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Sorry Brian, but you and everyone else who's made this arguement is wrong. All Jordan's done for Earth at that point is preserve the white male hegemony, so really, he hasn't done anything for the black skins but perpetuate a racist, classist system.

There's a bigger difference between the two though. The fact that Denny O'Neill was even considering talking about social problems and the real world to the extent that he attempted within GL/GA was totally revolutionary at the time. His series is very much a product of it's time and needs to be looked at as such to see the greatness in it. If you put any single issue of that on the stands right now as new and tried to have it hold it's own against anything being published by the contemporary Marvel or DC it would look laughable and clunky compared to even their worst books.
After 30 years of seeing that run on that series ripple out through all Super-Hero comics, as well as 30 years of progression in storytelling technique, style, and increased audience expectations we can, do, and should expect a LOT more out of comics writers than was expected then. The continued employment of Paul Jenkins is one of the few ongoing, large-scale mis-steps I see at Marvel. His Spider-Man comics were awful and showed a fundamental lack of understanding of the character of Peter Parker, The Sentry is a pretty crappy pastiche of Miracleman and Warlock with a bit of Meta-Story gloss to make people look the other way while he steals from Moore and Starlin, and Frontline, which could have been one of the most interesting and engaging series put out by Marvel has been instead a consistent example of the weakest most generic writing Marvel has to offer.
Paul Jenkins is not worth defending.

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Nice to see that I'm not the only one who thought O'Neil dropped the ball with that supposedly "classic" issue of GL/GA. Honestly, if Neal Adams hadn't been the artist on that story, I doubt it would be anywhere as well known as it is.

Anyway, if I was Hal Jordan, I'd have replied with something along the lines of "Well, okay, next time some giant alien starfish shows up to conquer the world, don't come to me looking for help, because I'll probably be too busy using my power ring to threaten the local slumlords into bringing their buildings up to code."

By the way, I never understood exactly *how* the old guy expected Green Lantern to help blacks. What did he want Hal to do, exactly? Steal from the rich and give to the poor? Overthrow the US government? Use his power ring to erase bigotry from people's minds?

Hell, maybe Hal should have just taken control of the world to make it a safe, orderly place. Because we all know how grateful Sinestro's home planet was that he became an absolute dictator.

Ben, you asked what Hal could have done, exactly, to help poor black Americans.

This reminds me of that part in Watchmen, where Dr. Manhattan watches The Comedian kill his pregnant Vietnamese lover. Dr. Manhattan could have turned the bullet into vapor. What the hell is wrong with him? The same thing that's wrong with Hal Jordan.

You do have a point, though. It's one thing to stop a bullet with the flick of a power ring. It's another thing to change an entire culture with that same power. Right or wrong, who knows, but definitely something to chew on. I think the O'Neil scene was brilliant, especially for its time.

Well, since you mentioned Watchmen, in that book Adrian Veidt prevents World War III, ends the Cold War, and saves the world... but in order to achieve that, he kills several million innocent people. Was he right or wrong?

Maybe Hal could have ended racism and segregation in the United States, but it would have meant that he initiated tremendous social and political changes & upheaval. At that point you get to an "ends justify the means" mindset. Is it okay for GL to force people to get along with one another and treat each other decently, just so long as in the end the trains run on time?

I am uncomfortable with this article. It's not nearly as cut and dried as save the world, stop racism.

Can a comic ask these important and complex questions? Yes, of course it can. But the more important side of it is should a comic ask these questions?

What place do social problems have in the medium, and how much is too much for it to remain viable in the balance of the morals vs. entertainment battle?

It's tricky. Very tricky.

I think the O'Neil argument should be given a pass not because it's "revolutionary" for its time or anything great like some commenters claim....it was poor, half-ass feel-good thinking then as it is now. It should be given a pass because back then comics were written for kids, so a little naivete is somewhat more acceptable. In an environment where comics are targets to people in their late 20s and up and the book is being touted in mainstream adult press as serious political allegory, such weak reasoning is just really unacceptable.

I'd pretty much agree with what you're saying there, but I'd like to add that weak, unsophisticated and naive as GL/GA was that the fact that it was even attempting to provide any kind of social commentary within a Super Hero book WAS revolutionary.

It's one of the primary reasons that run is considered 'important' to this day.

I give it a pass because I expect less of comics from that period, but I admire and revisit it because it was one of the first and most visible baby-steps towards a more mature level of writing.

