Wait... are either of these people even involved?
If you’re one of those people who spends as much time reading about stories as you spend reading stories, you’ve probably read that our villains tend to reflect our collective fears. It’s no coincidence that Invasion of the Body Snatchers came out during the Red Scare, they say. To the postwar Japanese, Godzilla was more than a rubber sea monster. Seventies cinema is chockablock with dirty cops, corrupt politicians, and The Man. During the eighties, it seemed like every movie villain was a Russian, a drug dealer, or a Russian drug dealer. If you’re old enough to remember the exact point at which cable news started getting stupid, you will remember a story or twelve about how Independence Day and other movies where landmarks get blowed up real good were really about our anxiety around the coming millennium. Even before you knew what Y2K was, you were scared of Y2K.
Comics sort of play by these rules, too, although I could spend all night trying to figure what Doctor Doom has to do with any actual thing. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills came out right as televangelists were gaining notoriety and political power, and sure enough, that’s who kidnaps Professor X and tries to use him for mutant genocide. (Like you do, from your church basement.) During the Watergate era, the puppet master behind Captain America’s foes, the Secret Empire, turned out to be none other than sitting president Richard Nixon himself (as you may remember from my favorite Top 5 I’ve ever done). I could write a thesis paper on how The Amazing Spider-Man is ultimately a book about paranoia: the majority of the villains trying to kill him, when unmasked, turn out to be people he knows personally.
“My first high school crush… is the stepsister of the Molten Man??” Oh, Peter; you’re just getting warmed up. Don’t get too close to any of your professors.
I tend to fall down these analytical rabbit holes, especially when I read a couple dozen comics in a row. What does this story say about the writer? What does it say about us, the readers? What does this book really say about the world we live in? What was in those brownies?
I went on such a binge this weekend, and I found myself reading probably too much into Avengers vs. X-Men. This event, after all, is one of the latest in a string of Marvel blockbusters in which the Good Guys stand up for what’s right to defeat their opponent, the Other Good Guys. The premise would be interesting enough to me in a vacuum, but the fact that it’s something that’s happening again fascinates me.
In House of M, the villain was an emotionally troubled former teammate. To ponder what exactly drove her mad is to ponder the nature of living in a world as insane as the Marvel Universe.
In Civil War, Iron Man’s team fought Captain America’s team. Lifelong friends came to blows, cloned each other’s corpses, and locked each other up in gulags that somehow no one is mad about anymore over issues of public safety, personal liberty, the people’s right to know, and who Mark Millar could write the most out of character. I still think about the issues that series raised, and what it says about the times that birthed it. Especially space Gitmo, which again, Iron Fist was getting locked up in but no hard feelings.
World War Hulk, of course, is what happened when Hulk’s friends staged an intervention and blasted him into space rehab. The villain is a friend who delivers the ultimate “not cool, bro” before everything returns back to normal.
Secret Invasion and Dark Reign had actual villains, but they were 1) Villains who were pretending to be your friends all along and 2) Villains who were declared good guys by taking advantage of a gullible media and a corrupt system. No subtext there, I guess. Moving on!
Remember Shadowland? Daredevil.
Remember Messiah War? Bishop.
Even Fear Itself, which attempted maybe-not-entiiirely-effectively to be about the existential dread in the zeitgeist, did so by making a bunch of goodish guys (the Thing, the Hulk, the Juggernaut) into agents of the apocalypse.
The Ultimate Universe has been getting in on the fun, too. The Ultimates are currently fighting history’s greatest monster, Reed Richards, after imprisoning him in the Negative Zone. (How do you like it, jerk?) At the moment, Ultimate Spider-Man Miles Morales’ biggest villain is… his uncle. How’s that for a twist in the usual Spider-Man mythos?
But what to make of all this?
Well, as I was reading AvX, I thought, “Hmm. Two opposing sides made up of basically good people trying to do the right thing but with very different ideas about how to go about doing it. Each side is declaring that the other side’s plan will result in catastrophic ruin if implemented. Having each accused the other side of being reactionary, being racialist, and/or trying to destroy an entire population, it is now entirely impossible for them to work together and get things done for the good of the people they ostensibly protect. The atmosphere between the groups is now so toxic that all compromise is impossible.”
I just cannot shake the feeling that all of this sounds familiar somehow.
I can’t say whether any of this stuff happens on purpose. I do think the issues of the day have a way of seeping into the groundwater, and it makes following the brightly colored adventures more rewarding. That’s where our heads are at. Who needs Doctor Doom when we have each other?
It could be worse. I also spent part of this weekend catching up on Joe Keatinge’s excellent Glory and Hell Yeah, and in both those books the biggest threats seem to be the hero him/herself. I can’t even begin to probe that can of worms.
Jim Mroczkowski would love to be able to blame everything on Loki.
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I agree. AVX and Civil War and all of the heroes splitting into two camps and basically having it out with each other stuff is highly reminiscent of the current political climate in the United States, Red states and Blue states. Each half is out to “save the country” in a way that the other views as “destroying the country.” Marvel has always attempted to be set in “the real world” and so it makes sense that they are taking the current disquiet of the country and funneling it into a superhero story. Are the Avengers Conservative/Republican? Are the X-Men Liberal/Democrat? Well, one side doesn’t trust an individual girl to be able to responsibly wield the “reproductive” power of a force than can give rebirth to an entire species and wants to basically keep her locked away without her consent for “her own good.” The other side wants her to do whatever she feels like doing, her body, her choice, and all of that. So, you tell me?
