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I'd think a Marvel editor somewhere might have said no to JMS's portrayal of Iron Man at ANY point over the last couple of years. And I would be waaay off.

"Real world" filters and JMS: Brian, I keep trying to FORGET that Spider-Man #36 was ever written... You're not helping.

Yeah, there's a pretty simple and not-at-all compelling answer to JMS's question of why the superheroes didn't stop hurricane Katrina.

Because superheroes aren't real, dumbass.

The question that I must ask is this:

"Does there really has to be a THOR comic in this decade?"

I miss Simonson. Those were the GOOD OL' DAYS...

I think JMS is the perfect writer for most of today's superhero fans. Adolescent writing that demands itself be taken seriously because of how "realistic" it is.

"I’d think a Marvel editor somewhere might have said no to JMS’s portrayal of Iron Man at ANY point over the last couple of years."

And I'd think any Marvel editor who did would be shown the door.

I think JMS is the perfect writer for most of today’s superhero fans. Adolescent writing that demands itself be taken seriously because of how “realistic” it is.

Geez, that's depressing. I really hope you're wrong. (I can't honestly disagree, but I HOPE you're wrong.)

I agree with you totally on Katrina; as for Iron Man, my feeling is that complaining about his portrayal in this issue is like bolting the stable door after the horse is a tiny dot on the western horizon. Iron Man has been so consistently portrayed as an arrogant douchebag over the last two years that at this point, you're probably getting more readers to see him get his comeuppance than you are if he's portrayed sympathetically. (Including Yours Truly; Thor #3 was the first comic I bought in about three months, and I bought it just to see Iron Man get his Iron Butt kicked. And it was satisfying, yes.)

Iron Man needs a total do-over to make him palatable again, a la Hal Jordan. Might as well milk Iron Douchebag for all he's worth first by having other superheroes use him as a punching bag.

I'm telling you, just pull a Lex Luthor and have Iron Man be the alternate universe Iron Man from Marvel Team-Up and presto! everything can be back to exactly how it was in the '60s (as all things must always be)

Geez, that’s depressing. I really hope you’re wrong. (I can’t honestly disagree, but I HOPE you’re wrong.)

I wish I was wrong too. And yes, it is depressing.

No, because then we won't have Beta Ray Bill or ROM spaceknight.

We need them now more than ever.

I think we all know that Tony Stark will (re)become an OK dude by, oh, say 05.02.08...

And I feel obligated to keep suggesting that Marvel might not need to.

If history is anyindication, the number of people who get inspired by a superhero movie to go into the comic shop and buy the current issue is really quite small. If anything, people will go to Borders and pick out a trade, or an essential collection.

But the only ones who come looking for comics after seeing the movie are kids, and they should be given the Marvel Adventures books, regardless.

I bet Marvel could make Tony Stark a cannibal when the movie came out and not suffer one bit from it.

I was expecting Tony to try a cheap shot, fail, and get owned.

JMS strikes me as the type of guy that will write something like this and go on to state in an interview that he doesn't like Iron Man.

I think one has to separate, er, Katrina-616 from Katrina real world a bit more. Clearly, he's not saying that Katrina in the real world happened because of the lack of super heroes. It's just saying, what if Katrina happened in the Marvel universe, and superheroes dropped the ball?

Given a Katrina event in the Marvel 616, we would certainly expect superheroes to do something, but maybe they didn't. Maybe they were occupied with the registration crap. (It certainly looks like Katrina 616 was a way more recent - it's like the water hasn't receded yet.)

Given enough simultaneous superpowered threats, it certainly seems possible that there might not be enough superhero coverage to handle a 'mere' natural disaster.

Maybe there's a race/class angle in the difference between the response to Katrina and the response to the explosion in wealthy, white Stamford. (Whether that's what's being driven at, I don't know. It's entirely possible that the New Orleans thing could be used shallowly and dropped. Which would be lame.)

It doesn't particularly bother me, any more than I'm bothered when some real murder case shows up a few months later with the serial numbers filed off as a case on Law & Order: Dead Raped Joggers And Kids.

