Greetings to you all. I bring good tidings and bloggings of a comical nature. Comical as in the bloggings pertain to comics, not that they are of a jocular content.
SO! Blog! Blog, blog, blog, blog, blog. I even love saying the word "Blog". A bit of light and heavy, today. Light content and reasonably heavier content than you're used to.
The Heroic Age Feels Real.
The Heroic Age, as referenced in a prior post or two, is not becoming unavoidable clearer. Whether you dislike spoilers, solicits or not, it's near impossible to avoid announcements about who is on what team.
With that said, we got the alternate cover to the upcoming comic, The Avengers #1! I'm not sure if they're adding the prefix "The", but they should. It sounds better. I haven't shown the main cover by John Romita Jr., so I'll do that:
The Avengers #1.
Here's the new one:
The Avengers #1 (Greg Land variant).
I loved Romita Jr.'s Thor and Iron Man from the teasers, but I disliked his others. In the former, I LOVE his Captain America and dislike all the others. I guess I'll just have to see what it's like when reading. Though I gotta say, Wolverine? Give it a rest, man. Spidey has the chance to make the BIG push, the call-up to the main roster...and you cheapen it by throwing in Wolverine? Ehh.
I like the Land cover more, but it still looks anti-climactic.
Either way, the Heroic Age is feeling way more real to me now, though. Bendis has stated that it isn't the whole team, so if you consider that we have seven already...I think we're pushing limits. It depends on so many factors, though. If it's written well and so are all the characters, it'll blast off. I'm totally excited for it, man. It FEELS like the dawn of a new era.
I'm still most awaiting Secret Avengers, especially with the continued teaser posters. Silhouetted ones at that.
So, heroism and such out of the way, we move to the darker side of the arguably heroic spectrum!
Vigilante Morality in Comic Books.
The Punisher: If you don't shoot, you've got a death on your conscience. A death you could have prevented. If you do shoot you're a killer.
Daredevil: What kind of a choice is that?
The Punisher: The one I make every time I pull the trigger.
I was re-reading Daredevil's entry into the mini-series that was Dark Reign: The List, and there's a scene in there that got me onto thinking of something that I wanted opinions on.
We've seen it in Batman's stories inside and outside of film, we see it in Daredevil and we see it in The Punisher. There are countless other characters, comic based or movie based, that take vigilantism upon themselves.
Now, while we can all agree that seeing these people kick ass is awesome...how RIGHT or WRONG is it? Well, it's neither as morality is subjective, but for the purposes of this blog post, I am asking.
Some people have such a low level of faith or trust in the law that they feel vigilantism is justified. Me? I believe that if we're going to green light vigilantism, we might as well green light anarchy. If we green light anarchy, we're green lighting idiocy. Sorry, but anarchy is never going to work, ever. Proof? It never has. The world was once lawless and it sucked, it would suck again.
If someone kills your loved one and you kill them, I don't condone that. I UNDERSTAND it, I do not condone it. That's not really vigilantism, though.
Regardless, where do you stand?
Where do you stand in the case of people like Batman? This man stands so rigidly and firmly by his rule to not kill, he does so because his parents were murdered and he wishes to not be the same. The fact remains, though, that he could have saved many lives by killing the Joker.
In Dark Reign: The List (Daredevil), Daredevil is lured to a rooftop by Bullseye. Bullseye then reveals that he didn't want to fight, just distract him long enough to blow up the condemned building he was trying to help the inhabitants of. He then explodes the building, killing 107 people of all races, genders and ages. The most notable piece of this exchange is when Bullseye says this:
Would Daredevil have been justified in killing him? Could you?
Is that a different kind of vigilantism? Is killing those who YOU decide deserve to be removed from society a different kind to, say, killing someone who has killed many, with a view to preventing many more?
Give me comments, let me know how you feel about this and what you feel on the subject. I'm really interested.
---
I guess that's all for now, so I will see you guys and girls on Thursday with slightly bigger edition of Thursday's Comics than you've seen in a while!
Until then, peace.
-The Mast
