Jim Shooter and the human race

[superboyprime]

One of the most fascinating things about Jim Shooter's writing is how, if you read a large chunk of it, you start seeing the message that the human race is really kind of crap. It's an undercurrent that runs through his body of work. All his characters, from the most noble superheroes on down, will display these startling moments of petty or pathetic behavior. They might be noble and good as much as 95% of the time, depending on what character you look at, but in that other 5% they become these nasty little weasels.

This shouldn't be confused with grim 'n' gritty or shades of grey, though it overlaps with those trends (see: Hank Pym's breakdown). Generally, it's less about moral compromise and more about behavior that's just incredibly small or petty.

Shooter was recently hired to re-revamp the old superhero property Dr. Solar: Man of the Atom. "Re-revamp" because this is the second time he's done it; the first was during his days as editor-in-chief of Acclaim Comics, where he re-imagined the character for the modern day. Now he's done it a second time, this time for Dark Horse and the 21st century. Issue #1 came out two months ago, and as you can see, the aforementioned tendency in his writing is still in full force.



The new series is a full reboot of the property, a separate continuity from all previous versions of the character. Issue #1 beings with the protagonist, Phil Solar, having only recently acquired his superpowers.



Dr. Solar begins to recount the act of industrial sabotage and resulting accident that gave him his powers, going over the whole affair.







Later...



Later...




There's also a second strand of plot about a hack sci-fi writer who the quantum wave grants the ability to bring his character to life.







There you have it, humanity as Shooter characterizes it. Our hero is someone so noble that godly power won't corrupt him. The characters are so steadfastly convinced of his moral strength that they can even make jokes about him referring to himself as god. This same person... is also someone who makes creepy passes as much younger female co-workers, and is now engaging in voyeurism too. And when someone gains the power to bring his creations to life, *of course* what he does to test it is try to create a living sex-toy. That's the world of Dark Horse Comics' version of Dr. Solar, and that seems to be the world of Jim Shooter's fiction.

Comments

[freezer]

So was Solar supposed to be a blatant ripoff of Captain Atom? Because he sure feels like one.

[stolisomancer]

If he's a rip-off of absolutely anyone, it's Dr. Manhattan. I don't think "older guy gets a skintight bodysuit and powers involving radiation" is enough to call him a Captain Atom ripoff, especially with what's being shown here.

[freezer]

This version of Solar is pretty much Dr. Manhattan. But I was referring more to the original versions of both Solar (Gold Key) and Captain Atom (Charlton).

[wizardru]

Given that Dr. Manhattan is a reworking of Captain Atom (the Watchmen originally being about the Charlton characters, before DC decided they wanted to use them), that's not that surprising.

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

Solar did appear 2 years after Captain Atom, which is suspicious, but it was also the start of the nuclear era so atomic accidents were fresh on everyone's mind.

[filkertom]

Ah, Shooter. One of those writers I really never wanted to encounter again. Now I'm having flashbacks to the second Superman/Spider-Man crossover.

[suzene]

Medic!

I quite enjoyed that..

[steverodgers5]

Mainly for his depiction of Doom. He also wrote Victor pretty much spot on for the original Secret Wars.

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

I much prefer this view of the human race to the one typically espoused in the sci-fi comics (and novels e.g. David Brin), with Green Lantern as the worst offender: humans are much better than other species because we are more emotional, have morality blah blah blah. This "human racism" bothers me to no end, especially because if you look at our planet, we've fucked it up considerably and oppress/kill non-native species that are likely sentient.

[okkult3000]

"oppress/kill non-native species that are likely sentient."

Aliens?

[bittercupojoe]

There's reason to believe that some species of whales and great apes would fulfill at least some of the requirements for sentience, depending on a few factors. Hell, pigs are extremely intelligent, for that matter. However, humanity tends to use criteria that say "well, only WE are sentient beings on this planet," ignoring the fact that, as a species, we aren't that far advanced from some of our nearest competitors.

[turtlefu]

There's a problem with that I have too.
Anybody who's taken a basic anthropology (let alone HISTORY) course, should know that human beings have a done A LOT. So saying "Oh, yeah, humans aren't that smart, or very advanced" is some pretty self-loathing shit, because humanity has had too many advanced, unique civilizations to just ignore.

[silicone_soul]

There's nothing particularly "self-loathing" about admitting that most of those advancements are as much due to opposable thumbs and high manual dexterity as they are to intelligence, though.

