COFFEE MOON!!! Yes, this again! Volume three came out, and it’s so not what I expected. I’m really happy the story isn’t ending so soon, but honestly I am still on the fence with the big shift. It feels like a full genre change, in a way that I don’t think you could predict ahead of time. So I’m partially in mourning about the loss of the shorter, but complete story it could have been. Not that much in mourning, really; they actually give that story the ending it needed, so if volume two were one chapter longer, that’s the game. And the story they’ve transitioned into is one I like, and it looks like they’ll handle it in the way I like best. So it’s more that I’m still reeling from whiplash. I’m so looking forward to the next volume! Volume four will be make or break for this new direction, and I have a feeling they’ll make it.
This week, I spent a lot of my day off watching out of date superhero fan-casting videos from Nando V Movies (good channel). It’s also the same week that I got the newest volume of SHY, so overall, I’m thinking about superheroes. I’ve liked superheroes since I was a kid, and they mean a lot to me. So I’m going to riff on some superhero stuff for a while.
The basic appeal of superheroes boils down to them being cool. They have cool costumes, they run around having super fights with their powers and gadgets, they get codenames, and they get to maintain a secret life where they’re more than human that no one else knows about. If you don’t think they’re cool, there’s really not much I could say to convince you that they’re worth getting into, I’d wager. It’s reductive to say they’re merely a power fantasy or escapism, but that’s also a part of it. We all feel powerless at times in our lives, whether because we are personally attacked by overwhelming social forces or because we see problems in the world that we can’t do anything about; it’s only natural that we look to a fantasy of getting special powers that let us change the world and fight back against our darkness. It’s the kind of impulse that drives people to other sources of strength in their lives, like athletics and activism.
But that power isn’t what makes a superhero. Powers are just the excuse used to justify the action of the story. In the words of Superman himself, “Do good unto others, and every man can be a Superman.” The basic premise of what makes a superhero different than other kinds of heroes is the fact that they always strive, and more often than not succeed, to live up to society’s highest ideals. As humans, there are many ways in which our actions and abilities are limited, so we can’t always make choices in line with the ideals we hold as our moral standards. Superheroes can, with their larger than life abilities, and they work hard to make that a reality. That’s what makes them different than real-life heroes.
That’s something I think people often get hung up on when debating what makes a superhero. The most common form that takes surrounds the no-kill rule. In my view, it seems like a no-brainer that superheroes wouldn’t kill people. As a society, we agree that killing is wrong, right? Just because we forgive those that kill in self-defense doesn’t mean it becomes the right thing to do. It’s the same basic reason to be against the death penalty; you just want revenge, and you’re gussying it up to resemble justice even though you’d be committing the same wrong. And I get wanting to punish people who harm others (not that death, which comes for us all, is a punishment). There’s room for characters like Red Hood and Ghost-Maker (maybe not Punisher anymore, since we don’t want to encourage police brutality) who work through that idea. But there’s a difference between them and proper superheroes. A superhero would take a step back from their personal feelings and make the right call.
This doesn’t have to result in all superheroes having the same ethics, philosophy, or political viewpoint, either. Right and wrong are difficult things to determine, and circumstances have massive impact on decision making. So does personal experience and desire. While there are basic moral standards we should expect all superheroes to maintain to the best of their ability, we should not expect them all to make the same “right call” or operate by the same MO. That’s what makes the stories interesting. It’s also possible for them to fail at times, to make the wrong call and give in to a personal feelings. They’re still people, after all. A great example is that Batman would never use a gun and doesn’t want anyone else to because of the death of his parents by a gun, but Batwoman does use them, in a nonlethal capacity. Batwoman doesn’t see a difference between that and using a sharp Batarang or throwing someone off a building; if what Batman cares about most is not killing people, and he’s willing to hurt people badly to save others, then what’s the difference between a gun and any other tool when used nonlethally? And compare how those two have to beat people into submission to how the Flash can whip around criminals with a rope to tie them up without causing them major injury. The Flash doesn’t berate Batman for being so violent, and it would be strange if he did, right? Spider-Man always looks for another way and would die trying, but there are a lot of X-Men who would kill or break some other rule if it was their last resort to save lives, even though they’d feel terrible about it.
That’s why it’s always interesting to hear people say that Superman is boring. I mean, not interesting, but the conversation can be. Because I get it; Superman is presented as always knowing the right thing to do, not simply making what he thinks is the best decision, and because of his powers, he can always make it work and everything works out fine. I think that sort of Superman story is boring, because there’s no moral conflict. But his powers don’t include omniscience. He shouldn’t always know the right thing to do. When he does do the right thing, it should be possible for there to be consequences. And even absent all that, there is something interesting about a person as good and pure as Superman, flaws in his seemingly perfect character. They’re doing a great version of him in the new show My Adventures With Superman. In the first episode, we see Clark getting torn up inside about the hypothetical situation where he wouldn’t help Lois if he knew Lois was doing the wrong thing. Because like, yeah dude, you shouldn’t help pretty people just because they ask for it, if you know it’s going to cost you your dream job and theirs and your friend’s. You can already see how that kind of overwhelming desire to be of service will get him into trouble, even as he’s doing what he thinks is right and helping countless people.
There are plenty of other examples of how it’s done right. Spider-Man is the archetype for the hero who always does what’s right for others at the expense of his personal life and those he holds closest. The X-Men have to put the needs of those that hate them above their own desires, and you can tell how difficult a burden that is for them to bear. Each of them carries it in a different and interesting way. Despite what those who reach for the lowest hanging fruit say, Bruce Wayne actually does give to charity and do things to improve Gotham besides be Batman, and yet it’s never enough. It’s his iron will that allows him to keep kicking afloat in that darkness, and yet it’s that same will that pulls him farther from his humanity whenever he’s without a Robin, his source of light.
I think this is the sort of thing that’s missing from superhero movies. In the movies, the heroes typically exist in reaction to a particular villain, and the villains are acting because of a personal grudge against the hero. It’s a basic action movie “everything’s personal” framework. The heroes also are mostly paramilitary killers who don’t seem to have any emotional reaction to murdering hundreds of people, because “obviously you kill the bad guys, they’re basically not human.” That’s why it’s so annoying to hear people complain about superhero movies: The movies themselves are doing the reductive power fantasy thing while paying lip service to the ideals of justice. Except Spider-Man; he’s still doing good.
Weekly Thoughts 7/22/23
Life in the Gutters 