Sorry I cannot accept an analogy that puts NASCAR and Myspace kids on equal footing with the history of race relations in America.

That was a poorly argued point itself.

Ben Herman: Well, since you mentioned Watchmen, in that book Adrian Veidt prevents World War III, ends the Cold War, and saves the world… but in order to achieve that, he kills several million innocent people. Was he right or wrong?

Wrong. Next question?

Okay, simply put, my problem with the scene is that it makes its point at the expense of the main character, Hal Jordan. He ends up looking like a putz.

Wrong. Next question?

Thanks for chiming in, Rorschach

I think it's sad that using Myspace is the benchmark for being a good superhero.

This argument is specious. After the assassination of MLK, a lot of white people were suddenly feeling bad about ignoring/dismissing the civil rights issue and the backlash against it. The black man wasn't talking about ending poverty, he was talking about the violent suppression of the civil rights movement. It was a big serious nationwide moral dilemma. Comics had to deal with it, and only O'Neil had the moral courage to do, which is why the issue is justifiably considered one of the greatest single issues of all time.

Are you seriously comparing this to Captain America feeling bad for not knowing about MySpace? In a Summer Event spin-off tie-in miniseries?

"[Jenkins'] Spider-Man comics were awful and showed a fundamental lack of understanding of the character of Peter Parker"

You're out of your freakin' mind.

First, I don't think that O'Neil's DIALOGUE (and not "argument") was misplaced : taken apart from the storyline, it seems misplaced... BUT... the scene appears right after GL defends against a corrupt landlord and the statu quo. O'Neil's entire series was, at the time, a reflexion of the binds between superhero genre and the social issues namely the preservation of statu quo.

Second, the dialogue is well done : "what have you done for the black skins ?" after the mention of all the rainbow aliens, reminds us, the readers, that at the time, there was a breakthrough of african-american characters where a decade before (and the start of the GL comic-book), there were none (then, I think, Ditko's Spider-Man started to put african american cops in the background, then there was Robbie Robertson in the Romita issues, the Falcon in Captain America and the Black Panther came into the FF as an african character without the colonial point of view) . And more to the point, GL had an eskimo sidekick whose nickname was "Pieface".

Third. O'Neil himself said in one preface that these episodes were not so much relevant at the times when it was printed, that they were more a reminiscence of the previous decade and the social and political battles that were fought : it was book about the sixties.
Regarding the treatment of racism, I Think the episodes with John Stewart as GL were less convincing, falling into the "angry black man" stereotype... at the same time, The Falcon was portrayed in a more subtle way in Englehart's Captain America as a man torn between two sides (echoing his partner divided between two times).

But then again, that's the trouble of being the first to tackle difficult issues. I think the GL/GA issues have indeed being a little outdated but not as much as the cold war background in Watchmen or the altermondialist thinking in Authority (and that was only a decade ago). There is work in pop-culture that needs to be kept in perspective to be appreciated : this is one of them.
Then again, I prefer the timeless energy of the Batman issues of the artistic tandem.

And for the Jenkins example, I think that (despite the fact that I don't like CW Frontline), the dialogue about NASCAR makes more sense while reading the issue than just having the panel extracted (like this one , for instance).

(sorry about my english, folks, I'm a foreigner)

"Sorry I cannot accept an analogy that puts NASCAR and Myspace kids on equal footing with the history of race relations in America.

That was a poorly argued point itself. "

I agree with this sentiment.

The GL/GA scene is heavy-handed to be sure, but this is the ultimate example of comparing apples to oranges.

I think claiming that not having knowledge of my space and NASCAR makes you a better American.

GO CAP !!!!

It should be given a pass because back then comics were written for kids, so a little naivete is somewhat more acceptable. In an environment where comics are targets to people in their late 20s and up and the book is being touted in mainstream adult press as serious political allegory, such weak reasoning is just really unacceptable.

That's a fair point, T.

Expectations certainly are higher for writers now than they were for O'Neil back then, so he could get away with bad dialogue easier. Sorta like how Gentlemen's Agreement won Best Picture!

I'm just glad we don't give okay films awards nowadays just because they touch on social issu...oh, right, Crash.

