The Comics Professor

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.

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!

Captain America #700 reminds us who Steve Rogers is...

The final issue of Captain America by the now-classic team of Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Caramagna was, appropriately enough, the bonus-sized issue #700, and true to its anniversary status, it serves as a reaffirmation of who Steve Rogers is. In wrapping up their near-future storyline, the team puts Cap in an impossible situation, forces him to make a tough decision, and gives us one of the best Cap scenes in recent memory, all before setting him up for his next round of adventures from Waid and an all-star roster of artists (before a new #1 this summer from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leinil Yu).

 

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

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.

Snyder and Lee give us a complex but heroic Superman in Superman Unchained #2

In Superman Unchained #2, Scott Snyder and Jim Lee show Superman facing insurmountable odds at the hands of an unknown but incredibly powerful foe. Rather than relying on brute force and heat vision to try to save the day, "this a Superman who is all about taking a deliberate, systematic approach to the business of being a superhero," as Forrest Helvie notes in his review at Newsarama. He continues:

There is a certain way that the Man of Steel thinks through every step he will take to save the day. But instead of being an uncomplicated tactician who’s able to think himself out of every situation, which would feel somewhat two-dimensional, Snyder subtly sneaks in a little more nuance to his vision of Superman. There are various plans he could employ to deal with the situation he faces in the beginning of the story with varied outcomes, some of which would necessarily include civilian casualties.

Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool emphasized the trade-offs in terms of lives saved that we see Superman explicitly considering (thanks to inner dialogue—Superman’s, that is, not Rich’s). He does find a way to save the day—Superman again, not Rich—and as Rich puts it, “Situations avail themselves, and there is an answer to be found. But there might not have been, we see here a Superman willing to sacrifice some to save more.”

Forrest and Rich capture much of what I appreciated about what Snyder and Lee did in this comic:

1. They showed Superman facing what a situation in which he might not be to save everyone and determining which course of action would save the most lives. (I've written about the need for even Superman to use this kind of moral judgment in Superman and Philosophy and elsewhere on this blog.)

2. In the end, Superman saved everybody, even when—especially when—it seemed that he couldn’t. As I wrote in my commentary on the Man of Steel film, that’s what Superman does. Just when you think all is lost, there's no way he can win or save everybody, he does. Because he's Superman.

It’s easy to write Superman into a situation in which there’s no easy solution, a tragic dilemma from which he “cannot escape with clean hands.” It’s much harder—but more gratifying to fans of the classical Superman concept—to write a situation like that, from where there's no way out, and then show Superman figuring a way out anyway.

Call me old-school—I’ve certainly been called worse—but when I read a superhero story, I expect to see the hero faced with unbeatable odds, wonder to myself “how will my hero get out of this one?”, and then when he or she does, think to myself, “wow, I would have never thought of that!” When I was a kid, my first thought may been about the hero and how smart and strong he or she was. But now that I’m older—much, much older—I give more credit to the creators, in this case Snyder and Lee, not just for being clever enough to develop a fresh take on a well-trod comics plot device, but also for retaining the classic sense of heroism that fans like me want from our superheroes.

To me, it seemed like the writers of Man of Steel wanted to show that they could "beat" Superman by writing him into an impossible situation, exclaiming "a-ha, we got 'im!" and pounding another nail in the coffin of fans' "foolish" idealism. Instead, Snyder and Lee are giving us a Superman who acknowledges difficult decisions but rises above them, showing that true heroism rises above defeatism. Luckily for fans like me, Snyder and Lee's "S" does stand for hope after all.

My thoughts on Man of Steel

Hmm. [Opens mouth to speak, nothing comes out.] Hmm.

Before I start, a caveat: I couldn't help but notice the controversy over Man of Steel on Twitter, much of it involving Mark Waid, one of the standard-bearers for a view of Superman I share. Passions are running hot over this one, which is both good and bad—it's good that people are talking this much about a Superman movie (or a DC Comics movie in general), but it's disheartening that they're arguing over the fundamental nature of a character that should be well established by now. Anyway, I've avoided reading any reviews or commentary, so other people may very well have said what I'm about to say, and if so, likely much better.

