Superman Unchained #3

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[darkblade]

Can we please stop postulating moral dilemmas for superheroes (Superman in particular but it applies to pretty much every hero in a shared universe to some extent) that will never be resolved because any meaningful look into the issue would force the world they live to stop resembling our own in any way shape or form?

All it does is highlight the genre's flaws only to go back to glossing over them until the next time someone wants to make the point. If you don't have the capacity to follow through on an idea it's better to forget it than half-ass it.

[silverhammerman]

Motto.

It's stuff like this that's made me swiftly fall out of love with Scott Snyder's writing. It seems like he just can't muster the earnestness that's essential to playing the superhero concept straight.

[rainspirit]

I like the argument he's making. It's not necessarily right, but it's not played out either.

Be interesting to see Superman's counterpoint, if he has one.

[superfangirl1]

I'm sure Superman will have one in a latter issue. But after Lane insults Superman.

One of General Lane's man inform him of a drone terrorist attack going on in Tokyo. So Superman and Wraith go on to handle the situation.

[freezer]

That's where this trope falls flat for me, because rarely do we see the hero getting griped at give the obvious counter:

"Then what, General? Say I took down your warlord or dictator? What then? Do I take over? Handpick one? Oversee the picking of one? Or go in, kill the bad guy, and cross my fingers that the guy that comes after isn't an even bigger menace? And what would the rest of the world think of that? You don't trust me now? Just think what would happen to my rep if I went around playing international judge, jury and executioner?

I'm not here to fulfill your war fantasies, General."

[joetuss]

In other news tmnt out of the shadows will be available for download next week

[icon_uk]

Umm... whilst I'm sure this is good news for TMNT fans, is there any particular reason you chose to post that info here?

[matrix_dragon]

... Why does DC hate Superman so much?

[freezer]

They don't hate Superman; just fun.

[applemagpie]

He's not 'cool' like Batman is?

[big_daddy_d]

Jeebus Superman is not a god and getting involved in international affairs is a hell of a lot more delicate than some people make it sound. Get tired of them treating him as if he has to do EVERYTHING! Settle your own damn issues you ass.

Now to more positive matters. Second page, first and second panel. OWNED!! I laughed so hard. I've never seen anyone just punt Superman, not even Doomsday or Darkseid!

[shadur]

... We've already GOT a 'verse where Superman does exactly this. We've had several, in fact, and its most current incarnation is called "Injustice: Gods Among Us".

Seriously. Stop asking Superman to solve geopolitical problems and especially stop accusing him of murder for refusing to go on a global unilateral interventionist spree.


But since the writer seems to be pretending he's making an actual argument, let me just write a potential response for Supes here.

"You want me to start actively dedicating myself to making a better world regardless of who may or may not want me to intervene? Fine. Let me just start by incarcerating a few hundred bank CEOs that together decided to crash the global economy just to line their own pockets. After that I'll put the entire 1% into a single jail and lift it to the edge of breathable atmosphere until they agree to an increase in the minimum wage, reasonable protections for workers and a social justice system. Then I'll pick up the entire board of directors for BP and drop them off by the Gulf Coast and make them pay for the clean-up of the Deepwater spill. And after that I'll probably have time free in the afternoon to sweep Afghanistan and Iraq and punch every Coalition soldier who's committing civil rights abuses in the face and coming back here to do the same with every corrupt police officer in the country before dinner."

"What? Why are you looking at me like that, General?"

[espanolbot]

As I say below, people who make arguements like this and the "Batman should just kill his rogues gallery" one generally don't understand the characters in the first place, and would also be in the first in line to complain if they DID do things like that.

[applemagpie]

Also completely feel that these kind of moral political issues should stay out of superhero comics. The mainstream superhero genre is very fantasy-based, so bringing up real world international political issues doesn't make the genre seem more mature and realistic- it just highlights how fantastical and childish it is. The point of superhero comics is that it's supposed to be fantastical and fun. Because international politics aren't as simple as 'good guy takes out bad guy and problem is solved', like it is in superhero comics. Superman goes into Sudan and takes out the dictator and it becomes a non-divided and stable country, instantly capable of peaceful self-government? On what f*cking planet? And what about issues of sovereignty? Also the majority of global suffering and conflict are caused by things like deep set economic systems and racial divisions, not 'evil dictators'. I know General Lane is supposed to be an ass, but the fact that this kind of moral conflict is brought up at all doesn't make the comic look more intelligent or mature at all /end rant

[espanolbot]

My guess is that he loved the Bush era and is now throwing a tantrum over not being able to do what he likes in the name of whatever agenda the government tells him to enforce.

[sadoeuphemist]

Ok so if the US army has a giant flaming superdude who is bigger and stronger than Superman, why haven't they sent him in to take down that Sudanese dictator etc etc etc?

[espanolbot]

Because Lane thinks that as an independant operator he isn't beholden to governmental destrictions like Superman is, and if HE were Superman he'd be using the power in that way, meaning that he's judging Superman by the same warped standards as Bill did in the second Kill Bill film (ie Clark Kent is how Superman sees humanity, as clumsy, oafish and weak, and that the persona is intended to mock his adopted race)?

[mr_cyn1cal]

This entire line of reasoning is completely and utterly laughable - it can't be taken seriously in the context of this story, for the following three reasons:

1) "General, I really don't think I should have to explain the concepts of blowback or unintended consequences to a United States Army General...but it's pretty clear I do."
2) "You're claiming the world is more safe now than in 1938? Did you just forget the Cold War? The proliferation of nuclear weapons? Terrorism? I'm not even getting into the supervillains or alien invasions here. No, I'm sorry, but on a purely geopolitical level the world is LESS SAFE than it ever was, meaning your little black-ops military operation has been wholly INCOMPETENT from Day One."
3) "Yes, I care about the public - I believe power such as mine requires a check and balance - again, not a concept I thought I would ever have to explain to an American."

