Batman, Guantanamo, and Me

Strange thing, I’m discovering. I’m 35, and comics suddenly are meaning more to me than they have since I was in high school.

In order for you to understand, I’m going to have to give you some background. On some comic book plots. If you’re normally not into the comic-booky goodness on this site, bear with me. I have a larger point than how cool Bloodhound is. (Still cool, by the way. Cancelled, but cool.)

In case you are planning to pick some of these books up, I’ll be discussing plot points from Identity Crisis, The Omac Project, and the “Sacrifice” crossover that ran through last month’s Superman and Wonder Woman titles.

The main one is Identity Crisis. Quick rundown: Sue Dibney, wife of the Elongated Man, was murdered. One of the chief suspects is Dr. Light, a villain long considered a buffoon. During the course of the investigation, the reader discovers a secret kept by a handful of Justice Leaguers – that years ago, Sue had been raped by a much more dangerous Dr. Light. The League apprehended him moments later, but even caught, he claimed he would do it again. And these members took a vote, and decided to alter his personality magically so that he couldn’t. (They had previously erased their secret identities from other villains' minds; this was a bigger deal.)

As this was being done, things got complicated. Batman arrived on the scene, and saw what the League was doing. He objected, and the members opted to use the magic on him, as well – stripping away those ten minutes of memory.

So Light becomes a joke, and Batman is missing ten minutes of time. It might not bother anyone else, but they’re not Batman. They say it’s often not the crime that gets you in trouble, but the cover-up, and that’s the case here. In The Omac Project, we learn that Batman eventually pulled his memory back together and realized he can’t trust even the Justice League. He sets up spy satellites to monitor superhuman activity.

These have secretly been taken over in a comic-book/SF way, by a guy named Max Lord. Lord has limited mind control power, but he’s spent years working on a way to control Superman. He sets him off, having Superman beat Batman into intensive care. Wonder Woman tries to stop him, and she and Superman get into a knock-down, drag-out. Eventually she gets her Lasso of truth around Lord, and she asks him: What do I have to do to eliminate your hold on Superman. Unable to lie, he says “Kill me.”

She does.

So this is pretty much where things stand. Batman has spied on his fellow heroes. Wonder Woman has killed a man. Superman, while he didn’t participate, actually knew about the memory wipes of supervillains and didn’t say anything; they helped keep Lois safe, after all. Now some supervillains have regained their memory and have attacked the Justice League’s loved ones. And the time has come to vote again as to what to do.

This stuff has been knocking me out. It’s not all hero vs. villain stuff, or at least not all black and white. It raises all sorts of questions: Is safety worth constant surveillance? How far should a hero go to protect others? What happens when you cross a moral or ethical line in order to protect someone? Will you cross it again? Is the line permanently redrawn? And if we draw that line too timidly, and fail to act with enough force, are we culpable for any deaths that stronger action could have presented? Can we trust the people who protect us? Should we?

These questions lead to questions about superhero tropes in general. What right, for instance, does Superman have to send someone to the Phantom Zone? Why does Batman get to break and enter to find evidence of a crime, or beat up thugs for information. Why is it okay for Green Lantern to put a supervillain out of harm’s way in a green cage on the moon, but if I lock up someone in my basement I’m a dangerous sicko?

It makes me think of the internment camps at Guantanamo Bay, and the prisons in Abu Ghraib. Locking up people without due process is wrong – but is it keeping us safer? Some people think so. Torture is wrong, but some people think it’s effective, despite the evidence that the information it yields is unreliable.

What the comics let me – and people all over comic book message boards -- do is this: They let us discuss these issues of ethics, morality, power and security while keeping our preexisting political viewpoints out of it. The ideas we’re talking about are relevant to the times we live in, yet aren’t charged with the rhetoric that inflames most political discussion (including my own, certainly).

Also, it lets me look obliquely at these issues without reducing me to a quivering lump of despair and fear. Terrorists will try to attack us on our home soil again, just as Dr. Light promised to find Sue once he escaped.

This is not a new idea, I realize. Science fiction and fantasy have always addressed contemporary issues, and comics are no different. But it’s taken me a while to articulate it, since it’s more a metaphor of tone than an analogy with direct correlations in the plot.

And I have to say that I’m hooked. What I’m getting lately are adventure stories that have relevance to my own life. But instead of trying to deal with reality in the plot, their hook is in the theme: What moral compromises are we willing to make to keep our loved ones safe? It’s a fascinating struggle, and one I don’t think any hero can truly win.

Rob