Never mind.

much more like comparing apples to onions

Oh, dear. When you do an LOLLIB'RULS and T. doesn't even agree with you, I think you've pretty much stumbled across epic fail, Brian. You really have to place this comic in the context of its times -- which were approximately around when Jimmy Olsen was marrying a gorilla and Superman was, just to do it, dancing around in a cactus suit convincing hapless folk they were tripping on peyote. GL/GA is awfully damn heavy-handed, but it's a Chris Ware comic compared to virtually anything DC was publishing concurrently.

Although at least he didn't use the phrase "epic fail."

I've never heard the term Lollib'ruls. Where is it from?

And T doesn't disagree with the main point, which is that the exchange is weak, just like Jenkins' was 30 years later. He's just in the "O'Neil should be excused for his bad dialogue because of the times." Which is fine by me.

"It's okay it was weak, because the other comics of the time were even weaker" is fine, but that doesn't change the fact that the exchange was weak.

You can excuse it, but it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Sorry, I was bit off in the previous comment. The fact that O'Neil and Jenkins' respective exchanges are weak is not, in fact, my main point. That's a secondary aspect of my main point, which is "The two exchanges are very similar." The whole "They're similar and they're both poor" is a secondary thing.

I dunno, Jenkins actually made me feel for Cap, he humanized the guy.

I liked the passage.

"John Grisham's latest novel about a crusading attorney has gotten bad reviews, but cheer up John Grisham! "Uncle Tom's Cabin", according to snotty bloggers who read it today, is also (from our modern, more enlightened perspective) trite and unconvincing. Don't you feel better, John Grisham? I know you felt terrible that snotty blogs didn't like your writing, but now you'll be overjoyed to discover that we also give historically significant works the same snotty dismissal! No need to thank us, John Grisham."

I'm just sayin'.

Sorry Brian, but you and everyone else who’s made this arguement is wrong. All Jordan’s done for Earth at that point is preserve the white male hegemony, so really, he hasn’t done anything for the black skins but perpetuate a racist, classist system.

Clearly saving the world doesn't help its inhabitants a bit; black people would have been much better off had Hal Jordan simply allowed Despero to kill every living thing on the planet, because hey, tyhey'd all be dead but at least they wouldn't be suffering under some sort of wicked racist hegemony. As David Lynch tells us, in heaven everything is fine.

More to the point, real life human beings have yet to figure out to how to meaningfully dismantle hegemonic structures of oppression; asking a bloody Silver Age superhero comic to do it is simply ludicrous. For God's sake, it's like .

This whole discussion is increasingly a reminder of why I don't like Mark Millar's Authority. There seem to be plenty of comics readers who think that simply whinging about hegemony or bad corporations or whatnot and then having the magic fantasy superpeople play "might makes right" for their side instead of the status quo is some sort of political statement. It's not. There are no superpowers in reality, and the imposition of a leftist status quo rather than a conservative or liberal-democratic one is still the imposition of a status quo.

The fact that it's a status quo you'd like rather than one you object to doesn't make any of these sorts of ideas vast shifts in the genre; it simply substitutes one power fantasy's pseudopolitical alignments for another power fantasy's pseudopolitical alignments while conveniently ignoring the absolute irrelevance of fantasy logics for real-life problems.

I say this, mind you, as someone who'd define themselves as a fairly committed leftist. I just don't particularly see how superhero fantasy comics are going to do much of anything for my or anyone else's political goals. It's not as if 15 years of old-school Hal Jordan stories materially affected the Civil Rights struggle, any more than it's true that

No, what this amounts to is the inane -- from ANY side -- demand that superhero comics flatter the political convictions of one or another segement of the audience. I can't stand it when it's self-proclaimed conservatives bitching about how nasty DC is to Joe McCarthy, and I can't stand it when it's self proclaimed liberals patting themselves on the back because Denny O'Neil wrote some poorly-selling stories in the early 1970s in apparent ignorance of the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. (Stalled out, indeed; two massive political victories for the Civil Rights movement are apparently infinitely less important to some people than the assassinations of two of its leading lights.)

Although the passage does indeed "humanize" Cap and clearly defines the person he is...and what's really important to him.....it just makes all the more the hero to me.

Ah, okay...yeah, there is a similarity, though (while, again, it has all the subtlety of a brick to the head) I don't think O'Neil and Adams's scene is anywhere near the groaner that the infamous MySpace sequence is. But there's certainly that same element of a character who is normally portrayed as enormously self-confident getting rhetorically destroyed by an argument that, um, isn't that strong.

