The Comics Professor

Green Lantern Annual #1: Of Free Will, Tolkien, and the Wonder Twins

All in all, Green Lantern Annual #1, written by Geoff Johns and pencilled by Ethan Van Sciver and Pete Woods, is one of the most exciting books to come out of the DC New 52 so far. Faint praise, perhaps, but this felt like the build-up to Johns' previous GL events like "Sinestro Corps War" and "Blackest Night," and that feeling has been sorely missed over the last year.

I don't think there will be any major plot spoilers in this post aside from what already appeared in the online preview (the first six pages on the comic). I will show a couple images from later in the comic, but nothing really revealing--but be warned in any case. SPOILERS!!!

As you may have seen from the preview, the Smurfs Gone Wild have decided that the threat to the universe lies not in emotion in general, nor in individual emotions, but in the very willpower that powers the Green Lantern rings--or, as they put it, free will.

We need to be clear on they mean by "free will." He does not mean it as the term is used in metaphysical debates over free will vs. determinism. That sense of free will describes any being's ability to be the "uncaused cause" and "first mover," to be able insert his, her, or its decision-making power or agency onto a world of physical cause-and-effect. It is not up to the Guardians or anyone else to eliminate free will if it exists--it either does or does not. And if there is no free will, no one has it--including our Guardians.

No, what they mean by "free will" is true choice, agency, or autonomy, the ability to make choices independently of external (and possibly internal) authority or undue influence. Free will in this sense can exist regardless of whether metaphysical free will exists, since this variety of free will operates on a psychological level, not the level of elementary particle physics. Even if we are not truly "in control" of our thoughts and actions in a deterministic universe, we will still "make" choices independently of others' choices--in the end, they simply are not our choices at all. (For more on the various meaning of free will, see this article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Basically, the Guardians don't like that their Lanterns think for themselves, for then you end up with rebels like Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner. (In fact, the middle Guardian above sounds a lot like the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg--he probably thinks the Lanterns drink too much soda too.) They want mindless creatures that will do their bidding--hence, the Third Army. And they're purty, too:

(I would have thought the word "assimilate" had been trademarked by the Star Trek people by now, but I guess not.) These soliders (for lack of a better term) have no mind, no identity, no free will. They will not make their own choices, they will not question the orders of the Guardians--they will be tools, pure and simple.

This story seems like a natural progression for Johns' broader Green Lantern arc, and I'm interested to see how it plays out. I do hope the Guardians eventually return to being good guys, if imperfect ones. Jordan and Guy Gardner disagreed with them often, of course, but at bottom they all sought the good, only disagreeing on how to pursue it. I hope Johns redeems them, or some of them, at the end of this storyline--but if the rest of New 52 universe is any guide, I'm not holding my breath.

I can't end this post without a couple panels from this comic that I found hilarious. First, we have the long-lost Guardians of Middle-Earth:

I guess they're the Lords of the... nah, too easy.

In the scene below, Hal and Sinestro have to combine the last flickers of energy in their rings to summon Sinestro's power battery. I guess Hal was a fan of the old Superfriends show, but Sinestro is none too happy with it.

Green Lantern powers, activate! Priceless.

Batman Incorporated #1: Grant Morrison (!) brings the fun to the DC New 52

I'm no fan of Grant Morrison, especially on Batman. But I will always thank him for bringing the "product" of Son of the Demon into mainstream continuity in the form of Damian Wayne, which has led to a Batman/Robin relationship unlike any that preceded it. Rather than purity of Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, or the loose cannon that was Jason Todd, Batman now has a partner with training and devotion that equals his own, but few of the principles that keep Batman from crossing the ultimate line into naked vengeance. (See this earlier post for father and son's discussion of killing from Peter Tomasi's Batman and Robin.)

Batman Incorporated #1, written by Morrison and illustrated by the incomparable Chris Burnham, continues the Leviathan storyline from the pre-relaunch title, but seems just as much like Morrison's own work on Batman and Robin (when Grayson wore the cowl). And it was fun! If I found Morrison's work in the Batverse very up-and-down before the relaunch, it seems like a breath of fresh air now. His "technicolor" vision of Batman is more than welcome, not so much within the current Bat-titles, but more against the backdrop of the New 52 as a whole, which is distinctly lacking in fun.

