The Comics Professor

Putting law, corruption, and power into context in Devil's Reign #1

SPOILERS FOR DEVIL'S REIGN #1 BELOW!

In last week's Devil's Reign #1, the first installment in the Daredevil-centered Marvel Comics event by writer Chip Zdarsky, artist Marco Checchetto, and colorist Marcio Menyz, Wilson Fisk—better known as the Kingpin, and currently the Mayor of New York—has enacted a citywide ban on superheroes to get revenge on Daredevil for erasing his secret identity from Fisk's files (as explained in Daredevil, vol. 5, #20, July 2017).

In effect, it's Civil War and the Superhero Registration Act (SHRA) all over again, but with less nuance. There's no pretense this time toward registering heroes and holding them accountable, although Fisk does argue for his law on the basis of public safety and respecting public servants. Also, no heroes are supporting it this time around (otherwise than a few, such as USAgent, who are working for him as an enforcer). Hence, there's no juicy ideological conflict here—just an example of the nakedly corrupt exercise of power and the imperative of good people to stand up and resist it.

And, knowing Fisk as they do, the (real) heroes are resisting. As detailed in my books on him as well as Civil War, Captain America opposed the SHRA, even though it was legitimately passed by Congress in response to a series of disasters related to superhero activity, because he felt it violated the liberty and privacy of people trying to save lives. So naturally, he finds the current law, with the same effects, even less acceptable, given the source.

We see just how unacceptable he finds it after Spider-Man (Miles Morales) saves a child from a burning building and Fisk's shock troops try to arrest him... until a higher authority steps in (while also saving lives).

When Fisk's officer asserts that the heroes are actually criminals now, Cap explains (with undue respect) that if he has to make a choice between following the law and saving lives, he will always choose the latter.

This doesn't mean that Cap is dismissing the importance of law in general, much less placing himself above it. He's merely recognizing that law is not an intrinsic good in and of itself, but rather a means to the end of ensuring social order, at the least, as well as protecting lives and promoting broader well-being. Heroes pursue those same ends, as do public servants and first responders, all of whom are justified in making judgment calls in emergency situations to set the law aside for the greater good (such as saving lives). Ideally, they will be held accountable for those choices after the fact if there is any doubt to their propriety, and sometimes those choices will be found improper (if not egregiously wrong). But it does not serve society's interest to set the law above the goals the law is meant to promote.

Of course, this is all the more apparent when a particular law is the expression of the vendetta of a corrupt public official rather than a response to valid democratic concerns. Cap makes this clear to several fellow heroes afterwards when Daredevil claims responsibility for Fisk's actions, explaining how Fisk lost the knowledge of his secret identity. Knowing all too well what it means to take on too much responsibility, Cap tries to tell Matt that it's not his fault, and then reasserts his commitment to doing what's right, regardless of any counterproductive law that Fisk chooses to put in his way.

In the end, though, it's Luke Cage who gets to the heart of Fisk's actions, as he explains to a group of gawking New Yorkers assembled around him and his family what the mayor's true plan is: to manufacture a crisis and then claim to be the only one who can prevent it from getting worse (like a mobster selling "protection" against his own threats of violence).

Even Tony Stark, poster boy and point man for the SHRA during the Civil War, sees through Fisk, suggesting a novel way to work the system against him: He's running for mayor. (Can Luke run instead?)

Before I sign off, I have to share this fantastic scene (sorry) featuring the ever-lovin' Thing as Fisk's stormtroopers break into the Fantastic Four's home:

If there's one thing that will get gentle Ben mad, it's someone threatening children, especially his family—just look at his face in the bottom panel.

Needless to say, it is clobberin' time indeed.

Daredevil nails a crucial difference between utilitarianism and deontology in Daredevil #36

SPOILERS FOR THE CURRENT RUN OF DAREDEVIL BELOW!

For the last year, Daredevil has been in prison, where he was sentenced in Daredevil #24 for second-degree manslaughter, resulting from the eventual death of a burglar he beat up in the first issue of the current run. Since he's been incarcerated—as Daredevil, mind you, avec mask but sans costume—Elektra has been protecting Hell's Kitchen as the new Daredevil (as seen on the cover to the right), and his twin brother Mike has been posing as Matt Murdock to preserve his secret identity. (If you think Mike Murdock was simply a farcical disguise Matt used in the past to do this, you obviously haven't read 2020's Daredevil Annual #1.)

In Daredevil #36 (released December 1, 2021), by writer Chip Zdarsky, penciller Manuel Garcia, inkers Cam Smith, Scott Hanna, and Victor Nava, and colorists Marcio Menyz and Bryan Valenza, the Man without Fear is once again a free man, although he was preoccupied the last few weeks of his sentence with battling against both corruption inside the prison and clones of Bullseye outside of it. After wrapping up both matters in the previous issue, the authorities tried to arrest Daredevil for being a fugitive from justice; several of his fellow superheroes argued the necessity of his breakout and the good he did, and a video recording of their argument with the police soon went viral. In the end, Matt turned himself in, presumably to show, as he did when he submitted to his initial trial and accepted the prosecution's plea offer, that superheroes must be accountable to the same laws they help enforce—although, over Zdarsky's run of the book, he has become more and more skeptical of the criminal justice system that ultimately carries that responsibility.