I think another problem with portraying real world events in superhero comics is that in the end, it's a double-edged sword.

9/11, I get. Nobody really saw that coming, so it makes sense that no hero would've stopped it. So they helped clean up, which is cool of them.

But with something like Katrina, there was a bit of advance warning. So realistically, superheroes would have been in the thick of it, helping with evacuation, erecting force fields, rebuilding things.

But they didn't, which makes them look like assholes.

If they had, it would've seemed self-serving. Not only does it smack of "Gee whiz, wouldn't it be nice if...", but the reader then comes away from this fantasy world and realizes that there weren't any superheroes to help out, which proceeds to make the reader feel like shit for living in a shitty, superhero-less world.

-M

I'm going to take a wild guess that, yet again, you couldn't tell this comic took place in Oklahoma if not for a caption stating that it was taking place in Oklahoma.

I agree with one of your points - bringing up super-heroes in the context of Katrina really leads nowhere except to uncomfortable memories of JMS' truly awful Amazing Spider-Man 36.

But I dont get it with all this ragging on the current characterisation of Tony Stark. I can see no problem with it in this issue - he tries to greet Thor as a pal at first, gets met with some attitude and things go downhill from there. Sure he is a bit Gyrich-like in telling Thor that he has to toe the line - but as head of SHIELD thats now part of his job.

The depiction of the relationship between Thor and Iron Man is even pretty consistent - though I would be surprised if Stracynszki realised this the last major interaction between the two characters was probably in 2003's 3-part "Standoff" crossover (which ran through the Avengers, Thor an Iron Man titles) in which they had a major conflict over similar issues (except Asgard was over New York at the time rather than the midwest).

More generally I have to say that I love the current Iron Man characerisation - hes a complex character who makes controversial decisions. Most superheroes are so interchangeable in their morality (-and lets face it -their characterisation as well) that I think its refreshing. Its also consistent with his past - his arms manufacturing, womanising ways and general willingness to cross ethical boundaries have been shown in numerous previous stories (such as Armour Wars and Operation Galactic Storm for instance).

Comparing this characterisation to the homocidal 90s depiction of Hal Jordan is wrongheaded and worrying. I read the sentiment so much online that I dont doubt that those fans will eventually get their way and this interesting period in Stark's history will eventually be retconned away by some eager to please and misguided future creator - which is pretty depressing really.

JMS needs to leave real world events out of comics. He's the only write doing it, and there's a pretty bloody good reason for that - it doesn't work, it feels tacky, and it makes readers cringe.

If it helps, you don't need to blame JMS for the Katrina issue. Reginald Hudlin established over in "Black Panther" a couple of years ago that all the Marvel heroes ignored Katrina and its aftermath, doing nothing to stop Katrina before it hit, and also doing nothing to help in the recovery either.

So while it may be a bad idea, it's not an idea that originated with JMS.

If they avoid Katrina, then they would either have to avoid New Orleans, or else depict it as unchanged.

If Marvel continued to depict the Gulf Coast as undamaged, I suspect they'd get criticized for that as well.

I think that Katrina happened during that whole "House of M" thing during which Thor was still dead. So I think that's the answer to the questions Thor poses. Maybe JMS is trying to show that he's been out of the loop and just doesn't know much about the things that happpened while he was gone like Katrina since they aren't talked about anymore. Civil War is still fresh in the minds of the Marvel U, but Katrina is not. Therefore, he would have heard about Civil War (especially with the clone business), but he might not have picked up a 2 year old Time magazine talking about the hurricane.

Just a thought.

[quote]Comparing this characterisation to the homocidal 90s depiction of Hal Jordan is wrongheaded and worrying. I read the sentiment so much online that I dont doubt that those fans will eventually get their way and this interesting period in Stark’s history will eventually be retconned away by some eager to please and misguided future creator - which is pretty depressing really.[/quote]

Well, I will agree that it is a wrongheaded comparison... much as I like classic Iron Man, there is indeed no comparison between Parallax and the current Iron Man. Parallax was a puzzling aberration from the start - or, more realistically, a bit of amateurish writing and editorial incompetence. By contrast, Iron Man has been steadily if controversially depicted as a character with control issues.