Don't get me wrong, I love what Snyder and Capullo have been doing on Batman, beating down Batman until he just can't take any more--and then he still comes back, because he's Batman. (Can't get enouh of that kind of story, sincerely.) And Tomasi's Batman and Robin has been a quality title, but Daniels' Detective Comics has been pedestrian at best, and the less said about Batman: The Dark Knight, the better. None of the other Bat-titles excite me either; as much as I wanted to enjoy Batwing, Batgirl, and Batwoman, they all leave me cold.

But Batman Incorporated #1, now this is fun. More details after the jump--and there may be spoilers.

Earth 2: The return of dignity and heroism to the DCU, or its death knell?

OK, the title is a little melodramatic, but I think this book deserves it. Earth 2 #1, written by James Robinson and drawn by the incomparable Nicola Scott, has me wishing (with qualifications) that this new Earth 2 were the mainstream DC Earth. (Its companion book, Worlds' Finest, by Paul Levitz, George Pérez, and Kevin Maguire, was also excellent, but pales in comparison to the cinematic bombast of Earth 2.)

I can't discuss this book without massive spoilers, so proceed with caution! More below the jump...

The Alpha Lanterns and the rendering of justice (from Green Lantern Corps #8)

Last week's Green Lantern Corps #8, written Pete Tomasi and illustrated by Fernando Pasarin and Scott Hanna, featured an interesting discussion among the Alpha Lanterns regarding what to do about John Stewart in light of his killings of a fellow Green Lantern who seemed close to revealing Corps secrets under torture by the Keepers.

This exchange raises terrific questions about the nature of criminal justice as well as the role of the Alpha Lanterns in particular. From Boodikka's comment that "our duty is to be impartial and render justice," it sounds like the Alphas are more than just police. As usually understood, police do not "render justice" but merely play a role in it by investigating and apprehending suspects--an important role, of course, but not quite "rendering justice." So let's assume Boodikka was getting ahead of herself, and continue to understand the Alphas as the internal affairs division of the Corps.

The more interesting issue here is about the proper role of incidental consequences to the execution of justice, even at the level of arrest and arraignment. There seems to be no question among the Alphas regarding what Stewart did; the only question is whether to arrest him for it (and presumably transmit him to the Guardians for "trial," as they did with Laira before the relaunch). Boodikka and Relok Hag take the position that they must arrest Stewart no matter what the consequences, especially those due to "emotion," in order to serve justice. Green Man and Varix, on the other hand, urge consideration of the broader consequences, particularly those that impact their ability to enforce justice in the future.

The first position has clear appeal: the Alphas have good reason to believe John Stewart committed a crime against the Corps, and he should be brought in for future questioning. Arresting him should imply nothing about his guilt (though the Alphas have grounds for reasonable suspicion), and the Guardians will pronounce judgment at trial. But the second position is more inclusive: it doesn't deny the importance of arresting suspected wrongdoers, but it admits other factors relevant to the decision whether and how to do it. Stewart is a leader in the Corps, widely admired and respected by his fellow Lanterns as a pillor of honor. Bursting into a crowded room to arrest Stewart (as they do at the end of the issue) is an extremely bold show of force, especially toward someone like Stewart who would likely submit himself willingly for trial. John's popularity, the moral ambiguity of his actions, and the Alphas' brashness in response make it likely that the Green Man's prediction of divisiveness will come true, and as Varix said, "the ability to enforce justice will be severely put to" the test.

Green Man and Varix are not suggesting that they don't arrest John at all, but merely that they do so in a way that preserves the Alpha's authority and whatever respect the rest of the Corps has for them. By following Boodikka and Relok Hag's hardline position (especially in the way in which they did it), the Alphas will compromise their own standing and make the pursuit of justice more difficult in the future. In other words, justice viciously served is self-defeating. Once the arrest decision is made, the Alphas should consider how best to take John into custody to make sure that they are seen as fair and--yes, Boodikka--impartial in their "rendering" of justice. This is not a compromise in the pursuit of justice, but a way to make the pursuit of justice better. Arresting John the right way will serve justice in this particular case and ensure that they will enjoy the respect and authority necessary to continue to serve justice in the future.