I'm going to offer some general comments about the movie, and then some discussion about some ethical topics raised by it. I'll keep the spoilers until the second part, and I'll warn you when they're coming.

First, Man of Steel as a movie (not as a Superman movie): I liked it. I loathe long films—90 to 100 minutes is perfect as far as I'm concerned—but even at 143 minutes it didn't feel long, and no parts of it dragged. Henry Cavill impressed me as Clark/Superman, having only seen him in The Tudors, and Amy Adams (whom I've seen in most everything she's done) played an effective Lois, but neither blew me away. The finest perfomances by far were Russell Crowe as Jor-El and Michael Shannon as Zod—both stole every scene they were in, and interactions between them were marvelous to watch. (The filmmakers cleverly found a way for Jor-El to appear throughout the movie despite... well, you know.)

The action scenes were spread throughout the movie nicely, broken up by emotional dialogue or flashback. This was important, because the action scenes themselves were intense—while there was little blood, there was more than enough destruction and explosions to earn the PG-13 rating. (I would not be comfortable taking my kids, 5 and 10, to this movie, and they've seen all the recent Marvel superhero movies.)

Visually, the movie was very stylish. While the Smallville and Metropolis scenes were by necessity reminiscent of past depictions, the designs of Krypton and Kryptonian technology were breathtaking, from their 3-D sculpting technology (for lack of a better term) to the armor the Kryptonians wore on Earth. But the movie was just so dim, like it was all shot through a fine gauze. There were no bright colors at all: Krypton was gray with accents of gray. Smallville was brown. Metropolis was—guess what—gray. And if you thought Superman would bring a ray of sunshine into any of this, you would be wrong. We've all seen the movie costume, all muted red and blue, with just a touch of muted yellow thanks to DC Comics' New 52 redesign. (And don't even get me started on the costume's texture, which reminds me of that rubber thingie you use to open the jar of pasta sauce that's been in your refrigerator since Superman Returns was out.)

But the dull tinge of the movie matched its narrative tone well—this is a dark movie through and through. Not quite Nolan-Batman dark, but more like Webb's Spider-Man but with none of the humor. The team behind The Amazing Spider-Man was able to give us a superhero film starring an upbeat character that fit with the current times but still retained some of the irreverance we expect from Webhead. But Man of Steel, featuring a character whose big red "S" stands for hope, was sorely lacking in hope, optimism, or joy. This is definitely a movie for a generation that is more likely to look in the sky and say "it's a bird, it's a drone—yep, it's a drone" with little hope of seeing a hero.

And nothing illustrates that point better than the ethics-loaded notes in the movie. This is where the SPOILERS start, so read on at your own risk if you have yet to see the movie.

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I have very mixed feelings about how Man of Steel showed Superman's heroism and ethical decision-making. Don't get me wrong, there are several inspiring scenes of heroism in the movie, such as the scene from the trailers in which young Clark pushes the schoolbus out of the river (at the risk of revealing his powers), and the scene near the end of the movie in which he destroys the world engine while it robs him of his powers. Other characters get in on the action too: Lois, Perry White, and Jonathan Kent all get chances to be heroic. These were fantastic moments in an otherwise dour film.

Unfortunately, these moments we expect from a superhero movie are overshadowed by other scenes that we don't. Clark/Superman makes some questionable moral choices in the movie, choices that may be understandable if any other person made them, but not Superman (or even any other cinematic superhero outside of Wolverine).

I've written a bit the last couple years about Superman's need to use moral judgment, rather than his incredible powers, to resolve tragic dilemmas, conflicts in principles or duties from which he cannot excape "with clean hands." In the comics, this usually takes the form of Luthor leaving Lois dangling off the ledge at the top of a skyscraper in Metropolis while a tidal wave threatens to wipe out a town in Indonesia. What will Superman do? If he can't save both, he has to make a choice, and by necessity that choice will involve a foregone option.

