O (new) Superman

[Mister Six]

To be fair, right-wingers should get to have superheroes too. And it's hard to think of anyone more appropriate for right-wing superheroics than Tony Stark.

The really dodgy stuff, though, was The Dark Knight which was basically a two-and-a-half hour justification for Bush's actions in the war on terror.

[Tiny Poster]

During the Civil War, however, Tony Stark wanted all the people with powers to register with the government - and if they wanted to be heroes, they would receive appropriate military training. I'm with him on that one.

[SavageHedgehog]

The Dark Knight certainly could be read that way (and that was certainly my gut reaction), and some US conservatives have certainly embraced it, but I think a lot of fans of the film feel that it's the opposite as Batman uses a lot of agressive post-Patriot Act tactics to stop the Joker, and for the most part they don't work. See the article at the bottom here.

And of course Conservatives are allowed "their" films, I'm just surprised Iron Man's conservative bent has, to my knowledge, rarely been acknowledged, when usually critics are all over that stuff.

[Dead kate moss]

The 'problems' with Iron Man as a movie is the rent-an-arab-terrorist bad guys. Maybe. But Stark's journey is realising his company making weapons is a very bad thing.

Oh, I guess he kills people a lot for a super-hero.

[CaledonianGonzo]

There's a huge phalanx of right-wing action heroes - James Bond, Rambo, Dirty Harry, Judge Dredd, Rorschach, Jack Ryan.  I bamlem Jack Bauer...
The lone vigilante cleaning the streets of scum and villainy is the reactionary wet dream.

And of course Conservatives are allowed "their" films, I'm just surprised Iron Man's conservative bent has, to my knowledge, rarely been acknowledged, when usually critics are all over that stuff.

It's slightly less black and white than that, though.  Tony Stark has his Road to Damascus moment in the hills outside Kandahar and returns to actually battle the out-of-control military-industrial complex in the form of Obadiah Stone.

[Ocho]

a surprisingly strong ending that doesn't devolve into adolescent-style sex gags.

I've hear that the big twist at the end was something Grant Morrison gave to Millar, it possibly being a remnant of Morrison, Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid's abortive Superman 2000 pitch.

[SavageHedgehog]

It's slightly less black and white than that, though.  Tony Stark has his Road to Damascus moment in the hills outside Kandahar and returns to actually battle the out-of-control military-industrial complex in the form of Obadiah Stone.

Yeah, but by the same token the main villain in most action films, even stuff like First Blood Part II, is some American cop or general who has gone too far.

Perhaps my issue is less that they've been too soft on Iron Man so much as they've other action films too seriously before

[thecuriousorange]

Well isn't it obvious?

I'll settle for nothing less than this. In HD. Nay, 3D!

[Dead kate moss]

I'd be surprised if they didn't use this classic tale

[Mister Six]

The Dark Knight certainly could be read that way (and that was certainly my gut reaction), and some US conservatives have certainly embraced it, but I think a lot of fans of the film feel that it's the opposite as Batman uses a lot of agressive post-Patriot Act tactics to stop the Joker, and for the most part they don't work. See the article at the bottom here.

TL;DR... well, not really, but when I come across sentences like 'The Joker stands for an inverted (or freaked) Kantian justice. In many ways, we are looking at the reversal of Kantianism into Don Giovanni Zizek has described many times' I give up. I don't have the background to entirely comprehend that sentence and I don't want to put the elbow grease in just to argue about a film on the internet.[nb]Also, stuff like 'If these rightwingers really think that Osama bin Laden is like The Joker as he appears in The Dark Knight, that gives us another, intriguing, insight into their fantasies.' Er, yeah - and if the film's written with rightwing intent then wouldn't it make those same parallels, irrespective of the actual truth? Bit solipsistic, that.[/nb]

As for his stuff not working... really? Hong Kong businessman presumably gets locked up thanks to Batman's extraordinary rendition. The Joker is eventually taken down thanks to Batman's phone-tapping technology. It doesn't always work, sure, but it does win out in the end. And isn't that itself a pro-Bush message? 'Yeah, our Patriot Act, anti-constitutional, anti-human-rights laws might not work right now, and they might not work tomorrow, but they will do eventually. And when the bad guys are locked up, nice Morgan Freeman will turn off the big computers that are looking over your shoulder and everything will go back to how it was. Until then you'll have to put up with it for your own good.'