[icon_uk]

I like the notion that we are, as "Homo Narrans" (or "tale-telling animals"), the only species which appears capable of passing information to others which we did not directly experience ourselves, we have a sense of ourself in the abstract which allows knowledge to be passed effectively beyond our own lifetime.

[bittercupojoe]

Except that this is absolutely not true. Hell, there's a famous psychology experiment that shows that animals will enforce arbitrary rules, even if they don't necessarily know why they do them. We may be the only species that does it through vocalizations (and, again, there's some research to show that we may not) and a "narrative," but we know that other animals have rules as arbitrary and superstitious as any religion, and that they will pass them down generationally.

[turtlefu]

That's laughable.

Compare Architecture to nests. Sure, buildings started out as nests, but have advanced to the point where they use complex calculations involving physics, as well as materials that are almost never found in the wild that had to be discovered and made, a science in and of itself.
Which is more complex, and developed more over time?

"Arbitrary rules and superstitions" is not the same thing as scientific progress.

[bittercupojoe]

Of course it's not, and nobody is saying that it is. I was responding to icon_uk's assertion that only humans pass down knowledge generationally. However, I would like to point out your rather humanocentric attitude towards sentience. Hell, even ethnocentric. You do realize that the attitude that "they aren't as advanced as us, therefore they aren't really human" is pretty much the cornerstone for every bad thing one civilization has done to a less developed one, right?

I'm not saying that pigs or whales or mountain gorillas are our equal. I am saying, perhaps, that there isn't just "sentient" and "non-sentient," and that we would do well to remember that. After all, would you want to be on the other end of the equation, i.e., an advanced (let's say alien) species with, I dunno, advanced fourth dimensional sensory and logic strucutres decides we're not sentient because we can't see and understand time forward and backward?

Some great apes are at least as smart as some developmentally disabled humans. Would you say those people aren't sentient? If so, does that mean they can be treated as you would an animal, with experimentation, etc.?

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

Um, dolphins, apes, whales, tool-wielding corvids. How much intelligence/sociality does an animal need to have sanctity of life?

[hyperactivator]

Why do animals with simalarites to humans in deserve sanctity? Isn't that just another form of self facination? Is it even usefull? Scientificly yes as it allows us to study how certain traits and behaviors develop. But all the animals listed above are not human and not like us enough that most of us would hesitate to eat one before we would eat eachother. Thats just nature.

Is it wrong to mindlessly destroy them or torture them. Hell yes. But they are NOT human.

And all talk of non human human level or above intelligence is hypothetical. Does it exist? Most likely. Have we found it yet? No. It's just us. Humans.

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

"Is it wrong to mindlessly destroy them or torture them. Hell yes."

Well, good.

"But they are NOT human."

Looked at an evolutionary tree lately. Some are pretty damn close. Technically, Homidae shouldn't even be a family. We are too closely related to apes (morphologically and genetically) and should be in Pongidae. Rather than self-fascination excluding non-human from 'sancitity' or sentience or intelligence or similarity, it is actually our ego that draws the imaginary line of separation.

[philippos42]

You mean native species?

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was a typo. I meant native to Earth.

[geoffsebesta]

Yeah, I never liked Shooter as much until you described him. You're right -- he shows humans as profoundly flawed but still somewhat noble and sympathetic. That's a tough trick to pull off.

If only his dialogue were better.

[recognitions]

Well, Ferro Lad's death was good.

[halloweenjack]

And when someone gains the power to bring his creations to life, *of course* what he does to test it is try to create a living sex-toy.

Well, hell, I would. I mean, yeah, I'd probably come up with the Justice League next, but come on.

In general, I think that Shooter is a better writer when he's not in charge of himself. His most egregious excesses (Hank smacking Jan, Moondragon raping Thor) came at the height of his power as Marvel's EiC.

[starwolf_oakley]

Here's a link to a Bob Layton interview. In it, he mentions how Jim Shooter was "universally disliked" at Marvel.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=124

[geoffsebesta]

But that's just not true at all. Read the Owsley interview, or I can just tell you -- I know a lot of folk who worked under Shooter, he was not at all "universally disliked." The folk I know had a lot of respect for him.

[stubbleupdate]

The TV newsreader is the one from the Rapist Search meme

[halloweenjack]

My god... I've never seen that before.

[jetwolf]

THANK you. I recognized the picture but couldn't place it. That was driving me nuts.