But guess what? In the comics, he manages to do both, to save Lois and the Indonesians. Because he's Superman. He does the impossible. He doesn't let the situation (or Lex Luthor) define his options—Superman defines his own options. He finds a way.

This is most relevant to the end of the movie when Superman kills Zod. After Lois helped the government scientists send the other Kryptonians and their battleship back to the Phantom Zone, Superman faced Zod alone. Zod indiscriminately used his heat vision to reap destruction and murder on Metropolis, and even after Supes had him in a chokehold, the deadly rays from Zod's eyes crept closer and closer to a small group of innocent bystanders. At the last moment, Superman snapped Zod's neck; Zod fell to the ground and Superman fell to his knees in tears.

Superman's remorse was obvious—and so was mine. (Not everyone felt this way; many in the theater cheered, which I've heard was not an uncommon reaction across the country.) This resolution to the story doen't work for me in a number of ways.

First, if Superman had the strength and control to twist Zod's head to snap his neck, why couldn't he turn Zod's head just to divert it from the bystanders? I can let this one go: Zod is a more experienced fighter than Superman is, and perhaps Superman had to put the last of his might into twisting Zod's head without being able to moderate his exertion sufficiently to avoid killing him. Also, this is a young Superman, fighting a physical equal for the first time in his short career. I can excuse him for not having the experience and wisdom to consider other options—people were going to die and he had to make a choice. I get that.

But I don't blame Superman for what he did in the story—I blame those who wrote the story and chose to portray Superman killing his opponent, presumably to make an "edgy" Superman for the 21st century. Even if I accept that Superman had no other choice in that situation, the people who made the movie had a choice whether to put him in that situation. They didn't have to show Superman killing someone—they chose to. They didn't even wait until the third movie, after his heroic ideals had been established and then his "necessary" compromise takes on more weight. No, they chose to show Superman killing someone in his first movie, thereby setting up his moral code for the rest of this appearances in this cycle of films. (Watch out, Luthor.)

And I find that choice despicable. I know full well that tough decisions sometimes have to be made, and Superman is not immune to them. And I love stories that show that moral struggle. But I also love to see Superman find a way to rise above the moral struggle, to show us that if you try hard enough, think the situation through, and refuse to compromise, you can find a way out.

This won't always work for normal human beings, but Superman isn't a normal human being. Superman is an ideal. The ideal. He shows us the best of what we can be. As Mark Waid said on Twitter, Superman shouldn't be written to more like us—he should be written so we want to be more like him. But this is not how the Man of Steel was written, and that's why it fails as a Superman movie.

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I saw Man of Steel Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning I went to Barnes & Noble with my son, who loves superheroes. We always look at both the regular graphic novel section and the rack in the kids' section with superhero books. (And we might happen to pass the philosophy shelves in between, just to make sure all my books are facing outwards. I'm a helper.) There's a new book in the kids' section titled Man of Steel: Superman Saves Smallville that tells a simpler version of the story in the movie, including the climactic ending. But it tells the ending a little differently:

So there were other ways to end the story without Superman killing his enemy—whew, and here I thought it was just me. (Ironically, the one reviewer so far at Amazon says even this book is too violent for small children!) Sure, in the storybook the villain got away. But that's one of the ways superhero movies usually end: either the villain is captured, gets away, or dies by his own hand (as the hero tries to save him, of course). More to the point, that's how Superman movies should end.

Of course, we can easily imagine situations in which Superman would have no choice but to kill his enemy, and skilled creators could craft an engaging story around it. (See my chapter from Superman and Philosophy for one example.) But an argument can be made that not only would it be a bad Superman story, but that it would not be a Superman story at all. Superman isn't the guy who usually does the right thing—Superman is the guy who does the right thing by definition. Any less and it just isn't Superman.