That's _far_ more interesting - and more professional - than the Dooley/Marz/Kyle fiasco.

Even then, there is no particular reason why the current Iron Man characterization must not be "eventually" undone. People change, and the current Iron Man mindset is indeed fairly unstable. He's alienated and manipulated way too many of his former friends and allies. As natural as his fascistic ways have been evolving, their removal will be even more organic.

If they avoid Katrina, then they would either have to avoid New Orleans, or else depict it as unchanged.

If Marvel continued to depict the Gulf Coast as undamaged, I suspect they’d get criticized for that as well.

JMS was not exactly forced to set the issue in New Orleans.

If they avoid Katrina, then they would either have to avoid New Orleans, or else depict it as unchanged.

...because New Orleans is such a common setting for Marvel Comics characters.

Superhero comics don't exist in the real world?

What the hell have I been reading?

Clearly, JMS is improving in his Thor storytelling, however, because this issue had TWO plot points. Even if they were both completely obvious from the cover and, like, first two pages.

Also: If Katrina didn't happen in the Marvel Universe, I'd never get to write my Brother Voodoo series.

Okay, I'll probably never get to write my Brother Voodoo series. Still...

Well, the New Orleans we all know and love doesn't actually exist in the Marvel Universe at all. The MU New Orleans is full of underground caverns and secret passageways. In the real New Orleans, those places would have filled up with swamp water before they even finished digging.

Reginald Hudlin established over in “Black Panther” a couple of years ago that all the Marvel heroes ignored Katrina and its aftermath, doing nothing to stop Katrina before it hit, and also doing nothing to help in the recovery either.

Was there a reason given?

It was because it was mostly black people wasn't?
Honestly, I don't know why I'm surprised that a book called 'Black Panther'is about why black heroes are better than white ones...

If you want to indict writing that is actually adolescent but pretends to be taken seriously because it is about serious things, you can't indict JMS. You basically have to indict 90% of the writers in this industry. This is the trend in comics, because in a larger sense, it is the trend in sci-fi and fantasy, which are the genres superheroes are closest to. It is also the general trend in television shows and movies.
Tastes change, and in ten years it will be something else. Right now, it's the cultural zeitgeist.

Anyway, there was a point in time when stopping disasters and helping people was one of the prime things superheroes did. There was a point in time when Marvel would've published a Hurricane Katrina benefit book about heroes going to New Orleans and trying to help people, and perhaps failing in the face of real-world problems (ala the 9/11 specials). That time is past, and there is something tasteless and selfish in berating a writer for even daring to point out that such a thing has changed.

Thor #3 was a really good comic.

>>There was a point in time when stopping disasters and helping people was one of the prime things superheroes did. There was a point in time when Marvel would’ve published a Hurricane Katrina benefit book about heroes going to New Orleans and trying to help people, and perhaps failing in the face of real-world problems (ala the 9/11 specials). That time is past, and there is something tasteless and selfish in berating a writer for even daring to point out that such a thing has changed...

Fair enough. My own criticisms of JMS in this thread have involved not what he was saying, or even why--rather, how.

To clarify: I was not saying that Iron Man was behaving like Parallax (although Tony's slaughter of a jetliner full of men, women and children has seen remarkably little commentary, really...) I was saying that Tony Stark is no longer a sympathetic character, and that's not a situation that can persist in an ongoing title.

So they will need, at some point, to retcon away his unsympathetic actions in order to sweep them under the rug and get on with him being the kind of guy you would want to read about _in the long term_. Sure, a complex, unlikeable morally ambiguous character is interesting if you're going somewhere with it...but Tony Stark has to be around for the next fifty years, and to do that, you have to feel for the guy.