Not sure I buy the analogy you lay out totally but it’s interesting. I tend to think the X-men come across as the more fundamentalist group, especially with Cyclops as the leader. It’s not for nothing that Wolverine even refers to Scott Summers as something akin to a religious zealot in an issue of Wolverine and the Xmen.
@KevinAB, while it is always tempting to make guesses about such things, I would say that you should be weary of trying to get an exact fit out of a metaphor. I think that you could find any kind of rationalizations to say most any member of either team is a democrat or a republican (or perhaps even a Libertarian).
Oh, sorry I was unclear. I don’t ACTUALLY think the members of either team are Republicans OR Democrats or have any specific political affiliation really. I was saying that the specific conflict the two teams are having is similar to the “current” heated political battles happening across the country. I think the conflict references, intentionally or not, the so called “war on women” in the United States. I don’t think the members of either team have any specific political views or affiliations in-line with what we see here in the real world. Again, it’s the conflict that makes me think political party struggle and NOT the actual Avengers or X-Men. As far as I know, none of them have specific political leanings.
I think the hero vs. hero stories are more common because the issue of heroism is increasingly being questioned in comics. Is Frank Castle a hero? How about Batman? We relate to these characters but if they existed in the real world, I don’t think we’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Writers are recognizing the weirdness in their behaviors and are taking attitudes to their logical conclusions.
Nolan’s Dark Knight ran with this question of perception and heroism. I’m sure it’ll be fleshed out much greater in the Dark Knight Rises but my takeaway was that heroism is very subjective and that the demands these characters are under put them at odds with most everyone else. I think AvX makes this arrangement too childish and obvious by simply seeking out big action scenes at the expense of character but Civil War was about personalities to a large degree.
@Andrew, agreed. AvX is a great story premise that is instead being turned into a lousy video game.
Great article and this sort of spirals into why I’ve fallen away from Marvel over the past several years: the feeling of unrelenting darkness.
There are certainly other aspects of the current Marvel U that bother me, but lacking the sense that the heroes are (for lack of a better phrase) not so heroic anymore really bothers me. I don’t mind the occaisional blurring of the line but when the line is blurred for virtually all the characters and for so long, I don’t think it can really be called a line anymore.
I was talking with a friend of mine who actually colours some books and we talked about how even the colour palette used in most Marvel books is muted and dark. It just adds to that overall tone for me.
And just to clarify; I’m someone who has refused to read Spider-Man since One More Day because I felt like that story made a fundamental change to the core of the character. So, I do occasionally take these things pretty seriously (perhaps moreso than necessary, but then, as fans, don’t we all do that at times?)
I still pick up the odd Marvel book, often mini-series. But it’s been getting easier to simply not to. I dropped AvX pretty early on and everything I’ve read since just reinforces that as a good idea.
this is my kinda article. thought provoking. also, i had to do something that i rarely have to do while reading things. i had to look up a word. zeitgeist. so this article was informative on a few levels. kudos.
i often enough find myself falling down those same analytical rabbit holes and often enough people tell me i read TOO much into things. that i should just enjoy it for what it is. i always reply that i prefer to read with my eyes open.
funny how this seems to be (mostly) a marvel trend. reinforces that joke that marvel villains are so bland that the heroes have to fight each other to keep things interesting.
I never saw the similarities of AvX with our current political system until you pointed it our….Then again I’m not reading any AvX books.
I think the mirror to this “Villians are the New Heros” is also interesting. Not only are we on a big redemption kick, but we’re also joining up with the bad guys more often (to fight a bigger bad). Even if the source material isn’t doing it, we seem to be kind of rooting for the bad guys, now, too.
Or maybe i’m just so Team Loki that I can’t see past him 🙂
I think it is just easier for the writers to come up with reasons for the heroes to fight one another than it is for them to come up with new villains. After all if SHIELD can be run by HYDRA why bother to have HYDRA at all?
I’ve thought about this recently as well. There are still plenty of stories where superheoes fight supervillains. The superheroes usually win too. Therefore they are the best amongst the overall superhuman community. So my conclusion is that the toughest challenges presented are the disputes between the heroes, thereby serving as the best material for events. I suppose the greatest flaw in my argument is that the events usually take greater than the majority of the calendar year to tell, but hey.
I’ve been thinking this for a while…thanks for putting it into words!
Great article, I miss when a year ago ifanboy was all about this instead of constant ads and previews.
I can understand that sentiment, but I am 100% sure that iFanboy is “all about” whatever it is that WE, the iFanbase want. I am pretty sure that they see what articles get the most hits and tailor what they do accordingly. The reason we have more “ads and previews” this year is because they get more views than articles like this, on average I think. All I’m saying is, don’t blame the iFanguys for giving us what we “ask” for with our clicks and comments.
I can assure you that the content has not fundamentally changed from a year ago.
Actually, that’s wrong. We have way more original features now than we had a year ago.
Yeah, and every single Monday at this exact time, for years, Jim has posted a column. Like clockwork.
the biggest issue for me is that you know its just a temporary spat. The hero won’t stay evil forever, so the stakes aren’t that high to start out with. Kinda like two athletes on a team yelling at each other on the sidelines. Its all good by the next quarter. Now if its your best friend or relative that turned into pure evil, that’s tougher, but i feel like it has to be almost permanent for it to have a lasting effect.
I find Glory and Hell Yeah refreshing amongst the current variety in comix.
I observed it recently when one of those Enigmatic New Readers told me he liked World War Hulk and asked why the Marvel heroes keep fighting each other.