But what if Green Man and Varix had been suggesting that they not arrest John at all (at least not until the Guardians ordered them to)? Do the Alphas have that kind of discretion? In a sense they must--as far as we know, there have only ever been five of them at any given time! Unless the 7200 rank-and-file Lanterns are extremely well-behaved (or the potential violations that would attract the Alphas' attention are very few), the Alphas can't possibly investigate and apprehend every wrongdoer among the Corps.

In the real world on Earth, police have tremendous discretion over which crimes to address, especially regarding misdemeanors like traffic violations and littering. Even in areas with a lot of officers per capita or square mile, they can't possibly go after every wrongdoer they see, and so they must use their judgment regarding which ones are most important to spend their time and resources investigating. Of course, people who double-park are one thing, but we wouldn't like to think of police letting murderers get away. Prosecutors, however, can certainly decide to drop a case against a suspected murderer if they think their limited resources can be better used somewhere else, either because of a weak case or even community pressure (though this is obviously a dangerous and inadvisable road to take). This is a tremendous amount of power, of course, and we trust our prosecutors to use it wisely and sparingly, but given the scarcity of their resources, they cannot possible prosecute every crime that comes across their desks, and must own judgment in choosing amongst them.

The idea that the Alpha Lanterns "embody the independent thought process of a Green Lantern along with the efficient logic of the Manhunters" is extremely intriguing one to a philosopher, especially one who has interests in rationality and judgment. This issue was the first of the "Alpha War" arc, so let's hope there is more to talk about in future installments.

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For more on justice and scarcity, see Michael Cahill paper's "Real World Retributivism" (Washington University Law Review 85, 2007, pp. 815-870), and my paper "Retributivism in a World of Scarcity" (from Theoretical Foundations of Law and Economics, edited by Mark D. White, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 253-271). The Alpha Lanterns and the trial of Laira are discussed in two chapters in Green Lantern and Philosophy (edited by Jane Dryden and Mark D. White, Wiley, 2011): Andrew Terjesen's "Will They Let Just Anybody Join?: Testing for Moral Judgment in the Green Lantern Corps" (pp. 53-68) and my "Crying for Justice: Retributivism for Those Who Worship Evil's Might" (pp. 162-174).

Another perspective on why Batman doesn't kill--and the problems with it

This week's Batman and Robin #8 (written by Peter Tomasi and illustrated by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray) was a welcome denouement to the Morgan Ducard/Nobody storyline that culminated at the end of #7 when, as Bruce explains to Alfred, "Nobody's dead. Damian killed him." (Imagine parsing that statement if you hadn't been keeping up with the storyline!) As Bruce and Damian recover from their injuries (gee, good thing Bruce hasn't gotten thrashed lately in any other title), father and son talk about what happened. Bruce shares his oral diary, revealing his own desire to kill Ducard, to show Damian that the urge is natural but that he must never give into it.

Bruce argues that he adheres to a principle of not killing that doesn't "allow for exceptions." This sounds very much like a Kantian perfect duty, which is fantastic--to a degree. In an ideal world, it is easy to say "I will not kill" or "I will not lie," regardless of the circumstances, and it is an admirable person that tries his or her best to stick to them. But such a person must also recognize that there can be circumstances that will force him or her to question whether these duties or principles are truly absolute.

Take Kant's infamous "murderer at the door" example: Your good friend shows up at your door one day, frantically trying to escape someone who's trying to kill him. You agree to hide your friend, and minutes later the would-be murderer shows up, asking if your friend is about. What do you do: lie to the murderer to save your friend, or tell the truth and help the murderer?

Kant said you must not lie. According to  him, you have one concern and one concern alone: following your strict duty not to lie. If you tell the truth (or simply say nothing, which will save the same effect), your hands will be clean. If you do right, you're not responsible for anything that happens as a consequence, whereas if you were to lie, and the murderer went on to kill someone else (in mistake, perhaps), you would be responsible for that.

But Kant was wrong, and he was wrong by his own standards. The murderer-at-the-door example appeared in the Berlin Press as a retort to Benjamin Constant, a French statesman, but in his more considered work, he wrote that no one can apply simple rules, including the duties one derives from the categorical imperative, to real-life situations without using judgment. For instance, even if you decided not to lie to the murderer at the door, you would need to use judgment to decide what to do instead: tell the truth, stay silent, or say "look--a squirrel!"