(And if your counter-response is, "Why does Tony Stark _have_ to be around for the next fifty years?", you automatically lose this round of conversation. Marvel is not interested in driving themselves out of business, despite all evidence to the contrary, and they do need their continuing characters to stick around. An enduring, consistently popular character that can sustain his/her own series for decades is not something you find very often, and you preserve the ones you have.)

So, like Hal Jordan, they will need to retcon away...probably everything since he took the Extremis, which will probably be used as the excuse...as the actions of "someone else", and not the Iron Man you like. Hal Jordan is the example I used because it came immediately to mind, but I could also have used Iron Man himself...'Heroes Reborn' was basically a quick and dirty dodge to avoid dealing with the fallout from Kang's mind-control, the Teen Iron Man fiasco, and restore the character to default settings.

I should just clarify here, I actually like Iron Man as a pro-registration character (and it really does follow established characterization), and manipulating himself into the position of SHIELD head is pretty interesting.

My problem is that JMS is writing all of this as though the character were pro-fascism, which isn't the same thing.

It reads as a bit odd when Tony tries to ideologically bully Peter Parker into submission. And when that doesn't work, to just flat-out pound on him. THAT doesn't read like Tony Stark.

I think the point of using New Orleans was as a metaphor. The super heroes should ahve done something and look like asses. Just like our government (who should protect people in the real world) should have done more and look like asses. Yes it is unrealistic to think that selfless characters like Storm and the Fantastic Four would not have helped Katrina, but our real world protectors felt they ahd more important things to do.
Also, Hudlin already portrayed post-Katrina in Black Panther, so it is not JMS's fault. Katrina is in-continuity, in fanboy speak.

Brian wrote: "JMS was not exactly forced to set the issue in New Orleans."

No, but even if he didn't, it would probably come up sooner or later, probably more justifiably.

Or would New Orleans become a no-go zone for Marvel Editors, because to mention New Orleans automatically raises this issue?

Damn, Apodaca beat me to what I was going to say about Gambit. Out of interest, since Katrina is 'in continuity', have we seen a reaction from Gambit yet?

I dislike the idea of real world disasters and wars entering into superhero comics much, because (ironically, I guess) it really stretches my belief in the story. But I can understand why they do it- to ignore it altogether seems cruel, and one of the things that has always seperated the Marvel U from DC has always been its grounding in something resembling reality.

I actually thought ASM 36 was great. If it really bothers you, just think of it as Marvel's 'out-of-continuity' tribute to an event that honestly couldn't have gone unmentioned. Bizarrely enough, reading that comic was the first time that 9/11 hit home for me. Being from Australia and not New York, I guess I couldn't quite get my head around it, but JMS nailed it for me, and I cried like a baby.

After what JMS did to Spider-Man, he shouldn't be allowed near any other Marvel character. Ever.

Go back to Midnight Nation and the like, JMS - that was good stuff.

I agree with the article totally. Really the only good way you could ever have superheroes dealing with an event that happened in the real world is to take it to it's logical conclusion. If superheroes were around, Katrina simply would not have resulted in the loss of life it did on our world. Basically, you would have to let superheroes effect the setting in all respects.

The other apporach is to just say that this takes place on an Earth where certain things that happened in our world did not. Now, I think this would be fine because I don't think it neccessarily takes away from that world being believable. It's fantasy in the first place so if you aren't willing to use your imagination what're you doing here?

It's just that on our world we have faced things like 9/11 and Katrina. On theirs maybe they didn't have that but they've had Skrulls, Galactus, ordinary criminals who don't need guns because they can shoot rays from their hands, etc.

In other words, both worlds..our and theirs will in their own time and their own way have dangers or disasters to face. There will be those who ignore or captialize on such things but as well there will always be heroes who arrive to and who emerge from such events to help when they are needed.

All this Katrina discussion has got me thinking that there's a good story to be told of the Louisiana based Initiative team. Basically, the team doesn't have many super villians to fight, so they spend most of thier time doing clean up work. Tell it from the perspective of one of the guys who was anti-reg but was forced/decided to register and now realizes that registration can be a good thing. My only problem is deciding who besides Brother Voodoo would belong on a LA team.