I think the difference between that scene and this one is that the underlying point of the Civil War bit -- "Captain America, you're out of touch!" -- is harder to argue than the idea that Hal (really, any Silver Age character) hasn't been there for the disenfranchised. Literally, this isn't true -- when you save the world from Starro the Conqueror, you're saving everyone in the world from Starro the Conqueror -- but on a more meta storytelling level, it holds water. We don't see these characters grappling with issues that were relevant to real people in that time, until that time (however hamfistedly). Not only do we not see Green Lantern concerning himself with the civil rights issues that were, y'know, kind of relevant just then (which is kinda what O'Neil is not so subtly getting at here), but we barely see black people in superhero comics at all. All of which I say to say, while the argument as framed is not an especially strong one, the meaning of the argument has merit. (Though obviously its real target isn't Hal at all, but other creators.)

The reason (it seems to me) that the MySpace scene doesn't work on any level is that we don't believe that Cap has been rendered irrelevant, we don't believe he could believe it, and we really don't believe he could be convinced of it because someone has thrown his ignorance of social networking sites in his face. It doesn't work textually OR subtextually. The meaning of the argument lacks merit.

(LOL'LIBRULS is pretty much a variation on LOLcats...see also LOL'WINGNUTZ, LOL'XTIANS, etc. It's basically just someone taking easy shots at something or other in a snarky, dismissive way.

...I have no real excuse for using "epic fail." What came over me? It's been a long day over here.)

Oh, dear. When you do an LOLLIB’RULS and T. doesn’t even agree with you, I think you’ve pretty much stumbled across epic fail, Brian.

I'm not disagreeing with Brian and I don't consider this post a fail on any level actually.

Well, in the future, I guess I'll take it for granted that when you're disagreeing with someone, you're...still agreeing with them? Fair enough. I didn't mean to imply I thought you thought the post was a failure, though; that was my observation.

“John Grisham’s latest novel about a crusading attorney has gotten bad reviews, but cheer up John Grisham! “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, according to snotty bloggers who read it today, is also (from our modern, more enlightened perspective) trite and unconvincing. Don’t you feel better, John Grisham? I know you felt terrible that snotty blogs didn’t like your writing, but now you’ll be overjoyed to discover that we also give historically significant works the same snotty dismissal! No need to thank us, John Grisham.”

I’m just sayin’.

I saw this somewhere else, and it's really mystifying to me. I get the whole argument with folks sticking up for O'Neil's GL/GA. I get that.

But this idea that me saying that the two scenes are really similar is an excuse for Jenkins' scene? I don't get that at all, and if that's how people are reading it, then sorry, I suppose, as that sure was not my intent.

As stated above it was:

A. The scenes are very similar
B. Both scenes are poorly written

It...could be that...your point was delivered...poorly?

It…could be that…your point was delivered…poorly?

I understood it just fine. Could be that...it's you?

Well, in the future, I guess I’ll take it for granted that when you’re disagreeing with someone, you’re…still agreeing with them?

Brian thinks the scenes are very similar. I agree. He thinks they are both poorly written. I agree. I just think that O'Neil's story deserves more of a pass for its bad writing given its target audience, which was kids in the 1960s.

I don't have my Overstreet handy, but I believe that that particular GL/GA adventure is the first official comic book appearance of Super Duper Magical Negro.

It…could be that…your point was delivered…poorly?

I dunno, if I thought the point wasn't delivered clearly, it wouldn't mystify me that people were taking it as though I was excusing Jenkins, right?

I have no problem with folks disagreeing with me as to the relative quality of the GL/GA scene (or the Cap scene, for that matter, if some people think that Jenkins wrote the scene well, I'm totally open to their reasoning behind such a position).

What mystifies me is the reading of the post as an excusing of Jenkins' scene - it seems pretty clear (and has been to most commenters here - they just disagree with my knocking of O'Neil) that I'm saying the two scenes are similar, and I think both of them are poorly written. I mean, "take solace that some older writer also wrote a bad scene"? How do you see that and say, "He says 'take solace,' that means he must be excusing Jenkins, even though he says above that he botched the scene!"?

In the end, it just struck me as interesting that the O'Neil scene was so similar to the Jenkins scene, interesting enough to blog about!

I understood it just fine. Could be that…it’s you?

