and Tony Stark interacting since Tony forgot Peter’s secret identity post-”One More Day”?

Fraction: I believe so.

I kind of consider Peter Parker to be the moral center of the Marvel Universe, and I consider Tony to be the most morally flexible, the most morally unhinged hero in the Marvel Universe. So it’s nice from time to time to put Tony and Peter together in a room and look at how they measure up next to one another. See how they compare, see how they work together. It’s a fun relationship.

Having recently written essays on the ethics of both characters as represented during Civil War--"Did Iron Man Kill Captain America?" in Iron Man and Philosophy and "‘My Name is Peter Parker’: Unmasking the Right and the Good" in the upcoming Spider-Man and Philosophy--Fraction's statement really got me thinking. My immediate reaction was to disagree: to my mind, Captain America, not Spidey, is the undisputed moral center of the Marvel Universe, and Iron Man is by no means "morally unhinged," but rather is just more pragmatic (in terms of consequentialism, not American pragmatism a la Dewey, James, and Peirce) in his moral decision-making.

But casting Spider-Man as the moral center begins to make more sense to me if you cast Cap and Iron Man as polar opposites--principles vs. pragmatism, deontology vs. consequentialism--with Peter hovering in the middle, drawn to each side at various times. For instance, during the Civil War, Peter first sided with Tony (based on his consequentialist arguments based on safety and security) until Cap convinced him to cross over (based on deontological arguments based on liberty). But nonetheless, when Aunt May lay dying from a gunshot wound during "One More Day," Peter sought out Tony's help.

In fact, the topic of my Spider-Man essay is the constant pull that Peter feels between the "right" and the "good," which is one way that philosophers often characterize the contrast between deontology and consequentialism. For instance, when Tony asks him to unmask in Civil War, Peter is torn between his loyalty and gratitude to Tony (representing what he felt was the right thing to do) and keeping his secret identity to protect MJ and May (representing the good that he wants to maximize). His later decision to split from Tony and sign up with Cap was motivated by the same conflict, just recast in terms of his new opinion of what the right and the good were: now he felt that standing against Tony and registration was the right thing to do, even though it endangered the "good" of protecting MJ and May (against the authorities once he was an outlaw). (This also highlights the role of judgment in determining what course of action represents the right or the good in any given situation, which I discussed previously.)

In both cases, Peter chose the right over the good, indicating that ultimately he sides more with deontology (and Cap) than consequentialism (and Tony), but the fact that he struggles at all makes him unique among the three heroes. So I would agree with Fraction that Spidey is the moral center of the Marvel Universe, not because he is the most grounded, but because he resides in the middle between two proud traditions in moral philosophy: deontology and consequentialism, or the right and the good.

Captain America movie poster and Civil War

In the spirit of Bleeding Cool's "Swipe File," here's the newly released poster for Captain America: The First Avenger:

 

My first impulse was that it was similar to the famous "Cap's pissin' behind his shield: pose from the wonder Michael Turner (RIP) piece for Civil War:

 

But now I think it resembles more this "death of Captain America" art, with his hands in front of the shield:

 

 

Confession: I was actually very excited about the Civil War similarity, because I just happen to have ordered this shirt yesterday.

(Speaking of Civil War, be sure to check out my chapter titled "Did Iron Man Kill Captain America?" in Iron Man and Philosophy: Facing the Stark Reality, where I discuss the morality of Iron Man's activities during that time, focusing in particular on his various discussions with Cap from books like Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War.)