After reconnecting with both his brother and Elektra, Matt—now very furry of face, which I hope is not a permanent state of affairs—returns to patrolling Hell's Kitchen, and comes across two young men who had just knocked over a bodega. More concerned with helping them turn their lives around then sending them to prison, especially given his recent experiences, Matt lets them go and gives the bag of stolen loot back to the store owner... which comes as a surprise to Reed Richards, who by then had also arrived on the scene.

Reed shares Matt's concerns about reassuring a worried public that they can trust superheroes, but they differ on how much deference they should show "the system" in order to do this. As he did during the fight over superhuman registration that he references—and despite the fact that his support of registration almost ended his marriage—Reed stands by the legal system, despite its flaws, and wants to devise an optimal strategy in accordance with it, as well as optics of the current situation.

In contrast, Matt asks a simple question—"What's right?"—and then draws out the difference between what philosopher W.D. Ross characterized as "the right and the good" (in his book of the same title). Effectively, Matt is contrasting Reed's utilitarianism, in which he calculates the myriad contributing factors to an issue to arrive at a conclusion regarding the best course of action to take, with Matt's own deontological approach, which dismisses empirical contingencies in favor of using principle to determine the right thing to do.

Matt drives the point home when he acknowledges Reed's brilliance, but suggests that it's distracting him from the simple moral truth.

To be fair, determining what's right is not necessarily simpler than determining what's good or best; both require the use of judgment to weigh the various moral factors that are relevant to a problematic situation. (I discuss this reference to Captain America and Iron Man's conflicting moral perspectives, very similar to Matt's and Reed's, and the different use of judgment they each require, in my book A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War.) But Matt obviously feels, at least in this case, that he has identified the right thing to do—showing mercy to the two young men and sparing them the "justice" of the system that Matt feels is broken—and he has decided that no other factors, including the effect of his actions on public opinion, are relevant to that decision, amounting to mere "noise" that's "drowning out what's right."

This is not to say Reed doesn't have a point as well. As we saw above, Reed recognizes the flaws in the system, which we can safely assume he has included in his determination of what is the best thing to do overall; it simply wasn't the conclusive factor in the end. For his part, Matt also showed he realizes the importance of optics when he turned himself in again after putting down the prison riot and helping to defeat the Bullseyes; nonetheless, he didn't find it relevant to his conclusion (which is a different moral logic than Reed's considering the flaws of the system but finding other factors more significant). Both heroes weighed the same options, but in different ways and with different conclusions, which shows how equally moral persons can nonetheless disagree, in good faith, on ethical problems based on their unique ethical perspectives.

Don't believe for a minute that this issue is settled, especially for Matt Murdock. After all, he has seen the criminal justice system from many sides—defense attorney, prosecutor, defendant, and incarcerated felon—and he has long had to deal with the conflict between the law he is dedicated to upholding and the ideal of justice to which the law is only an approximation, as well the conflict between the law, ideally based on justice, and the imperfections of the criminal justice system, designed and implemented by human beings to enforce that law in the real world. (And we didn't even mention the conflict presented by the dual roles he has chosen to play in this drama!)

Why We Relate to Batman

Batman is celebrating his 80^th anniversary this year, and while he has served admirably as the protector of Gotham City, there is one mystery that the world’s greatest detective has never been able to solve: his own moral inconsistency. Many focus on his all-too-human motivation and lack of superpowers to explain why he’s more relatable than other superheroes, but most of us also share his struggle to reconcile the various elements of his moral code, which serves to make him a different sort of role model from most of his costumed colleagues as well.

Let’s start with Batman’s mission, the guiding principle of his life, sworn over his parents’ graves after their untimely deaths at the hands of a mugger: to save the lives of the people of Gotham, chiefly by fighting the scourge of crime. This is broadly consequentialist in its ethics, striving to do as much good as he can, both as the costumed crimefighter Batman and as wealthy philanthropist Bruce Wayne. At the same time, he breaks many common-sense moral rules in the process—he practices violence, often to the point of inflicting torture, and generally ignores the law when it is inconvenient—all of which would fly in the face of deontological ethics, which focuses on the right and wrong of actions rather than their consequences.

None of these actions, however, is the cause of his moral distress or inconsistency, because Batman justifies them all by how they help him further his mission. To him, the end does justify the means in such cases, which may be disagreeable to some (especially deontologists), but it is not morally inconsistent within Batman’s consequentialist mindset. If he believes that beating a reluctant informant senseless will help him save an innocent life, then he will do it (and he does it a lot).

For Batman, this reasoning justifies a lot of behavior that many others feel is wrong, but even the Caped Crusader draws the line at one wrongful act: killing. Countless times in the comics, Batman has refused to kill even his most homicidal foes, including the Joker, and even risks his own life to save theirs (yes, including the Joker). In other words, Batman will do almost anything to further his mission to save the lives of the citizens of Gotham, but to paraphrase the philosopher Meat Loaf, he won’t do that—he will not take a life, even to save many others.

This is the central moral conflict in Batman’s life: He refuses to perform the one wrongful act that would most significantly advance his mission and further his idea of the good. Here, his deontological convictions about means—perhaps his only one—run into his underlying consequentialist ends.

What accounts for his refusal to kill? Most of Batman’s explanations in the comics focus on the effects that killing would have on his moral character. For example, he worries that crossing that particular line will make him like the people he fights (as if their shared predilection for violence and lawbreaking weren’t enough). This concern is a key feature of virtue ethics, yet another school of moral philosophy, but Batman’s skewed version of it reflects an obsession with maintaining a virtuous self-image at the expense of the mission he has adopted as his version of the good life, and in the end, it furthers neither.