Here's a thought: As someone already pointed out, Marvel's heroes SHOULD have been able to avert the Katrina disaster or at least most of its consequences. But what if the MU superheroes had actually managed to AVOID their world's version of the Katrina tragedy? What if Marvel decided that such a disaster wouldn't ever happen in a world filled with superheroes, and that a combination of their efforts would either minimize the disaster's damage or avoid it altogether? Would people be offended to read about a real-world tragedy being avoided by superheroics, or could it be a satisfying wish-fulfillment moment?

Would it be in bad taste if superheroes were able to stop real-world tragedies from happening in their fictional worlds? Would it be in bad taste if Superman had been able to catch the second plane in 9/11? Superheroes are, or at least used to be, all about wish-fulfillment; Captain America was depicted punching Hitler in the face years before the Reich was actually beaten, and everybody understood that Cap punching ut Hitler was a fantasy, and that it was good. Why wasn't Osama Bin Laden punched in the face by a superhero yet? Have the medium, and its readers, changed THAT much? Aren't superheroes supposed to be all about doing larger-than-life feats?

I don't understand why Katrina had to happen exactly the same way, in a world where superheroes exist. It's a very, very depressing thought. And it makes the "heroes" look unbelievably bad.

Superman took out fictional dictators who were clearly analogues to Hitler, but he didn't take out Hitler himself. Captain America did fight the real Hitler, but he didn't do anything to change his real-world status quo. Why? Because if you do that sort of thing too much, unless you're deliberately trying to creating an alternate history (a la Ex Machina), you get a decent story with no follow-up. ("Well, we've ended World War II in our fictional universe, and it's only 1942. Guess we'd better have our heroes go back to fighting bank robbers instead of Nazis.")

And you run the risk of cheapening the efforts of those dealing with the problem in the real world ("Sorry you lost 20 million people fighting the Nazis, Russia, but our guy in the blue tights took care of it just fine"), and/or making the people affected feel worse ("Sorry you lost your home, your friends, your job and your dog, but here's a story about people who didn't"). There can be a fine line between wish-fulfillment and just rubbing it in; the 9/11 comics were about providing support for those affected, not pretending the situation didn't exist.

That said, and taking these factors into account, it's probably better to leave the elephant in the room alone unless you're willing to handle the tricky follow-through. If Thor stops the next major natural disaster with his magic hammer AND Marvel is willing to deal with the consequences of this for their fictional world, fine; otherwise, having a character reject a key facet of the nature of maintaining that fictional world--without going so far as to reject it oneself--is cheating.

Anyway, there was a point in time when stopping disasters and helping people was one of the prime things superheroes did. There was a point in time when Marvel would’ve published a Hurricane Katrina benefit book about heroes going to New Orleans and trying to help people, and perhaps failing in the face of real-world problems (ala the 9/11 specials). That time is past, and there is something tasteless and selfish in berating a writer for even daring to point out that such a thing has changed.

I'm sorry, it's tasteless and selfish to criticize (not berate) a writer for trivializing the tragedy and significance of how Katrina actually played out by blaming it on superheroes?

The "I'm rubber-you're glue" defense doesn't really ever work, especially not here. Katrina was a natural disaster made worse by the incompetence of normal people. To bring supernatural elements into the mix is to simplify it, and ignore the real issues surrounding the situation.

Whether Hudlin was initially responsible for the idea or not, nobody forced JMS to use it. He made the decision, he gets the criticism.

I skimmed a bit so I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this but...

Thor is the god of thunder. Stopping a hurricane from destroying a city is kind of his job. He feels like he really dropped the ball by being dead and is very, very disheartened to see that no one else picked it up.

I like how real world events match up to the super-hero world. Yeah, they're going to miss things and yeah, they're going to drop the ball sometimes. Saying you can't apply real world events to comics is the same discussion as saying that Mr. Fantastic would have solved hunger, disease, and the world's energy problems. Reed can't do that, and heroes are going to miss a hurricane now and then.