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Epilogue: I couldn't find anywhere to mention this, but I was also disturbed by the scene in which Clark lets his father walk into the path of the tornado to save the family dog and help people get to safety. I get that it was supposed to show Clark the folly of hiding his abilities at the cost of innocent lives. But it threatens to introduce an "Uncle Ben" aspect to the Superman mythos in which Clark would forever be plagued by the knowledge that his father died because he stood back. Furthermore, it made no sense in story: Clark could have done exactly what Jonathan did (rescue the dog and help people to safety) without revealing his powers, and in the process protecting his father. As shown, it was a confounding story element that introduces an unnecessary and possibly disturbing element to the Superman backstory—another disappointing choice on the part of the filmmakers.

On Superman and fascism at The Atlantic

At The Atlantic today, Noah Berlatsky of the Hooded Utilitarian argues that Superman has not wandered far from his historical roots in racist fascism, which is even more reason to be concerned that anti-gay writer Orson Scott Card is writing Adventures of Superman. I won't comment on his spurious links between the Ku Klux Klan and Superman, much less his statement that "even at this late date, it's just not that hard to look at Superman and see the outlines of the KKK." (For a better look at Superman and the Klan, see this piece by Carol Borden at The Cultural Gutter, and for commentary on the links between fascism, Nietzsche, and Superman, see the chapters in part three of Superman and Philosophy.)

Berlatsky's main substantive points seem to be that 1) Superman is a "violent vigilante" and 2) violent vigilantism invariably and inevitably becomes directed towards the powerless in society. The first point is merely asserted but not elaborated on, as if readers would take this for granted. I think both aspects of this characterization of Superman are mistaken: he often uses force, certainly, but never disproportionately, and always to assist law enforcement when he can rather than subvert it. Batman has been known to cross both of these lines and has been criticized for it--see Colin Smith's review of the recent Batman #17, for example--but Superman has always been a clear counterpoint to this.

As for the second point, it is indeed a common storytelling device in comics for heroes to go mad with power, succumbing to the Ring of Gyges and abusing their fantastic abilities. This is an everpresent issue for Superman, the most powerful of heroes while at the same time a visitor to our fair planet. But this is a feature rather than a flaw: it allows the ongoing creators of Superman to depict the human (and Kryptonian) struggle to retain one's ethics against the pull of self-interest, especially as the power to pursue the latter grows. This highlights the importance of Clark Kent's upbringing in Smallville, where the Kents instilled a solid moral code in Clark to counteract the temptation of using his powers later. Of course he may let his resolve slip and use his powers for himself or causes he comes to believe in. But because he's a hero--because he's Superman--he won't.

So yes, a writer such as Orson Scott Card could use Superman's power to further his own agenda. But let's keep the focus of our collective disgust on Mr. Card, not on a superhero that, for 75 years, has shown us consistently how one should use amazing power for the good of others despite every temptation to do the opposite.

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 Good Men Project looks at heroism

The Good Men Project, a website I'm honored to be affiliated with (as a frequent contributor and now an editor-at-large), is currently running a series of articles on heroes and heroism, two of which feature superheros in particular:

• "The Man Without Fear: Heroism and Elementary School" is by my good friend Dr. Matt Finch (and originally appeared at another great site, Role/Reboot). Matt uses the story from Daredevil #7 (in which Matt has to lead a group of blind children through a raging snowstorm after their bus crashes) to explore the challenges he's encountered with teaching small children. (And he was kind enough to mention in the piece that I suggested that particular comic to him--he even immortalized the day in tumblr form.)
• "Why I Read Superhero Comics" is my own contribution to the section, explaining how the best superhero comics can inspire by reminding us that everyone has the capacity to be a hero in some small way, and that my favorite superhero stories feature heroes confronting dilemmas similar to those we face in the real world, problems that must be solved using reason and judgment rather than powers or gadgets.