But good dear (insert name of preferred deity/magic invisible spaceman here) this is goddamn stupid on every conceivable level. Everyone involved in this comic should resign in shame.

[espanolbot]

See, this is less a comment on Superman, as it is a comment on General Lane. General Lane here is talking more about what he himself would do if he had access to Superman's power, and the assumption that because Superman has so much power and doesn't use it how Lane would, Superman is somehow less of a hero for it.

Lane is a guy who should know very well the amount of restrictions that would come to him over what someone in his position can and can't do in the military, so he feels that because Superman has no restrictions he must be a god-like sociopath who deliberately choses to not do the things Lane would do if he were Superman.

This is the same backwards logic that is shown by a lot of people who don't understand why Superman does why he does, be they some versions of Lex Luthor or even out of the DCU with the observations the titular Bill made about him in Kill Bill volume two.

Arguing that Superman is a mass murderer because he saves people one at a time instead of taking over the world and ruling it like Sauron is something only someone with an fundemental lack of understanding of what Superman is would say. Same as people who say that Batman should kill his rogues gallery in order to save the lives of their potential victims.

It's more a lack of moral fibre in those making the comments than any fault of the superheroes themselves, as those same people would probably be first in line to complain if Superman or Batman DID start acting like fascists by imposing their own rules upon the world.

[shadur]

At the very least, the moment Superman or Batman started imposing their own rules on /them/.

Like I said, it's telling that the first examples that spring to Lane's mind are atrocities that happen far enough away that he can be philosophically concerned about them because nothing that happens there will ever affect /him/.

[alschroeder3]

Okay....now don't get me wrong, I actually think it's a question that SHOULD be addressed, as Doctor Doom did to Superman in the second Superman-Spider-Man team-up, at least occasionally.

But think what this is saying.

The US military has had---since 1938---a being more powerful than Superman under their control.

Since 1938????

So---when Pearl Harbor happened---why wasn't the Japanese fleet immediately sunk??? Why wasn't Tojo and the warlords of Imperial Japan immediately rounded up and put on trial in front of the World Court for the League of Nations or whatever? Siegel did a little fantasy about what would happen if Superman COULD have jumped into World War 2, and it had him dumping Hitler and Stalin in front of the World Court.

The ONLY action that we know this "Wraith" did was the wholesale slaughter of the people in Nagasaki, AFTER the first a-bombing of Hiroshima, simulating a second atomic blast, according to UNCHAINED #1.

That doesn't even make any SENSE. In the real world, given the tremendous slaughter that probably would have been involved in trying to occupy the Japanese Islands without the atom bomb, at least a case could be MADE for using atom bombs to win the war, even if you violently disagree with that decision. But slaughtering millions when, in the Wraith, they had a precision "weapon" that could target ONLY the upper echelon of the Japanese war machine, amounts to a war crime...slaughtering millions of innocents when you could have easily taken out only the commanders.

To say nothing of Auchswitz and the other concentration camps in Germany and elsewhere. If he's Superman-plus, surely he has the various visions, also, so you can't say he would have been ignorant of what was happening. Same thing applies to ANY totalaritarian regime or massacre from 1938 on. 9-11? If the military had a Superman-plus, and wasn't afraid to use it, why wasn't Osama Bin Ladin immediately plucked from Afghanistan? What about massacres in Rwanda? The killing fields of Cambodia?

I wouldn't ask this except they THEMSELVES are bringing this up.

And....does anyone else think the Wraith is awfully mild-mannered and too compliant with a government that shouldn't even have the power to control him?

I haven't picked up this issue yet, but this part raises real questions.

[sadoeuphemist]

I dunno, they used to say that the JSA couldn't just snatch up Hitler because he had the spear of destiny that kept them off German soil or something, maybe Hirohito had something similar?

The same goes for Osama bin Laden. And the Hutu paramilitary forces. And the Khmer Ro-okay you know what let's just accept that superhero comics are pretty juvenile and are not at all equipped to handle questions like these.

[flash_fan]

Y'know, I don't mind people entertaining these type of questions in Superhero comics. It's getting old now because comic creators have been beating that particular horse long past it's death. Honestly though, I've assumed through most of my life, there was enough Darksied invasions, attacks from Atlantis, Skrull-Kree conflicts etc that Superheroes genuinely didn't have time to sort out the kind of complex human rights issues General Lane is talking about (and over simplifying). They're the type of issues you can't solve with a Bat-a-rang or a wad of webbing to the face. Most Superheroes don't play the part of political reformist or lobbyist. They to to work more as threat response teams.

[icon_uk]

It would be nice if Superman's answer to this tired cliché rant from Lane was to hand him the tpb of Gruenwald's "Squadron Supreme" series and just say "Because".

[starwolf_oakley]

Chris Claremont covered this in SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN: WHOM GODS DESTROY. After Peark Harbor was attacked, Superman sank the Japanese navy. Also in that series, there's some type of nuclear option if Superman involves himself in political matters outside of America.

[q99]

"What we REALLY need is hard supers making hard decisions!"

*'Hard supers' have been in existence for decades, make a fraction of the change of the icon of the Leaguers*


I remain unconvinces by this standard line, since they never seem to do that well themselves, and often backfire. Heck, the only two 'proactive' teams I can recall working are JL Elite and X-Force.