Besides... they were all in the negative zone. Fighting Dr. Doom or something

"Superman took out fictional dictators who were clearly analogues to Hitler, but he didn’t take out Hitler himself."

There was totally a story where Superman beat Hitler and Stalin! I've seen it in a couple Superman anthologies! I'm pretty sure I have it in the collection of Superman Sunday comic strips I got for Christmas! Why can I not stop using exclamation when I am dog tired? !!!!!

"There was totally a story where Superman beat Hitler and Stalin!"

And here's a page from it:

http://www.dailyraider.com/comics/screwedupcomics4/17.jpg

Also, you could own the first printing of it if you had way too much money:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-Superman-Captures-Hitler-and-Stalin-Comic_W0QQitemZ270164500602QQihZ017QQcategoryZ35752QQcmdZViewItem

My own thought is that unavoidable real-world events ought to be mentioned and used, but that the "why didn't heroes stop it" thing shouldn't be flagged up. Because flagging it up is opening the same door behind which lurks those "Why doesn't Reed cure AIDS; why doesn't Hank Pym end famine?" sorts of questions.

Ask why superheroes fail to prevent real-world catastrophs, and you're basically asking why they don't solve any real-world problems in their own universes. The answer is always going to be simple and predictable: their world reflects ours first, and deals with supertech and superpowers and their ramifications second.

As to the odd (and often voiced, these days) desire for WWII-style propaganda comics, well, I'm reposting an old essay of mine from elsewhere on the CSBG forum page for all to attack me at.

Thor must really despise Florida, and the Caribbean nations given all the times he let them get blasted.

Yeah, I remembered Superman vs. Hitler and Stalin after I posted the above. It kind of supports my point that once you do a story like that you don't have much room for followup, since no one seemed too eager to incorporate that story into Superman's official backstory. (Also interesting that it was written in 1940, before the US entered the war and Stalin became a US ally.)

"Thor must really despise Florida, and the Caribbean nations given all the times he let them get blasted. "

Just because he couldn't stop Katrina doesn't mean he didn't stop Andrew in the Marvel universe. Although, as I typed that, it does feel a little weird to think that way. I think the story worked in that issue, but maybe when you step back like at all, it doesn't work.

I don't usually bother commenting on comments on my comments (because man, is that usually pointless), but this caught my interest. Also, someone seemed to miss my original point.

It's not a "rubber-glue" defense, it's just a logical fallacy of the criticism being raised here. If you berate comics for mentioning Katrina at all because of its awful real-world cost, you get into the uncomfortable territory of wondering what is "safe" to mention. Superhero comics have always frequently mentioned real world catastrophes with grotesque human costs in passing, as mere story props. A list of the times Marvel alone has published this material would be very lengthy.

It makes no sense to begin objecting to this now, simply because Katrina happens to be fresh in our minds. It's just selfishness masquerading as social consciousness; what the criticism really means is "you know, I don't want to think about this depressing stuff when I sit down to read a funnybook". And that's not a valid criticism, that's a statement of personal taste masquerading as one. To express it in a way that cloaks itself as sensitivity or social consciousness is tasteless in the extreme, in my opinion.

Far more tasteless than mentioning a real-world disaster a few years after the fact in a setting that is nominally obligated to follow real-world historical events and reflect the reader's reality on a superficial level, anyway.

[...] J. Michael Straczynski has been taking some flak for his portrayal of Iron Man in this issue of Thor (for instance, from Brian Cronin). I think this criticism is misguided, for two reasons: (1) Thor is justified, given that Iron Man created a subservient clone of him during the Civil War, and (2) Iron Man has been pretty much acting like a dick since the start of the Civil War, most of his actions have been morally indefensible, and frankly emotionally the reader wants someone to kick his ass: Thor, the Hulk, whoever. Iron Man’s not a hero anymore, and seeing Thor lay into him is just plain fun. [...]