We could debate whether or not Batman should kill the Joker and his other murderous enemies until Bat-cow comes home. (Yes, there is a Bat-cow.) Certainly, comics fans have been doing this since before the first poisoned fish with a Joker grin popped up in Gotham Harbor. More important, however, Batman has long been debating this as well, both to himself and with his friends and fellow heroes, making much the same arguments I outlined above. He is keenly aware of this essential moral conflict, which is much harder to dismiss than using violence or breaking the law to further his mission. In this case, Batman has to explain what makes his concern with his virtue more important than his mission, or what makes the life he would take more important than the lives his foes would take.

Batman’s ongoing struggles with moral inconsistency provide us with a point of reference to consider our own. Most of us have a concept of the good we want to further, whether it’s saving lives as first responders, curing disease as medical researchers, or pursuing justice as policymakers or activists. At the same time, we all have moral lines we refuse to cross, such as those at the borders of lying, cheating, or stealing, and we also have ideas of who we want to be as people that includes but also supersedes all of these considerations.

All of this moral “material” is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile and make consistent, especially when we have to marshal it in the face of hard choices. As many philosophers acknowledge, a faculty of judgment is necessary to combine, prioritize, and balance all of these moral criteria to make an actual decision. Philosophy professors teach the basic elements of ethics to our students, but as Immanuel Kant wrote in the Critique of Pure Reason, “judgment is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught.” Judgment is developed through experience over time (and many mistakes), and it is also be learned through example—and not necessarily by those who exercise it well. It is more important to see the process of judgment than its results, and fiction can be just as valuable to this end as the stories of real people, if the characters portrayed in it are sufficient complex.

Batman is indeed complex. Over his eighty years, he has developed into a fascinating character with a multifaceted ethics, and because of this he can not only entertain us but also inspire us. His struggle to reconcile his conflicted moral code, likely as impossible a task as eradicating crime in Gotham City, is yet one more reason he is considered so relatable to millions of fans around the world. His moral and psychological extremes may not qualify him as a role model similar to Superman or Wonder Woman, but his awareness of his own conflicts, especially regarding trying to be moral in several different ways at the same time, is certainly worthy of admiration and emulation. Among superheroes, no one lives a more thoroughly examined life than Batman.

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See here for more on my book Batman and Ethics, which you can buy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or IndieBound.

A Sentinel Centennial: Thoughts upon the 100th post at the Virtues of Captain America blog

Thanks to Vince Skolny for the title of this post!

Today's post on Captain America #176—the pivotal issue that bridges the "Secret Empire" and "Nomad" storylines—marks the 100th post at the Virtues of Captain America blog. The blog launched on July 9, 2018, just under eleven months ago, with Avengers #4, and I've regularly posted twice a week (occasionally thrice).

Before we get to the more substantive thoughts, please allow me to indulge in a bit of personal satisfaction in this. I always imagine and plan grand ongoing projects, but I've had very little success actually starting them, much less sticking with them very long. (I tend to write my books in a few months, although the research periods have been longer, especially with the Cap and Batman books, in which 40-50 years of comics had to be read or re-read. "Nice work if you can get it," I know.) Being aware of this, I wrote about fifty posts before I even bought the Wordpress site or mentioned the project online, just to make sure I would maintain interest long enough to make it worthwhile. Now, nearly a year later, with a hundred posts online and over forty more in the can, I see no end in sight, and there are a lot more comics to cover: Today's post is an August 1974 issue, and the prepared posts go through the end of 1977. (What year is it now? I don't even know anymore.)

The motivating premise of the Virtues of Captain America blog was that almost every substantial appearance of Captain America in a Marvel comic since his defrosting in 1964—those in which he does more than simply appear in a large group scene or shout "Avengers Assemble!"—explicitly reflects some aspect of the his moral character (as described in my book of the same name), because the character of Captain America is defined by his ethics to a greater degree than is any other superhero. That claim was tested in these first 100 posts, as a significant number of his earliest appearances, both in his own titles and Avengers, certainly showed general heroism but few specific virtues. On the whole, though, I think I've been able to draw enough ethical content of interest out of even the "thinnest" issues to make their blog posts worthwhile (albeit not dedicated posts to those single issues), while having fun with them all. The blog is currently in the middle of Steve Englehart's groundbreaking run, which is generating longer and more substantive posts, and this trend will only accelerate when I get to the runs by Roger Stern, J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Gruenwald, and Mark Waid, just to name a few.

Because I did cover several comics at a time in many posts, I have discussed more than 100 issues so far. In fact, if my count is correct, I've covered 242 comics: 119 issues of Tales of Suspense and Captain America, 99 issues of Avengers, and 24 other comics in which Cap appeared, spanning just over a decade, from March 1964 through August 1974. Out of these first 242 comics, I cited only 41 in my book, which suggests that, even though nearly every appearance of Cap contains some reflection of his moral character, many of these are mere passing references that didn't merit mention in a book that relied on the most prominent and definitive strongest statements. (Or maybe the book should have been a lot longer.)