More relevant is the need for judgment to settle conflicts between obligations, and this provides a more reasonable answer to the murderer-at-the-door example (and much-needed perspective on Bruce and Damian's discussion). Clearly there is more than one principle, duty, or obligation at play when the murderer comes to your door--specifically, you should also help save your friend's life, based on a moral principle to prevent wrongful harm to others. I think most morally reflective people would consider that to be a more important principle in this case than the principle that you shouldn't lie. Of course, this judgment is contingent on the context of the situation: the harm threatened is severe and the lie would be to a person intent on doing wrong. In a different situation, the judgment may be different, though the two principles are the same, because the context gives the principles different relative weight.

In the second panel above, Damian essentially states the opposing principle to his father's: "But if killing them is the only way to stop them..." Bruce knows this principle well: while he says in this issue that he made a promise to himself ("and on the souls of my parents") not to kill criminals, he also made a promise that night (as seen in countless retellings of his origin) to make sure what happened to him doesn't happen to anyone else. Bruce and Damian recognize both a principle of preventing wrongful harm and a principle of not killing--but for Bruce, the latter principle always takes precedence, where I think Damian is more open to weighing the principles against each other in any given situation. (I realize this may be due to his early training by the League of Assassins, which leads him to minimize the importance of the no-killing principle. If nothing else, Bruce is helping him see the importance of this principle by adhering to it with no exceptions--the opposite extreme to Damian's dear mother and grandfather.)

Bruce does give other rationales, familiar from previous Batman stories in which killing has been discussed. He gives the virtue argument, that killing makes you a lesser person ("bankrupts your soul") and makes you no better than those you're sworn to fight. (His caution against indulging vengeance can be considered part of this, and is the clearest argument he makes; few would defend a principle based on vengeance.) He also presents the consequentialist argument ("reinforcing the same cycle of violence") that killing only leads to more killing. But note that neither of these escape the need for judgment: is your purity of character more important than saving lives, and does killing necessarily lead to more killing--or may judicious use of it lead to less deaths instead?

Bruce's continued idealism on this issue is particularly welcome following Geoff Johns' flip comments about killing earlier this week. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, Johns may have been thinking much the same as I wrote here when he said, "there are heroes that, when they need to cross that line, they do it," citing Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman as examples. I would just like to see more discussions like the one in Batman and Robin #8, in which these heroes defend their decisions and explain why they "need to cross that line." I'm less interested in whether or not they kill than I am in how they justify it.

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Kant presented his murderer-at-the-door example in an essay titled "On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns," available in the Hackett edition of his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Philosophers have spilled much ink and killed many trees trying to reconcile the absolutist position given there with the rest of his philosophy; my favorite is Christine Korsgaard's "The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil," available in her book Creating the Kingdom of Ends, which focuses on the difference between ideal and nonideal moral theory. Finally, I wrote about Batman and killing, relying chiefly on the Joker and the trolley problem (which can easily be framed as a conflict of principles as above), in my chapter "Why Doesn't Batman Kill the Joker?" in Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul.

Two-Face shows us both sides of the virtue ethics/situationism debate

In the back-up feature to last week's Detective Comics #8, written by Tony S. Daniel and illsutrated by Szymon Kudranski, Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, appropriately adopts both sides of the recent philosophical and psychological debate over character traits.

First, Harvey shows us the situationist position:

Situationists such as John M. Doris, author of Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, argue that people do not have general character traits like honesty and courage, but rather that their moral behavior depends very strongly on the circumstances of any particular situaiton. This work is based on psychological research showing that, for instance, people are much more likely to help a stranger after finding a coin in a phone booth (or other seemingly irrelevant and trivial cues).

This is widely seen as a criticism of virtue ethics, which claims that people do have robust character traits or dispositions that correspond to the virtues. Luckily for us, Two-Face also represents this position:

Virtue ethicists respond to the situationist critique in a number of ways. For instance, they argue that they never claimed that character traits and action were correlated precisely, so there is no problem with observing some situational variation in behavior. Also, they argue that the experiments don't show that circumstances change any particular person's behavior; they simply separate those with robust character traits from those without. (Showing his own professional virtue, Doris lists much of his critics' work here; Gopal Sreenivasan's "Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution" is particularly good.)

So heroes in the DCU can kill when they "need to" or "have to"?

