Ethics... A County Near London?

By Regie Rigby

Ethics is a complex subject, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, what with finally writing my own comics and all. What is right and what is wrong might seem straightforward, but in fact the finer points of acceptability and mitigation have taxed the minds of the greatest philosophical minds the world has ever seen.

I’ve got about 1500 words to get to the bottom of it.

Shouldn’t be a problem…

After all, I’m obviously limiting myself to the ethics of comics. Indeed, I’m limiting myself to the ethics of Superheroes. Come on – we can polish this off in no time at all!

For the most part, as you know, I’m not a huge fan of the Spandex crowd. I make exceptions for Bats and Spidey, but the rest of them bother me. They always have. And the more I think about it, the more I realise that this is more than just a reaction to their inherent silliness. It is, at least in part because the whole idea of the Superhero is morally very dubious indeed.

First of all, they tend to be based on the principle that “Might makes Right”, which is something that civilised society has been striving to move away from since, well, since civilisation really. I mean, let’s take the original model as a case study shall we? Why is it that Superman is permitted to take the law into his own hands? How come he gets to decide who is punished and who is allowed to carry on hurting people? (And yes, he does you know. Bear with me – we’re coming back to that point later…)

I’ll tell you why. It’s because he’s stronger than everyone else.

Now, as I rule I grant you he uses his power for good. But he doesn’t have to, and in the end, we know that. Rooting for Superman is like supporting the best team in the league. Chances are he’s going to win in any given set of circumstances, so you might as well tell yourself you’re pleased when it happens. All very simple and straightforward, but that kind of unquestioning support for the strong is intellectually rather lazy, don’t you think?

Now, it’s true that human literature has always featured such characters. If I’m going to have a go at the Spandex Brigade logically I also ought to have a go at the writings of Homer, of Ancient Rome, even of my own Anglo Saxon ancestors. Indeed, I probably have to have a go at the whole of the world’s various literary heritages. Each and every one of them features characters with great powers interfering in the lives of ordinary folk.

There is a difference though. As I’ve noted in this column before, although “super powered” characters, be they heroes or villains are nothing new. What makes the Superhero of the comic book tradition different is the fact that they are no longer regarded as supernatural. (The good Doctors Strange and Fate not withstanding…) Once such characters were gods, or at least the children of gods. Since the arrival of the Big Blue Boyscout we’ve been given characters who live amongst us as us.

Kal-El might be the last son of Krypton, but Clark Kent is a good old country boy and mild mannered reporter. He’s ordinary. That’s kind of the point of him, and that’s his presumption. How dare he sit in judgement on his fellow citizens?

Supes of course, is at least a decent bloke. In fact, he’s not really a very good example of what I’m talking about since, like Spidey, he tends to take the “I have a duty to help, because I can help in ways that nobody else can” line. Morally, that’s an entirely defensible position to take – if you see somebody suffering or in danger and you don’t do something to help when you can, that would make you a pretty lousy human being.

Where these characters cross the line is when they go out looking for “trouble”. There’s a reason why police officers are given training. Your average bloke in the street isn’t qualified to assess every situation and determine the best course of action. Sometimes it’s obvious. But not always. When do you use force and when do you negotiate? Not that such considerations occur to your average Spandex Warrior for whom “resolution by force” is the default setting. Indeed, if you come upon a fight or confrontation, how do you judge who is actually “in the right” - if anybody?

As I said, Supes is not the best example here, but how about his darker, more brooding buddy Batman? Brice Wayne had a terrible experience as a child, and has good reason to want to make a difference. But if anything his history makes his penchant for running around hitting criminals over the head even less acceptable for him than it would be for other people. Now, I know Bats isn’t actually a power as such, but he still fits the profile. He’s not accountable to anybody – indeed; he actually presents that as a virtue. His general attitude seems to be that he can get results the cops can’t because he isn’t bound by the rules that restrict their actions.

But attractive as that is – and I think we’ve all probably wanted to rip through some red tape at one time or another – that’s what makes him, and those like him, dangerous. There’s a reason why cops and courts have to follow rules. However frustrating it might be when people “we all know are guilty” walk free from court, or even escape prosecution altogether, the rules of due process exist to guard the freedoms of citizens in a free society from abuses. More often than not, when the rules have been “bent” so that “somebody we all know is guilty” is convicted when the evidence isn’t really there it turns out that they really were innocent after all. (My country can offer many examples of this, whether we’re talking about the Birmingham Six, or any one of the parents convicted of child abuse or child murder on the strength of flawed evidence in the past decade.)

No. Like every geek that was ever bullied at school, I can state absolutely that the biggest, most popular kid in the schoolyard can still be wrong. Indeed, the biggest, most popular kid in the schoolyard can still be a total arse, especially if you’re the really weedy kid that nobody really likes much. And that’s my other problem with the whole Superhero archetype. They all make out they’re so damn hard done by when actually they’re the big kids on the block.

Now, maybe it’s just me. It probably is just me, but I really resent that. So many Superheroes have origins that are basically bullied kid’s revenge fantasies – check out every version of Spidey’s origin for the part where he does something brutal to Flash Thompson and you’ll see what I mean.

Now I admit, as a former victim of bullying (I actually still have scars, which might explain the chip on my shoulder) I loved the scene in the first Spidey movie (well, not the first Spidey movie, but the first one with Tobey Maguier) where Peter Parker fights Flash in the school corridor. But it’s a guilty pleasure, because it’s not a fair fight.

Flash picking on Peter clearly makes him a Bully, because the pre spider bite Parker couldn’t hope to stand up to the King of the Jocks. But since at that point Peter has realised at least some of the abilities he has gained, he knows that he can take Flash. He also has a chance to walk away without breaking Flash’s hand. He just doesn’t take it. That really does make him as bad as Flash, but as readers/viewers we’re now being encouraged to applaud rather than criticise. This for me is a problem.

Not that Superheroes are the only offenders in fiction of course. From Dirty Harry to John McCain and beyond, the movies are not short of characters who behave in exactly the same way. But only Superhero Comics use positive representations of such attitudes as the entire basis of their genre. And it’s wrong. It’s a bad attitude the instant you apply it to real life, which makes each and every superhero – from Superman down – a terrible terrible role model.

What we need is an antidote to all that. Non superhero comics already have such antidotes of course, whether it’s John Constantine, who doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a selfish cynical bastard or Adam Chamberlain who really does try to do what’s right and agonises over every moral compromise he makes. There aren’t many Superheroes who do anything other than spout justifications for their outrageous behaviour.

That’s what I want to address with the Sunset project – which is why I’ve been thinking so much about this issue lately. And that’s also why I’m interested in what you think. Am I taking all this too seriously? Should I loosen up and just enjoy the ride? Or are there deeper issues that the genre could and should address?

The boards are open. See you in seven.