As the comics I cover gradually have more material of ethical interest, I have also found that I have to synopsize the stories more than I expected, if only to provide sufficient context for the panels and quotes I want to discuss. I don't mind that, and I have enjoyed doing that in the books, especially when the focus is on Cap's behavior through an entire story, but I didn't expect to do it as much at the blog. Even more enjoyable have been the posts in which I can indulge in a little comics history, which you'll see a lot more when coverage of Roy Thomas's Invaders run starts soon, a masterclass in retroactive continuity in the classic sense as gaps and inconsistencies in comics history are explained and forgotten characters revived for new readers. (We already got a taste of this in the post on Captain America #155, written by Steve Englehart based on a Roy Thomas idea, which explained the 1950s appearances of Cap and Bucky even though, according to 1964's Avengers #4, they were "killed" before the end of World War II; we see a bit also in the post on Giant-Size Avengers #1, which previews the two men who served as Captain America in the late 1940s, explained in What If? #4 in 1977.)

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As work on the Virtues of Captain America blog progresses, I sometimes think, "I really ought to consolidate some of these posts and write something covering a larger number of comics, possibly centered around one aspect of his ethical behavior"... until I realize I already did that when I wrote the damn book. There are, of course, great comics that came out after I finished the book, such as Captain America vol. 7 #14, from which the images in this tweet from @widowsmaximoff are drawn. (I managed to slip in issue #10 from that run at the last minute during production of the book, but #14 came out too late.) Perhaps I may write some overarching posts once I get to comics from 2014 and on, but until then, I stand by the book as far as a summary of Cap's moral character is concerned. (That is, unless Wiley wants an updated second edition.

<clears throat>

I said, unless Wiley wants an updated second edition.

<crickets>

Oh well.

But that got me thinking: What would it be like to write a book that way, first blogging about individual issues and then consolidating the ideas from them into a book? As it is, I take copious notes on comics in preparation for a book, so this would just involve making my notes public and presentable. It seems like much more work—but then again, I already spend a lot of time retyping, coding, and sorting the notes, so the blogging about the issues may not be that much additional work (depending, of course, on how much content and polish I put into each post).

One advantage to doing the book before the blog, though, is that I can write each blog post with the knowledge of the complete scope and history of the character. When I write about Cap's 60s and 70s comics, I know what's coming, and I can put the early stories in the context of what comes later—something I couldn't do as well if I blogged as I read (even if I have some knowledge of the entire run). It might work for the Fantastic Four, because I've read the entire run, and might have worked for Batman, because I'd read most everything before I started re-reading for the book, but not for Iron Man, Thor, or Daredevil, to whom I am just as devoted but about whom my reading is less complete. Also, the blog-first method would probably not work well with respect to a publishing deadline (absent a very strict and manageable blogging routine on my part, ha), so it would be best to try with a project I would plan to self-publish—especially if it turns out that, at the end of the day, I don't want to write the book anymore!

I joke, but that's a serious consideration (complementing what I said earlier about finding it difficult to sustain interest over a long period of time). Part of the appeal of writing a book for me is discovery. Although I usually have some idea of what I'm going to say, books always end up significantly different than imagined or planned. Writing a book when I know exactly what it's going to say feels like an exercise in transcription (although in actuality the focus simply changes from figuring out what to write to figuring out how to write it well, which is no less important a task). Obviously, consolidating the themes of hundreds of blog posts is still work, but if nothing new comes from seeing the forest over the trees, I don't know if I'd be motivated to take this huge step. But it's an interesting thought nonetheless, and I might consider it for a "passion project" that is for me—and up to me—alone, even if other people like it too.

Kind of like the Virtues of Captain America blog itself.

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Anyway... here's to the next 100 posts! Thank you to all who have been reading, whether you've been there from the first or have just found the blog recently. If you have any ideas how to improve the site, either in terms of content or appearance, please feel free to let me know in the comments below. (I would like to spruce the site up, but my talents, assuming I have any, definitely lie elsewhere!)

And if I see you around, as Cap says...

(Oh Thor... and you wonder why you're not worthy anymore.)

Batman and Ethics — my new book coming next spring!

The news is out! As announced in the "Batman's Brain" panel at San Diego Comic-Con and in an interview with CGTN America, the superhero-and-philosophy book I've been teasing for the last few months is titled Batman and Ethics and will be published by Wiley Blackwell next spring!

Following the same approach I used in The Virtues of Captain America, Batman and Ethics breaks down the Dark Knight's moral code by looking at his actions and words over four decades of comics, from the early 1970s to 2011. By restricting myself to a period of (only) the comics in which I believe the character was portrayed fairly consistently, starting with Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' legendary work and ending just before the New 52 relaunch, I try to show that Batman's moral behavior shows a deeply conflicted hero, one who tries to save lives and serve justice in several different ways but has trouble finding an acceptable balance between them—or even within any one goal. Instead, his actions and words reflect a mix of utilitarianism and deontology (with just a touch of virtue ethics) that reveals the value of each while demonstrating how difficult it is to pursue them at the same time.

The first half of the book covers the nature of his mission while the second half discusses what he will do—and will not do—to further it. In the process, I talk about issues such as:

1) Why does Batman refuse to kill even his most murderous villains even though that would contribute significantly to his self-professed goal of saving lives? (I discussed this in the first chapter of my 2008 co-edited book Batman and Philosophy, but I go much deeper into it here, including an extended ride on everyone's favorite trolley!)

2) How does Batman reconcile his widespread use of violence and torture with his mission—especially given that he often wields these tools against people who are not even suspected of committing crimes—and how do these actions compare with killing, which he refuses to do?