I understood it too. Sorry, Mike, we have a consensus. Better luck understanding future posts.

Are people ignoring that massive difference between the speakers in the two scenes?

In one scene you have a reasonably educated reporter making an incredibly stupid argument that's blatantly inflammatory and a strawman: it's essentially something that you'd see on Fox News and would dismiss immediately. Cap's response should have been to call her crazy.

In the other scene, you have what appears to be a poorly educated disenfranchised African American who's suffered for most of his life. Of course his argument has flaws in it: he's speaking from emotion and not trying to make some polished statement, and there's no reason to expect his argument to be precise. Yes, taken literally the argument is poor, but it's the fundamental point (that GL could do more to help with race relations and poverty) that's important, and that's what Hal really ends up responding to.

Well said Thok!

Maybe we can bring that black guy back and give him his own DC book or put him in Shadowpact, since he is Magical Negro after all. Magical Negro can do a lot to help DC with its current drive for a diversity quota!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro

I dunno, Thok. The old dude was clearly knowledgeable about the different hues of aliens there are in the galaxy. He can't have been too uneducated.

Seriously though, you make a good point about the old dude. But I think Brian's point still stands about Hal taking this guy's rant as sage wisdom. It doesn't mean he has to come back with, "Hey, you old bastard, did you notice a meteor didn't fall on your head today? That was me, you're welcome." But he shouldn't have been shamed speechless.

And T., don't even joke about that. The way DC is these days, the old black guy is gonna get his own planet in "Countdown" or something.

Oh man, that would actually be great. The Magical Negro planet, a whole planet just dedicated to the old black disheveled guy shuffling out of the shadows at weird, inopportune moments to shame white heroes into doing things for black people...to the point where helping black people occupies all their time!!! Great scenes can happen like the Superman of Magical Negro Earth has to ask for permission to take a break from soup kitchen duties to stop a meteor from hitting earth. Judd Winick can write it and Denny O'Neil can edit.

From another perspective- the scene in GL/GA leads to Green Lantern re-evaluating his priorities and helping to bring down a corrupt landlord. It sparks his conscience and inspires him to work for social justice. The result is a satisfying if heavy-handed narrative.

The scene that Jenkins wrote just makes you want to punch a fictional reporter in the face. Hard. Repeatedly. I'm not sure if that was the intended emotional impact, but it's neither cathartic nor stirring.

See...see...the joke was, Brian was talking about writers making unclear points, right? And then -- then! -- there was this blog post Brian quoted in which the guy misinterpreted what Brian had said...and so what I said was...

Yeah, never mind. If you have to explain it, it's not really that funny. Moving on!

To be fair, at least one of us should've gotten that.

Ah, well. "Whoops", he said, as he ate some cake and proceeded on his way.

I didn't know the GL/GA run had fallen out of favour so strongly with American audiences. I bought the trades recently and I think the comic holds up rather well. They are occassionally clunky but also raised extremely interesting points, for example the fact that superpowers would not really cgange power relations. At the end of most stories, the heroes have only removed surface problems, while the underlying issues of poverty/exploitation/racism remain. Cut those comics some slack - I take them over "Final Infinite Countdown to Ultimate Multimensional Crisis" anytime.

I think that the main difference between the two scenes, and why they don't really deserve comparison, is that the GL scene is trying to educate the reader about a social problem, and the CA is not.

Yes, they are both silly arguements. But one of them at least deserves to be an arguement.

Theno

Why are Hal's gloves yellow?

Here's my scan from the Showcase reprint issue from around 1991: http://www.adamcasey.com/images/greenlantern76.jpg

I think that the main difference between the two scenes, and why they don’t really deserve comparison, is that the GL scene is trying to educate the reader about a social problem, and the CA is not.

i agree.

as someone already said, the GL/GA scene works on a subtextual (or "meta"... urgh) level. really it's about addressing the expectations and priorities of the reader as much as - or more than - it is about Hal's. the Cap scene just doesn't work on that level, especially since CW aimed squarely for Hollywood-style realism.

doesn't make it a particularly strong argument by the old black guy, of course, but... i think it's still oddly effective. i know it affected ME when i first read it: it was one of those things that i had just never really thought about at the time as a young superhero comics fan... and i am black.

Wow. What an absurd comparision. And frankly an offensive one that suggests that the author lacks a nuanced understanding of questions of race.