Hmm. Here's Geoff Johns, discussing the future of the Green Lantern book with Vaneta Rogers at Newsarama:

Nrama: Going back and looking at the relaunch, I know everyone talked about it being a "soft" reboot and pointed quite often to Green Lantern and Batman as the places where not a lot of changes took place, but it's obvious this Hal Jordan is a little different. You're playing him a lot younger and a little more brash, especially in the Justice League title. But I think a lot of readers were surprised that Hal Jordan killed a Sinestro Corps member in a way that appeared light-hearted, as he made a funny comment. Did you want to show that he was a little different now?

Johns: Yeah, because Dan [DiDio] and Jim [Lee] wanted the timeline rolled back to five years, there are differences with Green Lantern. He's a little bit younger, but also, all the stuff he's been through, I think he's a lot more sure of himself. I think he's a little less patient with the stuff he goes up against.

...

With that Sinestro Corps member he killed, when Hal goes up against one of those guys, he's going to take him out if lives are at stake.

There are certain heroes that kill. Among those are Green Lantern, who definitely has to, although he doesn't do it very often. But he does it when he has to. Aquaman sure does. And we've seen Wonder Woman do it too.

So there are heroes that, when they need to cross that line, they do it.

Does this herald a mjaor shift toward "heroic killing" in the DCU? The rest of the Marvel community tolerates the Punisher--and welcomes Wolverine onto every team--with little controversy (usually from Captain America), but I've always thought the DC heroes were more firmly against killing (hence the reaction to every iteration of the Vigilante that pops up). Of course, there have been exceptions, but they were always treated as such, like Superman's killing of the Kryptonian criminals that led to his "Exile," Wonder Woman's breaking Max Lord's neck during "Sacrifice," and most recently the Guardians' enabling the Green Lantern rings to kill members of Sinestro Corps during "The Sinestro Corps War."

I'm no absolutist when it comes to moral prohibitions, but Johns' attitude strikes me as disturbingly lacksadaisical. Green Lantern "definitely has to, although he doesn't do it very often. But he does it when he has to"? Why does he "definitely" have to and not other heroes? And what defines when he "has to"? One has to presume some consequentialist calculation (the one life taken versus the many saved or perhaps threshold deontology (where the hero refuses to kill unless the cost becomes "too" high), but why does this apply to some heroes and not others? Is it a difference in ethical codes, character traits, or situations?

These are interesting questions, to be sure, but Johns seems too glib about it all for my tastes, simply saying that "there are heroes that, when they need to cross that line, they do it." Let's just hope that when they consider crossing that line, we see them struggle with it--if they feel they "have to," at least let the readers know why, and let them judge if they agree or not.

(As for Johns' statement about "all the stuff he's been through"--in his short five years, of course--and how this supposedly informs his character, see my recent post on history and character.)

Mourning the death of character in the DC New 52

I hadn't planned to write any more about the DC relaunch--every month I drop a couple more titles, and I fear it won't be long before I'm buying little more than the Batman and Green Lantern families of books. (Even Earth 2 is sounding more like a new Tangent Earth: the names are the same but most else is different.) But then I read something from Marvel that I truly enjoyed, and part of the reason I enjoyed it is also the reason the DC relaunch has left me flat.

The book is Avengers: The Children's Crusade, a nine-issue bimonthy series by Allan Heinberg and Jim Chueng, the creators of the Young Avengers series. It was recently collected in hardcover (very soon after the last issue hit the stands), and I spent a leisurely afternoon and evening last week reading it--with pleasure. The series recounts the efforts of Young Avengers Wiccan and Speed to find Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, whom they believe to be their mother. They are aided in this by Magneto (Wanda's father), and along the way they have run-ins with the Avengers and the X-Men. (This series is a prelude to a certain event, Avengers vs. X-Men, that you may have heard of, despite Marvel's famous promotional subtlety.)

Besides being exceptionally well-written and superbly rendered, the series is steeped in Marvel history--much of which is succinctly recapped along the way for the benefit of the new reader. The rest is inessential to following the story, but adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of it. I don't think it's revealing too much to say the series touches on the relationship between Wanda, her brother Pietro (Quicksilver), and their father Magneto; Wanda's relationship with the Vision (which bore two sons, an epic tale in itself); the three mutants' relationships with the X-Men, the Avengers, and society in general; the Avengers Disassembled and House of M storylines, as well as more recent Avengers, X-Men, and Young Avengers stories. (And many of the Young Avengers' histories are wrapped up in Avengers lore as well, of course.)