3) How does Batman choose which crimes to investigate or which criminals to pursue, and why does he give some a pass (such as a certain feline foe of whom he's famously fond)?

4) How can we explain Batman's often tenuous relationship with the Gotham City Police Department and his close friendship with Commissioner James Gordon—and how does all of this affect the pursuit and conduct of criminal justice in Gotham overall?

5) Why does Batman continue to train young boys to be his sidekicks when even he admits it's... problematic?

6) Is being Batman the best way Bruce Wayne can serve his mission of saving Gotham—and even if not, is it within his rights to do so? (And speaking of which, is it OK that he focuses so much on Gotham to the exclusion of the rest of the world?)

7) More generally, is Batman of value—to Gotham, to the world, and to Wayne himself?

Do these tough challenges suggest that Batman is any less of a hero or a good person? Not at all! If anything, it shows that he tries too hard to do too much along too many dimensions, setting himself up for failure to succeed at any one of them. But that's part of what makes Batman a fascinating character: he pushes himself harder than anyone can, holds himself to impossible standards, and beats himself up when he fails to live up to them.

It's also part of what him relatable, because most of us are morally conflicted in the same way. We all want to do what's good and we also want to do what's right, but we don't always have a clear idea what either of those means, much less how to settle conflicts between them. By looking at Batman's moral inconsistency, then, we might get a better picture of our own, and see how we might work on improving it.

Watch this space for more news about Batman and Ethics as the release date approaches!

New interviews and articles about Captain America: Civil War and my book, A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War

It's been an exciting couple of weeks around the release of Captain America: Civil War, with several articles, interviews, and a review of my book A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Civil War appearing online. I collect them all on the dedicated page for the book at profmdwhite.com, but I thought a Comics Professor blog update was called for as well.

1. I did two interviews about the movie, its relation to the comics, and the ethics and politics behind both:

"A Philosopher Watches... Captain America: Civil War," interview with Skye Cleary for the Blog of the APA (American Philosophical Association), May 10, 2016

"The Post-9/11 Ethics of Captain America: Civil War," interview with Katie Kilkenny for Pacific Standard, May 9, 2016

2. Michael Dudley of the University of Winnipeg reviewed my book for the Winnipeg Free Press on May 7, 2016 in "Civil discourse: Comics book series says plenty on liberty, security and morals," containing the immortal attribution, "something of a rock star in the world of comics." (I wish!)

3. Finally, I wrote two pieces based on my book and the Civil War comics (before the movie came out):

"What Can We Learn from Watching a Superhero Civil War?" Psychology Today blog, May 3, 2016

"Captain America: Civil War -- conflicted heroes and a clash of philosophies," The Guardian, April 21, 2016

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Even though it's "old news" by now, I'm also very happy with my chat with Scott Niswander for his Nerdsync podcast:

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As always, if you like any of this stuff, let me know on Twitter and check out my book, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Civil War, available now!

Now available, in print and ebook: A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War

At long last, today is the release day for A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, published by Ockham Publishing in both paperback and ebook.

Comic book readers and moviegoers love to see superheroes fight, whether to protect innocent people from supervillains or to save the world from invaders from outer space. But superheroes also fight each other, and if we can look past the energy blasts and earth-shattering punches, we can find serious disagreements over principles and ethics. This was certainly the case when Captain America and Iron Man went head-to-head over liberty and security in Marvel Comics’ epic Civil War storyline, a fictional allegory to post-9/11 America (as well as the basis for the third Captain America film).

In his latest book, Mark D. White, author of The Virtues of Captain America and editor of Iron Man and Philosophy, carefully leads you through the ethical thinking of the three characters on the front lines of the Civil War:

Iron Man, who has taken charge of the US government’s efforts to register and train superheroes to enhance safety and security

Captain America, who leads the resistance against registration in the name of individual liberty and privacy

Spider-Man, who is torn between his two mentors and has a uniquely personal stake in the battle

In his characteristically light and humorous tone, White lays out the basic ethical foundations of each hero’s thinking and highlights the moral judgment each must use to put his ethics into action. He also explains how the Civil War affected the three heroes after the battle ended and how the experience continued to test them in very different ways as events in the Marvel Universe continued to unfold. Finally, he uses examples from Civil War to show how conflicting principles such as liberty and security must be balanced in the real world, lest both be lost.

Written in a style that will be easily accessible to those new to philosophy or superhero comics, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics’ Civil War will be a fascinating read for diehard comics fans and philosophy buffs as well.

If you want to find out more about the book, there are several places to look (and listen):

• My podcast with Nerdsync, in which Scott Niswander and I covered many of the topics and issues in my book, the Civil War comics, and what we could surmise about the upcoming movie, and still only seemed to scratch the surface!

• The lectures I gave at Northwood University on the topic of superheroes, liberty, and security, the video of which can be found here (although the player can be very touchy with respect to browsers, with Internet Explorer and Edge working the best, and Firefox sometimes).
• Comics Worth Reading generously ran a brief excerpt from the book on their website (and The Philosopher's Magazine is planning on doing the same in an upcoming issue).
• Finally, Troy Powell (a contributor to The Avengers and Philosophy) interviewed me about the book for Graphic Policy.

I am available for interviews, podcasts, signings, or lectures—just contact me at [email protected].