It is perfectly common and reasonable for people to point out that a powerful person has failed to address the concerns of their community. Consider this hypothetical. Let's say you have AIDS. The president in this hypothetical has failed time and again to include funding for AIDS research and treatment in his budget. Now, as a person with AIDS, you are also human. The hypothetical president in the same year approved funding for federal marshals for airplanes. Now, since you are a human and humans sometimes fly in airplanes, you are a beneficiary of this funding. Yet it would not seem out of place for you to say "the president has done nothing for people with AIDS." The speaker in this context is not saying that "nothing the president has done provides benefits to people with AIDS." Rather the speaker is saying, "the president has done nothing to address the SPECIFIC concerns that are particular to people with AIDS." Thus, the president's actions have shown insensitivity to the problem of AIDS and consequently disrespect to the people living with it.

Similarly, Green Lantern stopping Sinestro or Dr. Polaris may benefit African Americans because they hold membership in the broad category of humans, but GL has done nothing to address those concerns that are specific to African Americans as opposed to the broader community. In theory, GL could be a closet racist. It could be that he saves the world specifically out of a sense of loyalty to other white people and black people only benefit incidentally. By analogy, if an anti-aircraft gun shoots down a plane that is about to drop an H-bomb on your city, this is very good for the rats in your city who will not be h-bombed as a result. But it doesn't mean that the gunner has sympathies for the rodents or is concerned about the specific challenges faced by rodents-- traps, poisons, cats, etc. In fact, GL's failure to confront the injustice of racism on his homeworld while flying around space looking for wrongs to right on other worlds suggests that he doesn't see racism on earth as a concern worthy of his attention. The speakers comments are astute, articulate, and damning, both to GL as an individual, and on a metatextual level of comic books in general for having heroes confront imaginary supervillians rather than addressing real world injustices.

TO the speaker, Sinestro, Dr. Polaris, and other such costumed menaces undoubtedly seem far removed from the concerns he faces in his daily life. When he is searched and question by a cop simply for walking in a white neighborhood, this is not because of Sinestro. When a bank engages in redlining and makes it impossible for residents to engage in upkeep of his community, this is not because Dr. Polaris is making its financial decisions.. When he gets passed over for job promotion against a white guy with less experience and skill, it's not because Hector Hammond brainwashed his boss. When his kid is shot by a cop and an all-white jury acquits, the cop isn't Black Hand and Star Sapphire isn't on the jury. And when Martin Luther King is shot, it isn't by the Weaponers of Quard. The high flying adventures of Green Lantern seem utterly irrelevant to the real-life concerns of a man in racist society. Green Lantern has failed to address the injustices that plague this man.

Finally, it's not entirely clear that the things that benifit the white community and the establishment that GL defends always benefit the black man. As the white man has demonstrated himself time and again to not be the black man's friend, what's good for the white man is not necessarily what's good for the black man.

When the Moors invaded Spain this was a very good thing for Jews in Spain. Moslems almost always treated Jews far been than Christians did, a fact that Jews who now ally themselves with the US against Palestine and Iraq (if you don't think the US is an enemy of Palestine, then please consider who pays for Israel's weapons) would do well to remember.

Perhaps some of the alien invaders that the JLA is always fighting back would treat the black man better than white Americans once they took over. They might not send him to die in VietNam, they might not assassinate his leaders, they might not brutalize the women of his community who work for civil rights. Frankly, to the black man, the alien invasion took place 500 years ago. The fact that that the aliens have their own cop to protect them isn't really something that he is going to be heartened by. Let's say you were the Silver Age Braniac's bodyguard. Are the people of the bottle cities that Sinestro kidnaps supposed to see you as their hero for protecting their kidnapper-- even if some of the threats to Sinestro might also compromise your safety? Let's say in this hypothetical that Brainiac was an accepted member of Coluan society and it was a social norm of Coluans to kidnap cities from their homeworlds and put them in bottles. If Colu had superbeings who defended it from invaders, say the Justice League of the Continent between 33 and 64 longitude and 23 and 45 latitude (Coluans are nothing if not precise), would you consider them your heroes if they defended Colu from invaders, but did nothing to provide redress to the bottledwellers, the great-grandchildren of the kidnapped denizens of their respective planets? Why would you assume that the aliens would be any worse to you than the Coluans have been? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The panels posted above are among the most poignant, powerful, and astute in the history of comics, and the glib attack on them represented by this post reflects a fundamental lack of appreciation to one of the most courageous and ethical comics ever printed. The irony is Brian seems possessed of the same kinds of rationalizations that probably prevented Hal Jordan from confronting racism before this moment. "I'm looking at the big picture-- I can't be bothered with the specific concerns of individual communities." The difference is that Hal is at heart a hero, a person devoted to justice, and when confronted with his own hypocrisy, he slumps in shame and has the moral courage to admit his error. Brian, instead of jeering at these panels, you'd do best to reread them--and perhaps consider following Hal's example.