It'd be a more convincing deconstruction of Bush-era anti-terror legislation if all the morally dubious shit didn't come to anything and Batman won out by sticking to habeas corpus. But he doesn't.

[Mister Six]

The 'problems' with Iron Man as a movie is the rent-an-arab-terrorist bad guys. Maybe. But Stark's journey is realising his company making weapons is a very bad thing.

They're not terrorists.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not sure I agree that superheroes are generally right wing. They are usually saving people without causing death, for no material gain, and are often shunned by society for being different. The only "superhero" I can think of who is a bit right wing is The Punisher (there's an afterword in the first Punisher book where the editor basically says he hates liberals) but he's more of an anti-hero. I'm not even sure how a "liberal" superhero would be any different.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Coincidentally, this just appeared in my Twitter feed.

Batman: Plutocrat

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/01/batman-plutocrat?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29

[El Unicornio, mang]

That's quite amusing, but pretty ludicrous.

[Mister Six]

Not sure I agree that superheroes are generally right wing. They are usually saving people without causing death, for no material gain, and are often shunned by society for being different. The only "superhero" I can think of who is a bit right wing is The Punisher (there's an afterword in the first Punisher book where the editor basically says he hates liberals) but he's more of an anti-hero. I'm not even sure how a "liberal" superhero would be any different.

Isn't there something a little right-wing about people who appoint themselves the arbiters of right and wrong and go around meting out extra-judicial punishments to those they deem to be transgressors?

[Mister Six]

Coincidentally, this just appeared in my Twitter feed.

Batman: Plutocrat

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/01/batman-plutocrat?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29

I like that a lot. When I interviewed Grant Morrison[nb]KLANG![/nb] he pointed out that while Superman has a bit of socialist cred, Batman will always have the stigma of being an aristocrat who goes around beating up the working classes.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Isn't there something a little right-wing about people who appoint themselves the arbiters of right and wrong and go around meting out extra-judicial punishments to those they deem to be transgressors?

Not really, if you don't draw a line across what is right and wrong then basically no-one is guilty of anything. It's not like Batman and his pals are going around attacking abortion doctors or software pirates, they're tackling folks who are intending to cause massive destruction or world domination. I can't think of a single example of a superhero nabbing a bad guy and me thinking "Oh leave him alone, he's not that bad!".

Batman will always have the stigma of being an aristocrat who goes around beating up the working classes.

LOL! When does he do that? (wasn't lol'ing at you, by the way, just got an image of him swooping down on some miners and beating them up whilst laughing that amused me)

[Nik Drou]

Although Tony Stark is very much a capitalist (and, post-'Civil War', a murderer) and the movie can certainly be read as pro-US intervention, that wasn't quite my interpretation of the film. It's worth pointing out that the movie Stark is compelled into action through realising innocent blood is on his hands as a result of his weapons manufacture.  You could argue that's one of the more direct criticisms of the US arms industry you'll see in a modern popcorn movie, particularly as he specifically targets his own brand weaponry in his assault on the terrorists.  As flawed as I felt the movie was, it nevertheless helped reaffirm my fondness for the superhero, which had been dwindling up till that point.  The scene starts around 2:30 mins in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGzbWFgjM0&feature=related

It's a broad facsimile of the kind of footage we feel we've seen countless times.  Poor people in a Middle Eastern/African country, suffering under some form of brutal oppression.  In a break from reality, however, we're allowed to see a figure in red and gold drop from the sky to deliver a swift and vivid justice with little ambiguity, before flying off without asking for a fee.  That may be an appallingly trite reduction of the issues facing that area of the world, but it also carries the essence of the superhero in a way that felt meaningful in itself.  It's totally understandable to see it as 'Iron Man is the US and we need to go in and save these guys and possibly give them some malls to hang out in while we're at it!", but that's not what made me (metaphorically) pump my fist in the cinema (simmer down...). 