If you read the book, please let me know what you think, either in the comments here; on Amazon, Goodreads, or elsewhere; or on Twitter (@profmdwhite) or email ([email protected]).

Announcing my first self-published book: A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War

UPDATE: See new publication and ordering details—new post coming soon with new cover!

It's finally here, my long-promised book on Marvel Comics' Civil War storyline and my initial foray into self-publishing with Amazon's Kindle Direct, publishing on February 3 and available now for pre-order: is now being published by Ockham Publishing in print and ebook formats and is available for pre-order on Amazon:

A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgments of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man

From the promotional copy that someone other than me definitely wrote:

Comic book readers and moviegoers love to see superheroes fight, whether to protect innocent people from supervillains or to save the world from invaders from outer space. But superheroes also fight each other, and if we can look past the energy blasts and earth-shattering punches, we can find serious disagreements over principles and ethics. This was certainly the case when Captain America and Iron Man went head-to-head over liberty and security in Marvel Comics’ epic Civil War storyline, a fictional allegory to post-9/11 America (as well as the basis for the third Captain America film).

In his latest book, Mark D. White, author of The Virtues of Captain America and editor of Iron Man and Philosophy, carefully leads you through the ethical thinking of the three characters on the front lines of the Civil War:

Iron Man, who has taken charge of the US government’s efforts to register and train superheroes to enhance safety and security

Captain America, who leads the resistance against registration in the name of individual liberty and privacy

Spider-Man, who is torn between his two mentors and has a uniquely personal stake in the battle

In his characteristically light and humorous tone, White lays out the basic ethical foundations of each hero’s thinking and highlights the moral judgment each must use to put his ethics into action. He also explains how the Civil War affected the three heroes after the battle ended and how the experience continued to test them in very different ways as events in the Marvel Universe continued to unfold. Finally, he uses examples from Civil War to show how conflicting principles such as liberty and security must be balanced in the real world, lest both be lost.

Written in a style that will be easily accessible to those new to philosophy or superhero comics, A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics’ Civil War will be a fascinating read for diehard comics fans and philosophy buffs as well.

Although I've wanted to write about Civil War for a long time, and touched on it in The Virtues of Captain America as well as essays for Iron Man and Philosophy and Spider-Man and Philosophy, the late October 2014 announcement of Captain America: Civil War kicked plans for a full-length treatment into gear.

I originally planned to focus on the larger political issues in the book, but then decided to change the focus to what I really enjoy writing about: the characters themselves. This allowed me to explore the three heroes' different ethical frameworks, the way each used his judgment to put their ethics into action, and how their choices affected them during the Civil War as well as afterwards. Iron Man had the longest arc, which carried him through World War Hulk, the Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn's "Dark Reign," and the Siege of Asgard. Cap's and Spidey's arcs following the Civil War were shorter, for different reasons, but are just as fascinating, with Cap's nicely dovetailing with Iron Man's during the Siege.

As you might guess from the title—and especially from the banner atop the marvelous cover designed by the incomparable S.L. Johnson, a wonderful collaborator and adviser on this project whose work you can see here—I have a mind to publish more A Philosopher Reads... ebooks on various superhero characters and storylines in the future. (The title was inspired by books like this and is meant to suggest that this is only one philosopher's reading of Civil War, and is in no way definitive, much less comprehensive.) I will continue to publish superhero-related books with traditional publishers when our interests coincide; I'm working on one at the moment and in discussions to do another. But the self-published ebook format allows me the freedom to write on whatever I want, regardless of the availability of "promotional moments" like films or TV series, and at whatever length I choose; A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War is the same length as The Virtues of Captain America, but future ones may be shorter if appropriate. (But my epic treatment of Green Arrow's classic Van Dyke will naturally be a three-volume set.)

The other person without whom I could never have done this is my intrepid copyeditor Louise Spencely, who also worked on The Virtues of Captain America and Superman and Philosophy. Not only does she find all of my embarrassing typos and unforgivable offenses to grammar, logic, and common sense, she also "gets" my style and voice and helps it come out more clearly. On the top of all this, she was invaluable to helping me format the manuscript for Kindle, not only on technical matters but also finding the most attractive font and layout. (You can learn more about her here.)

If you liked The Virtues of Captain America or my essays in various books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, or if you love Civil War and these characters as much as I do, or even if you just like a little philosophy with your superheroes (or vice versa), please check out A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man and let me know what you think!

Watch out... nuanced discussion of moral perspectives in Captain America: Sam Wilson #2

I clearly remember seeing the internet headlines on a Wednesday morning several weeks ago when the first issue of Nick Spencer and Daniel Acuña's Captain America: Sam Wilson was published, screaming about "Captain Socialism," which were joined later that day (naturally) by Fox News. The irony, of course, was that the alarm was completely unfounded, that all Sam Wilson said in the comics was that he planned to get more involved in politics than his predecessor Steve Rogers did (with all details given off-panel), and it was the press and the American public in the comic book that overreacted by accusing Sam of being anti-American, socialist, traitorous, etc. Were Spencer and Acuña engaging in a bit of playful trolling based on a too easily predictable real-world media reaction which they actually predicted in the same comic? (I hope so.)

Beneath the hype and hysteria, though, it remains that Sam Wilson is a different Captain America, forging a new path that diverges in some important ways from the one tread for decades by Steve Rogers. And even more impressive, Spencer and Acuña have achieved this distinction while staying true to Rogers' well-established characterization. (This contrasts with comments made by a previous creative team who, in the process of explaining the difference between Sam and Steve, oversimplified Steve's views to obscure the fact that Sam was going to be little more than a carbon-copy Cap with wings and a bird.)