Adam, Omar summarized the opposing position as well as I could, so rather than basically regurgitate what he said, I'll just point you to his comment above.

I'll reiterate two very basic questions:

1) How could one write a coherent superhero genre story in which the heroes materially address social ills like racism, etc.? Tales in which Captain America punches a Klansman do not count, by the way, for the blindingly obvious reason that punching a Klansman does not address racist social structures in any meaningful way.

2) If such a comic was written, would it have any affect whatsoever on the nonimaginary world, 99.9% of whose inhabitans don't read sodding comics in the first place? That is, if fictional character Hal Jordan undoes millennia of racism in the fictional universe published by DC, thereby bettering countless fictional minorities, is anything other than the ludicrous power fantasy of a different political group (as opposed to the standard ludicrous fantasy of beating up Sinestro to save the omniverse this week) really being produced?

I agree with Omar. It's similar to the discussion I had in a recent comments thread here about whether Spider-Man should use Mary Jane to address eating disorders. Who is it really helping?

I've looked over Adam's post a bit more, and I'm still not sure what he thinks should be done in these stories. Does he want Hal Jordan to start blowing up banks that engage in redlining or something? Or overthrow the government?

You start demanding that, you've left the superhero genre behind. It can address real-world concerns, but it has to do so in a more sophisticated allegorical mode than these sorts of clodhopping efforts at "relevance" are capable of inhabiting. At best, having characters who are essentially designed around the use of violence wreak vast social change is a rather disturbing "benevolent dictatorship" sort of fantasy. (Frank Miller loves those, of course; his major critique of Superman et al. seems to be that they Haven't simply taken over the world and forced it to be better for its own good.)

Superhero comics read as direct rather than indirect political allegory are indeed antidemocratic, even fascist. This is why it's so much more interesting to find the indirect elements than to focus on the way in which power fantasies are -- gasp! shock! -- about power and then demanding that it be your power fantasy rather than someone else's.

As tot he rest of his post...well, it doesn't hold up at all, really. The Moors being better for the Jewish population of Spain doesn't seem to me to have much in the way of direct or immediate logical connection to the Palestine-Israel conflict. That latter problem has far more to do with rather specific claims to land and political autonomy, as well as with the particular political event that was the founding of Israel.

Prior to both Wahabbist Islam's rise in prominence and late-19th and early-20th century Zionisms, there isn't much conflict between Islam and Judaism, and they do share some solidarity as the "Others" of Christian Europe. But late political modernity and the demand for the state form as the mode of ethno-religious representatio, a historical force that transforms conceptions of ethnicity in the first place, has led to all manner of quite virulent conflicts. The Middle East -- and what a cartographically and historically loaded term that is -- is a flashpoint for reasons that really don't speak much to the prior political age or episteme of Moorish Spain.

Along the same lines, Adam has to invent a hypothetical sort of villain for his JLA example; you'll find no such thing in the comics as published, of course. Despero, Kanjar Ro, Zazzala, and the rest were generally portrayed as something between horriblemilitary dictators or outright specieist or racist conquerors who figured that all humanity was fit for slavery. And I notice as well that he stumbles again into the desire for benevolent dictatorship, for the aliens who conquer us but at least aren't racist and therefore are somehow morally superior. In short, it seems to me to concea an argument for totalitarianism. (I say "seems to me" because I invite other, more generous interpretations. I don't like calling people totalitarian sympathizers, not least because I doubt most people are such.)

And of course Adam neatly steps past the way in which the Moors were still rather far from ideal rulers, or even particularly humane ones. Similarly, the alien conquest example seems to assume that there will always be an oppressor and an oppressed; the hope expressed in these hypotheticals is not for a world without oppression but merely for a world in which prior oppressors get their turn under oppression. In short, it is history as an endless cycle of vengeance and violence. I'd much prefer that we bend our imaginations to utopian or at least ameliorative concepts of history and the political.