Rather than weighing the series down, this tremendously rich and intertwined Marvel history provided essential background to the story, motivation and recognizability to all the characters involved, and emotional resonance to the events therein. These are all things that the DC Universe no longer has, since they erased most of their history, and have been evasive regarding which elements of it remain.

When I read the DC New 52 titles, even the more entertaining ones, I find myself numb to them. I don't know the characters anymore; I don't know what they've been through, how events affected them, and how it affects their behavior. The names are familiar, the costumes are similar (with a lot of redundant seams and armor-plating), and the powers are the same for the most part--but who are they? Without background and history, I have no context in which to understand their actions or care about them as characters. They're mere ciphers in familiar guises, frauds who play on our loyalties while betraying our treasured memories.

This problem is obvious in cases like Superman and Wonder Woman, who have been reinvented to a large degree. (Don't even get me started on Green Arrow.) Superman--perhaps the easiest DC superhero to define in terms of his character before the relaunch--now (ironically) seems completely alien to me. I can't say if any of his current behavior is out of character because I don't know what his character is anymore. Wonder Woman has always been harder to nail down in terms of her underlying character (an observation usually made to excuse low sales, but cause and effect are difficult to parse out), but now DC seems hellbent on upending everything we know about her origins, perhaps in the hopes that this will make her easier to define. (And that's being charitable.)

But the problem exists even for characters such as Batman and Green Lantern, who were left relatively untouched by Barry Allen's jog at the end of Flashpoint. (When I say Green Lantern I'm thinking primarily of Hal Jordan, but it applies to any of them.) We still don't know how much, or what parts, of their past history remains canon and still informs their personal character. DC dismisses these concerns, repeatedly saying that which stories remain in the New 52 continuity will be revealed as they become relevant. But they are relevant now: they are relevant to every character in every story, because they tell us who they are and what they've been through, and give us some basis to identify them as characters rather than simply talking heads in masks and capes.

To know who Batman is now, we need to know whether Jason Todd died, whether Bane broke his back, whether Darkseid "killed" him, and so on. To know who Hal Jordan is now, we need to know if he ever became Parallax, died, and became the Spectre, as well as the status of the more recent events of the Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, and Brightest Day. And then we have the various crises, deaths, and resurrections through the DCU, which inform the histories of all the characters in it.

If DC wants to leave all these details vague, or let them slip out little by little to tease the readers, that's their choice. But as long as we don't know what these characters have gone through, other than the broadest details, we don't know them as characters--we can't sympathize with them, we can't understand their behavior, and we have no connection to them. We will come to know them over time, as we do any new characters, and there's nothing wrong with that--unless we're supposed to retain our old loyalties and keep buying the books based on the "0ld" characters we used to know but who are now so much flotsam in the time stream.

Contrast this with Marvel, whose characters are more precisely defined than most of DC's (even before the relaunch). Captain America is noble, Iron Man is cocky and brilliant, Thor is chivalrous, Namor is regal and pompous, Daredevil is idealistic and compassionate, Spider-Man is naively pure, Hank Pym is insecure, and so on. We know who these people are, and when they say or do anything that seems "not like them," fan cry out--and justifiably so! Through decades of stories, even though crafted by a series of writers, these heroes' basic character traits have been defined so well (though not with perfect consistency) that any thing said or done out of the ordinary is immediately called out as out-of-character. Take Thor's calling the Hulk a "pain in the ass" in Fear Itself #5, for instance, which was widely derided by fans as something Thor simply would not say. The Thor they know, the Thor that has been written for so long even by so many, is so consistent in his speech, mannerisms, and behavior that this one phrase seemed horribly out of place. Could anyone justifiably call anything Superman says in the New DC Universe out of place? On what grounds could they say it?

