Wow! maybe we can get BatMan to fight Shrub and BushCo. next......

"...and in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand. Some men aren't looking for anything logical, they can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Alfred

from The Dark Knight.

Where do you think he gets the funding for his utility belt?

Batman is not a limo libural?

If anything, his tool is a corporate utility belt. Or something like that.

eom

that one of the companies was doing fairly political situations; the topic was increased government surveillance and registration of all mutants. Captain America refused to be a part of it and was assassinated outside a court house. Tony Starks, AKA iron man, a defense contractor was all for it and it caused a huge rift in the super hero world.






wow, i'm geeky

The Mutant Registration Act has actually been in their books for a while. What caused the Civil War was an attempt to impose the same legislation on ALL metahumans. The storyline ran for best part of a year and split the whole metahuman community, even fracturing several supergroups.

It obviously had a lot of paralells with Shrub's attack on civil rights. Both were triggered by huge tragedies, both started slow and, looked at a certain way, the pro-registration side's arguement seemed reasonable. Marvel fucked it up eventually by having one side the obvious bad guys rather than letting the fans make up their own minds.

People have difficulty with that in their real lives which is why they use escapist fare to, well, escape it.

Like you, I think the interesting bits are in the tension that comes with ambiguity. That's why I loved Joss Wheadon's story arcs in Buffy, why I love the darker Bat Man and Xena.

These characters are neither good nor evil. They struggle with kamma, dharma and the search for moksha. They all typify how our earthly intentions, desires and instincts come into conflict with the true duty of our higher nature. And the eternal, sometimes epic, struggle we face in order to bring our best intentions forward while reigning in the worst of our impulses.

That conflict is eternal and unresolvable (barring transcendence or moksha) and the authors faced a decision themselves whether to allow the struggle and ambiguity to continue or to make that decision for others....

On the other hand...they're just comics, right?

I present V For Vendetta, the Sandman series, Road To Perdition and Batman: The Long Halloween as proof. I will argue with anyone that those represent true art. Most comics aren't that good but then, no-one's ever matched Shakespeare either and people still write plays. Stan Lee used to ask people to imagine what a comic would be like if Shakespeare and Rembrandt collaborated on it. Maybe no-one's ever managed to do that but it shouldn't stop us trying.

I think the ambiguity in comics usually works in their favour. Batman is at it's best when the writers remember that firstly, Bruce Wayne is just a mask that Batman wears and secondly, Batman is every bit as unbalanced as his enemies (see The Long Halloween or The Dark Knights Returns). Professor X works best when the writers remember that he's every bit as much a fanatic as Magneto (and the third movie thankfully remembered that). The ambiguity of the early Civil War arc worked in it's favour, it presented both sides as flawed, human. Both sides had reasons for believing they were right. It was the first time I can remember when I heard comic fans arguing morality in the store. Wheedon managed to pull the same trick with Spike in the later seasons and the entire Angel series was built around concepts like redemption and atonement.

That's my primary complaint with Marvel as a company. I don't mind them doing these huge storylines but it bothers me when they don't let them mean anything, they don't have lasting consequences. DC are (very slightly) better because they (sometimes) allow big events to mean something. Jason Todd (the second Robin) was killed and his death had real, far-reaching consequences for the entire Batman line of books and he stayed dead for decades (he was recently brought back to much outrage from fans). Magneto dies and returns so often, he's practically got a revolving door on the afterlife and Jean Grey is very nearly as bad.

By the way, I just about recognised the reference to dharma but I have no idea what kamma and moksha are. I imagine I'd be familiar with the concepts but the words mean nothing to me.

Essentially:

kamma = desires
darmah = duty
moksha = transcendence

I used the words then went on to use the concepts in the following passages. Sorry I was not more clear.

Some of us will never forget what they did to enable Bush/Cheney.

:thumbsdown:

And hey,cool av.Glad others are using it! :)

The squirrels like the bird feeders. The dogs hate the squirrels. When I see the squirrels at the bird feeder I'll go over to the dogs and whisper quietly in their ears..."Ooooo...Godzirra!"

And off through the yard they tear. Of course, the squirrels are out of reach by the time the dogs get there...but it is fun to watch.

I remember the movie The Boys From Brazil and the Hitler clone used to say,"Cut!" when he had his dogs attack.

I like Godzirra better. :)