Along the way to pointing out Sam and Steve's subtle differences, Spencer and Acuña also toy a bit with the segment of modern comics readership who like to jump to conclusions based on a handful of preview pages and solicitation text and fueled by internet speculation (and, in no small part, the marketing efforts of the comics publishers). Our creative team does so not only with Sam's internal dialogue but also in his exchanges with the dudebros seated on either side of him on an airplane, who take everything they read on Twitter to be the whole story and refuse to listen to Sam's mroe elaborate explanations. As Sam thinks to himself, "it's a complicated, messy story"—and Spencer and Acuña do a masterful job of peeling back the layers to this story (with many more still to be revealed, I'm sure).

The complicated and messy part I was most pleased to see dealt with the difference in Sam and Steve's moral perspectives, a difference which is nowhere near as simple or stark as the final scene of the first issue (or the cover of the second one) would have us believe.

Two scenes in Captain America: Sam Wilson #2 show this very well:

1. In these panels, a reporter asks Steve what he thinks about Sam's new political stance:

He simply nails it: Sam is his own Captain America and he can choose how to play that role, whether or not it's how Steve played it in his heyday or how he would play it now. Steve also struggled with the call to political activism in the past, such as when he wanted to support Andrew Bolt's congressional campaign (early in Mark Waid's Heroes Return run). His solution was to remain neutral as Captain America but work for the campaign as Steve Rogers (regardless of whether people knew they were one and the same—recall that he also made a big fuss about surrendering at the end of the Civil War as Steve Rogers, not Cap). Would Sam make that same decision? Perhaps not, but Sam is not Steve, and it was great to see Steve acknowledge that for the press (in the Marvel Universe as well as ours).

2. After SHIELD catches a man who released secret files describing a proposal to use Cosmic Cube fragments to make subtle changes to reality, Maria Hill makes clear she relishes the thought of submitting him to military tribunal. While Sam and Steve both oppose this project and personally make sure SHIELD scraps any plans to pursue it, they disagree on what should be done with the whistleblower (let's call him "Snedward Owden"), with Sam much more concerned about Hill's plans than Steve is.

Here we see Steve and Sam differ in terms of their confidence that the whistleblower will receive fair treatment and impartial justice at the hands of SHIELD and/or the military, and also their roles regarding the law (on which more below). Sam describes their essential difference of opinion the following page, an important yet nuanced disagreement that feels natural within the context of the two characters' backgrounds and which could lead to some fascinating character beats in future issues:

I could quibble a bit with Steve's statement above that "we don't get to put ourselves above" the law, especially after admitting his past civil disobedience to Sam (and emphasizing his willingness to be held accountable for it). Perhaps this is a result of Steve's official SHIELD role as chief of civilian oversight, just as his appointment as head of global security following the Siege of Asgard made him more assertive regarding Tony's exclusive use of the Iron Man armor (as seen in the first issue of Avengers Prime). Or maybe he feels it's his responsibility as chief of civilian oversight to monitor the tribunal, requiring a certain degree of faith in a process he'll be involved in. After all, unlike the registration act (and earlier government policies he regarded as unjust), he does not see any problem with military tribunals per se that warrants disobedience—especially if he's on the scene. Even if this does signal a shift in Steve's views, it is not a shocking or abrupt one. (This, of course, assumes that this is the same Steve Rogers we know from the 616 Marvel Universe, and not some New 52-style slight-of-hand where, post-Secret Wars, he's "basically the same character but different—just keep reading!" That remains to be seen.)

Only two issues into their run, Spencer and Acuña have fulfilled the hopes I had for Sam Wilson as Captain America since his "appointment" was announced. They've begun to give Sam a unique perspective on serving as Captain America that represents an interesting alternative view on the role that offers endless story possibilities, without watering down or stretching the concept of Cap itself beyond recognition. As well as further discussion with Steve, I hope we get to see some of Sam's internal struggles with his new stance, in which he questions how far Captain America can and should go in support of a particular position. This is not to say he shouldn't be more political than Steve was, but I would like to see him acknowledge and confront the fact that it is a different role for Captain America (rather than simply defending it to others).

Personally, this is the most excited I'm been about the Captain America title since Steve took up the shield after Bucky "died" during Fear Itself. (It's worth mentioning at this point that young James was a different sort of Cap too.) While a part of me longs to see Steve "enyouthened" and back in the star-and-stripes at some point, the rest of me looks forward to a long, insightful, and enjoyable run of Captain America: Sam Wilson from Spencer and Acuña.

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If you're interested, I discuss judgment and compromise, principle versus politics, and civil disobedience in chapters 5 and 6 of The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero.

A problem with Marvel's AXIS: The difficulty of inverting complex characters.

Marvel's current crossover event, AXIS, involves various characters having their ethical orientation "inverted": heroes become villians and vice versa. A deceptively simple premise that has been used throughout the history of superhero comics—but rarely on this scale—it has potential for interesting stories (as well as culminating in "things will never be the same" changes to the status quo).

Ironically, however, it is precisely the aspect of Marvel's characters that makes them unique—their moral complexity and nuance—that confounds efforts to "flip" them from good to evil or from evil to good, resulting in strange adn confusing choices in storytelling and characterization.