Iron Man is impossible.  It's not so much American Imperialism saving the day, more an idealised expression of the best of our technological ingenuity.  It's art saving the day.  It's someone in stupid, gaudy attire rescuing us from a plane in freefall and, in doing so, affectionately throwing our own world into sharp relief.  I don't think anyone encapsulates this better than Superman.  Alan Moore, now thoroughly and justifiably sworn off superheroes for the rest of his days, summed him up beautifully as 'a perfect man who came from the sky and did only good' in the introduction to 'Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?'.  As jaded as I now am to comics in general, I still have a lot of affection for Superman and still get disheartened when he's dismissed as boring or 'too powerful'.  He was always one of the more complex characters and one of the trickier to get right in a story.  Other characters, the most obvious being Batman, have angst-ridden, psychologically convoluted reasons for their pursuit of crime.  Superman does it because he feels it's the right thing to do.  Is there a better reason?  He has Godlike powers, he could rule us all, he could bypass all our corrupt institutions and ideas of due process and what-not, but instead he wears a red and blue suit and saves us from villainy, time and time again.  That'll always more interesting. 

Anyhow, I liked Superman Returns and it's a shame we won't see more of Brandon Routh.  Zack Snyder has a good visual sensibility for comic adaptations, so he'll presumably bring a lot of the larger than life action that was missing in the last outing. 

[Mister Six]

Not really, if you don't draw a line across what is right and wrong then basically no-one is guilty of anything. It's not like Batman and his pals are going around attacking abortion doctors or software pirates, they're tackling folks who are intending to cause massive destruction or world domination. I can't think of a single example of a superhero nabbing a bad guy and me thinking "Oh leave him alone, he's not that bad!".

Just because you agree with him doesn't make him right. You fascist.

LOL! When does he do that? (wasn't lol'ing at you, by the way, just got an image of him swooping down on some miners and beating them up whilst laughing that amused me)

Well I think he was using 'working classes' as shorthand for 'lower classes'. It was said with some humour, but the point was there: you don't see Batman fucking up Nike for exploiting third world sweatshops or bringing down brokers for doing dodgy trading.[nb]Yeah, because that wouldn't be fun to read about. But still/[/nb]

[Mister Six]

Other characters, the most obvious being Batman, have angst-ridden, psychologically convoluted reasons for their pursuit of crime.  Superman does it because he feels it's the right thing to do.  Is there a better reason?  He has Godlike powers, he could rule us all, he could bypass all our corrupt institutions and ideas of due process and what-not, but instead he wears a red and blue suit and saves us from villainy, time and time again.  That'll always more interesting. 

Interesting intellectually, but not emotionally. Which is why, as you say, few people have really got a handle on how to write a Superman story. It's not a concept that lends itself easily to fiction (or, at least, not serialised fiction which thrives on crises and angst).

[Tiny Poster]

Are there any left-wing action movies? And I don't mean War Is Hell films.

Iron Man 2 has some pretty direct Ayn Rand references, plus there's the whole theme of Tony's private property vs the Government's desire that he give up control of his design.

Here's Iron Man co-creator Stan Lee:

It was the height of the Cold War. The readers – the young readers – if there was one thing they hated it was war, it was the military, or, as Eisenhower called it, the military-industrial complex. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer. He was providing weapons for the army. He was rich. He was an industrialist. But he was good-looking guy and he was courageous... I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like – that none of our readers would like – and shove him down their throats and make them like him.

[Dead kate moss]

The Batman (or any superhero) as crypto-fascist beating on the poor has some legs... but in comics those thugs are usually the side-order to the real threat, which is some dastardly psycho evil villain hellbent on world domination/opening a portal to Hell/giving Batman some tricky riddles... and ONLY Batman/Moon Knight/Brother Voodoo/Hellcat can stop them!


Also, it's an insult to equate poor criminals with poor non-criminals. In the simplistic world of comics, you don't have to be a mugger just because you are poor. Oh, and in the real world too.