No, the demand that superhero comics do these sorts of things more generally is just not a particularly well-considered one upon examination. It's a demand that a mode of fantasy and a rather restrictive genre forsake itself for the psychological comfort of a small segment of its readership, or in some cases that the genre indulge the worst of its elements and allegorizations for that same reason rather than work to find the best of its possibilities.

In the end, it's an argument that profoundly misunderstands the role and the workings of fiction, mistaking its ability to reflect and allegorize the world for an idea that a change in the representation might change the world reflected and allegorized.

Oh, and of course he gets the history a bit wrong as well; the Caliphate of Cordoba periodically expelled the Jews. And when it collapsed, it was replaced by quite intolerant successors.

1) How could one write a coherent superhero genre story in which the heroes materially address social ills like racism, etc.? Tales in which Captain America punches a Klansman do not count, by the way, for the blindingly obvious reason that punching a Klansman does not address racist social structures in any meaningful way.

It's beyond me.

But I don't take that to mean it's beyond EVERYONE, y'know. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is a farce based on the premise that crossdressing is hilarious. Toni Morrison's BELOVED is a ghost story.

I'm basically of the mind that the right artist can do anything with ANYTHING.

2) If such a comic was written, would it have any affect whatsoever on the nonimaginary world, 99.9% of whose inhabitans don’t read sodding comics in the first place?

Who knows? I'm an art history minor, and it's pretty clear to me that anyone tying to find out the effects of art MOVEMENTS on real world history is an excersize in baseless speculation 99.9% of the time.

I think there's a possibility an individual work of art can change the world for the better. At least it's a nice idea.

So your answer to my questions, Mark, is basically, "I dunno but someone must?"

At best, having characters who are essentially designed around the use of violence wreak vast social change is a rather disturbing “benevolent dictatorship” sort of fantasy. (Frank Miller loves those, of course; his major critique of Superman et al. seems to be that they Haven’t simply taken over the world and forced it to be better for its own good.)

In fairness to Miller, this is the vein in which superheroes were created. If you look at Seigel and Shuster's first couple of dozen Superman stories, a benevolent dictator is exactly what he was. He singlehandedly imposed his will on everyone and everything through violence in the aim to create his own utopia. Like you, I think it's a horrible way to portray them, but I don't think it's fair to single out Miller as some kind of fascist when many of the early superheroes, especially Superman, were created in this exact vein as well.

In fairness to Miller, this is the vein in which superheroes were created. If you look at Seigel and Shuster’s first couple of dozen Superman stories, a benevolent dictator is exactly what he was. He singlehandedly imposed his will on everyone and everything through violence in the aim to create his own utopia. Like you, I think it’s a horrible way to portray them, but I don’t think it’s fair to single out Miller as some kind of fascist when many of the early superheroes, especially Superman, were created in this exact vein as well.

The difference being that Miller's doing it now, decades after the genre moved beyond those roots, and in a time period after we've seen in spades what dictatorships are capable of. If he were writing in 1938 I'd cut him some slack; he's not.

The 30s Superman wasn't a dictator-- he was an equalizer. The only people he forced his will on were those who profited off of war and economic exploitation (e.g. war profiteers, corrupt politicians, slumlords) and those who terrorized others (e.g. wifebeaters).

We're not talking about an Authority or Squadron Supreme type who assumed state power-- the 30s Superman was more of a Robin Hood with superpowers. He recognized that in a society where the rich, powerful, and corrupt make the rules, only a powerful person willing to break the rules could achieve justice for the common person. V of V for Vendetta operates under a fairly similar philosophy. I've generally looked at the 30s Superman as a fantasy version of the anarchist concepts of "propaganda of the deed" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed) and "direct action" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action).

30s Superman did things like wage war on drunk driving and traffic incidents in order to make driving meet his personal standard of safety. He also intervened in wars, like that early story where he forces two dictators to fight each other in a boxing ring. That's more than equalizing, he was imposing his will and engineering society.

I dunno, Adam, it seems to me that to see 1930s Superman as an emblem of those political philosophies would require overlooking the deliberately Nietzschean trappings of the character's name and origin story. Nietzsche's philosophy is hardly anarchist in its principles, after all, and the very concept of a "Super" human would seem to put the lie to the idea of equality in the first place.