Some may argue that Marvel's characters are too simplistic--especially compared to someone like Batman--but any such "simplicity" is based on well-established regularities of behavior that give them their stable, underlying character traits and that make them familiar to us. We know Spidey, we know Cap, we know Iron Man--and we know when they do something out of character. This is true of all serial fiction--ongoing TV series, movie franchises, book series--in which characters develop over time and establish clearly defined traits. New writers in these media have a responsibility to the fans to maintain the basic elements of the characters by writing them consistently with their past characterizations. And if they want the characters to change and grow--as they should, to an extent--they must do so organically and in a way that makes sense in the story, not present abrupt changes in character that make the fans doubt the writer knows about the character at all. (My chapter on "Brand New Day" in the forthcoming book Spider-Man and Philosophy presents this argument in the context of Peter Parker's deal with Mephisto, which was widely regarded as a bow to editorial fiat that flew in the face of Peter's basic goodness.)

I don't know the new Superman, the new Wonder Woman--or even the "new" Batman, even though he seems little changed from before the relaunch. There's no way I can know them. These "characters" have no definite history yet, and therefore no character to recognize. I suspect the powers-that-be at DC thought they could have their cake and eat it too, relying (as I said above) on longtime readers' loyalty to the characters they loved to keep them tethered to the books, while the creators crafted new characters beneath the surface to try to draw in the mythical "new reader." But speaking as a longtime fan, I don't think it's working on either front; and in the words of a fellow mourner, "I have no interest in the Emperor's new clothes when I can clearly see the Emperor's mucky behind."

Grim and gritty Shazam? Where's the fun in comics today?

In this morning's New York Post, we get an image of the new Captain Marvel Shazam. Gritting his teeth. Looking mean. With a hood. Grrr.

Just like the old Captain Marvel. No different. Ahem.

Somehow I don't think Hoppy the Marvel Bunny is showing up in the DC New 52, unless he plays the role of the rabbit in a story based on Fatal Attraction.

It's amazing how what used to seem corny now seems utterly comforting--or just plain fun. Are any of DC's New 52 books fun? I don't mean good--there are good books, like Batman and Nightwing, Swamp Thing and Animal Man. I don't mean silly books, either--obviously Hoppy was silly. I mean books you could give a kid (say, under 10) who wants to read about good guys beating bad guys, without all the angst. (See this for a parent in a similar situation.)

This isn't about the amount of sex and violence in today's mainstream comics--this is much simpler than that. I love Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns as much as everybody, and I appreciate the more complex storylines that followed in their wake. But does every book have to look like them?

No, it doesn't, and Marvel knows that. Dan Slott's The Amazing Spider-Man is a fun book. Mark Waid's Daredevil is a fun book. Kieron Gillen's Journey into Mystery (aka Kid Loki and Friends) is a fun book (and a lot of it lately has been set, literally, in hell). At times light-hearted and at other times serious, but never depressing--never losing that sense of hope that things will work out in the end. Before the relaunch, DC had books like Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl and Gail Simone's Secret Six--the first a story of a young hero being trained by her predecessor, the second a band of psychopaths. No two books more different, but both fun.

Am I saying the Batman comic should be fun? No. But the Superman comic should be. Batman's a creature of psychology; Superman is a wonder. When we feel awe at what Batman does, it's because he does it with no special powers or abilities. But Superman can do almost anything--and we want to see that. We want to see flying and punching and heat-vision and speed and spitcurls. We want to see what goes through Batman's mind as he pursues his mission, because that's what makes him interesting. Superman's a fascinating character as well, and that should be explored, but not at the expense of seeing him do things only Superman can do.

That's the fun in Superman. The 10-year-old in me misses that--and the 40-year-old me who buys the books is listening.

You mean DC's new Earth 2 is going to be darker than the New 52 Earth?

New from The Source is a teaser about the new Earth 2's Batman and the design by Jim Lee:

“Who will Batman kill to save his own daughter?” asks EARTH 2 editor Pat McCallum. “Right out of the gate that should tell you we’re dealing with a different kind of Dark Knight here. More ruthless, dangerous…the costume is familiar and yeah, there is a Wayne under the mask, but we’re looking at a man desperate to save the only family he has left. EARTH 2 is about to become a very bad place to be a bad guy.”

"A Wayne" means it's not Dick Grayson under the cowl (unless on this Earth he took the Wayne name), and it's not Damian (unless he's aged enough to sire Helena). But it also suggests it's not Bruce--and definitely not a Bruce we know. (Unless "we" are Frank Miller, maybe.)

I'm still intrigued by the new Earth 2, but I'm more ready to be disappointed by what may end up being DC's Ultimate line.