There are very few characters in the Marvel Universe who are unambiguously good or evil: Captain America (that is, Steve Rogers) and the Red Skull, who are not among the inverted, are the two obvious exceptions. (There could be others too: for instance, I'd throw in Spider-Man, pure of heart but imperfect in execution, who interestingly was also not inverted.) The vast majority of the Marvel heroes and villains, however, are more complex, the heroes struggling against their more base natures and the villains striving to some degree to find redemption or achieve noble ends. But this complexity, a hallmark of Marvel Comics since the firm of Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and Associates dreamed them up in the 1960s, makes it diffiult to simply "flip" their moral characters. As a result, in AXIS we see a wildly inconsistent approach to inversions, especially regarding several heroes and one villain in particular.

Throughout this series and its tie-ins, I've been fascinated and frustrated by two characters in particular, Iron Man and Doctor Doom, whom I've long found to be very similar in their moral characters. Essentially utilitarian in their ethics, both pursue their personal visions of "the good" while believing that the ends justify the means. This leads Iron Man, for example, to take the controversial actions he took during Civil War in order to protect the superhero community, and leads Doom to try to take over the world, time and time again, because—as shown well in the miniseries Doomwar—he believes in his heart that only his rule can save humanity. Of course, both also have massive egos which serve to enable their extreme actions in pursuit of their singular visions, granting each the perception of entitlement, even the duty, to use their superior intelligence to save the world, damn the costs (as well as indulge personal vendettas and grudges along the way), and it is this arrogance which often foils their greatest ambitions (especially in Doom's case).

But after they are inverted during AXIS, these two similar characters are spun in completely opposite directions. Iron Man is portrayed as a mustache-twirling Snidely, teasing the citizens of San Francisco with an Extremis app that can make them "perfect" and then charging them $100 per day to maintain it. (This could be seen merely as leveraging an extremely attractive—and presumably legal—product for maximum revenue, but that sort of behavior often represents evil in popular fiction, and in any case is quite a departure from Tony's recent corporate altruism.) In other words, whatever restraints Tony Stark once felt on his pursuit of the good, for himself or for the world, have been removed. But this is not Tony "inverted"—this is Tony squared, Tony unleashed, his buffers removed, all second-guessing forgotten, resulting in even more of a caricature of himself than (according to some) in Civil War.

On the other hand, Doom has been all but neutered, now positively apoplectic about all the pain he caused his beloved citizens of Latveria, on whom he bestows democracy (by fiat, natch) before embarking on a program of making amends like a charter member of Villains Anonymous. The once proud and noble Doom simpers to Valeria Richards (daughter of Sue and Reed, currently living with Dad's greatest enemy in a delightful act of childhood defiance) about his need to right his past wrongs and also protect himself Latveria from an inverted Scarlet Witch who wants revenge for the events of Avengers Disassembled, House of M, and her wimple. (He had nothing to do with last one, but she could be understandably pissed about it all the same.) He even admits to Valeria—brace yourself, true believers—that Reed Richards has "always been right."

While Iron Man's "inversion" magnified his worse impulses, Doom's robbed him of his best. He either no longer seems to want to save humanity—a change that, in itself, hardly seems heroic—or he no longer feels he can do it and that the way he was doing it was incorrect—which is not an ethical change but an empirical one about methods. The thing that was evil about Doom was the steps he was willing to take to serve his goal of saving the world, but his nobility came from his sense of purpose and the moral lines he was not willing to cross (matters of honor such as truthfulness and keeping promises). Where he was once a fascinating man of extremes, now he's been reduced in both his ambition and his arrogance.

How interesting it would have been if, instead, Doom had been inverted into a traditional one-dimensional villain instead, using his brilliance to rob banks. Then, at least, the reader would have been led to ponder the true complexity of Doom's character and wonder if he was really a villain to begin with, and in what ways he was different from a hero like Iron Man. (At least they didn't make him an angry blogger.)

It seems that what the inversions did was not to flip the overall ethical orientation of the affected heroes—except in the most simplistic way possible, turning nuanced moral characters into one-dimensional caricatures—but merely flip the degree to which they perceived limits on their activity: for example, Iron Man sees fewer limits and Doom sees more. Apart from Tony and Vic, the Scarlet Witch indulges her desire for revenge against Doom; the all-new Captain America (Sam Wilson) still fights crime, but more like the Punisher than he did as the Falcon; and the X-Men become very pro-active against humanity (making Cyclops look like Gandhi). None of them has become a villain per se, but simply less traditionally heroic by virtue of crossing lines that once they refused to cross.

The main idea of AXIS is to flip heroes and villains along the "axis" of good and evil. But given the complexity granted to most of the Marvel characters by their creators, and maintained over the years out of dedication to that vision, there is no simple axis to be found. Most Marvel characters express their heroism or villainy in nuanced and multifaceted ways, so there are many axes along with they can be inverted. For example, they can be flipped in one aspect of them (such as what remained of Tony's restraints on his pursuit of goals), flipped along more than one of them (such as Doom's loss of ambition and arrogance), or reduced to a simple black-and-white caricature (such as the Scarlet Witch of Vengeance).

Of course, the "fuzzy" method of inversion in AXIS may have been part of the creators' plan—it did result from a magical spell, after all, and magic is known for its unpredictability. But I think some great story possibilities were missed by not considering what truly makes the various Marvel characters heroes or villains—or both.