And Batman doesn't take on Nike sweatshops for the same reason Superman doesn't fix all the world's problems. They don't do what politicians - or WE - should be doing. (Conveniently).

[biggytitbo]

Disapointed that Nicholas Lyndhusrt has been overlooked for this again.

[Slaaaaabs]

Disapointed that Nicholas Lyndhusrt has been overlooked for this again.

Lyndhurst can't play Robin AND Superman!

[Nik Drou]

Interesting intellectually, but not emotionally. Which is why, as you say, few people have really got a handle on how to write a Superman story. It's not a concept that lends itself easily to fiction (or, at least, not serialised fiction which thrives on crises and angst).

I would say there's certainly an emotional level to it.  There's a lot of pressure and responsibility on him, more than any other hero in the DCU, and he has to be the one to not be angst-ridden or conflicted.  Not to say he's never self-reflective.  Incidentally, alongside All-Star Superman - which is smashing - I'd recommend John Byrne's 'Man Of Steel' series.  For me, it's still the defining rendition of the character.

I'd also say that Superman is possibly the most adept  for serialised fiction, simply because he can go anywhere and do anything.  There's no real end to his adventures.  Having said that, I don't really think any character warrants their stories told indefinitely.

[Mister Six]

I would say there's certainly an emotional level to it.  There's a lot of pressure and responsibility on him, more than any other hero in the DCU, and he has to be the one to not be angst-ridden or conflicted.

Yeah, but it's hard to do that without him angsting about not being the angsty one. Ennis's Hitman story (lined upthread) does a good job of covering this ground but obviously a lot of other writers have trouble with it.

Not to say he's never self-reflective.  Incidentally, alongside All-Star Superman - which is smashing - I'd recommend John Byrne's 'Man Of Steel' series.  For me, it's still the defining rendition of the character.

I only know Byrne from his modern-day, [banned troll]-esque miserable old man persona and that has pretty much put me off reading those books. Well, that and the story where Big Barda gets mind-controlled into doing a porn movie. Byrne is a fucked up person.

[SavageHedgehog]

Are there any left-wing action movies? And I don't mean War Is Hell films.

Stuff like On Deadly Ground and the Billy Jack series have left-leaning morals, but to some extent they're undone by the genre's need to showcase the hero indiscriminately killing people in the most glorious and imaginative ways possible

[Nik Drou]

Yeah, but it's hard to do that without him angsting about not being the angsty one. Ennis's Hitman story (lined upthread) does a good job of covering this ground but obviously a lot of other writers have trouble with it.

Oh, the last thing I like is seeing Superman angst too much about anything really, much less angst about angsting (whatever that would look like). 

I only know Byrne from his modern-day, [banned troll]-esque miserable old man persona and that has pretty much put me off reading those books. Well, that and the story where Big Barda gets mind-controlled into doing a porn movie. Byrne is a fucked up person.

Oh, certainly.  Nevertheless, His Man Of Steel series was still great (that odd Big Barda thing aside), as was his Sensational She-Hulk and I'm a fan of his artwork from that period.



I'd particularly recommend the first trade paperback.  Since his revamp, almost every change (largely for the better) to the character and his origin has since been reneged, which is a shame.

[Dead kate moss]

certainly.

Byrne's enemies have filled his Wiki entry with lies. You are not allowed to quote anything from Wikipedia on his board. And it's not clear from that story that Barda did anything porny, though that's what the villain was trying to make her do. He is a grumpy old sod though.

[Mister Six]

I'd particularly recommend the first trade paperback.  Since his revamp, almost every change (largely for the better) to the character and his origin has since been reneged, which is a shame.

I also find it incredibly hard to read comics with thought bubbles in them. Actually I find just about any of the old-school, pre-Watchmen-style mainstream comics almost painful to read. I came to superhero comics in a roundabout way, you see - through Vertigo in my early 20s, then looping backwards to mainstream DCU. The thought-bubble stuff just seems so hokey and clumsy it almost hurts.

My problem, I know, but I'll have to politely decline your suggestion (besides, I still haven't read any Cerebus and I only have room in my life for one deranged woman hater at a time).