JLA/Hitman #2

[history79]

15 pages of 45

Comments

[dcbanacek]

Oh yes, where Ennis nerfs the one guy in the League who doesn't have powers so his pet can show how a "hard man does a hard thing" or some such nonsense.

[beyondthefringe]

I'm going to take a different tactic and say that this story is interesting in confronting the ridiculously high standards to which we hold our brightly-colored primary superheroes, while asking what sort of choices might be made by those without the same resources, powers, moral high ground...

And yeah, sure, I know comics are full of antiheroes and vigilantes who happily go around committing murder and ultraviolence, and it's ridiculous every time we ask how the Punisher can exist in the same world as Captain America and go unchecked.

It's interesting how the major heroes of the Avengers and Justice League, as well as others like Spider-Man, are held (and hold themselves) to the highest standards, and act as the pole against which everyone else is judged/is held accountable/rebels against. And then you throw in someone like Tommy Monaghan with his own set of experiences and moral code, and when he's confronted with an impossible, necessary task, he does things in a different way. Was he a hero? To some of the people he helped, sure. He was also a lying, cheating, voyeuristic, exploitative killer, and his story ended with him dying in one last stand doing one last decent thing.

I find a certain fondness for Hitman that I don't for many of Ennis' other "hard man" characters, and I think that's because unlike the Boys or Preacher, he didn't get a happy ending or a get out of death free card after everything he did and went through.

Plus, in the era of Batman-is-God, you have to neutralize him or else there'd be no need for a story involving someone else. :)

[agent8]

I seem to remember and explanation, by I think, Batman, several years ago.
The costumed heroes hold themselves to a higher moral standard and practice the "no-killing" rule because (1) their power and training allow them that luxury, and (2) that's the only way the public will accept them.
The public will accept costumed vigilantes fighting crime and turning over the crooks to the police and the justice system. They will not accept costumed vigilantes acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
It's a case of "If we crossed that line the public would turn on us in a heartbeat and our effectiveness would be ended. They would never trust us again, including during the world threatening cases like alien invasions".
Also, I believe, it gives the public a way to, psychologically speaking, believe that they're in control of the heroes, that they have set the limits on what the heroes will and won't do.

But Tommy is not part of that. He's not a superhero and he's certainly not part of the JLA. He doesn't have the power and training they do.
He was a Marine combat vet and then an assassin before he got his powers. That training and those experiences is what defines him, not the X-Ray vision and telepathy that Bloodlines gave him.
So, when it came down to it, that's what he fell back on. As he said, he's just a guy with a gun, what else was he supposed to do?

Quite frankly, the JLA come across looking like a bunch of self-righteous prigs who insist that everyone follow their moral code. I have to wonder what the reaction would have been if it had been Steve Trevor, or just some unnamed generic soldier, who had shot the astronauts. I sincerely doubt Flash, Bats, etc would have gotten up on their moral high horse then.

Personally I think Bats is still just pissed at him because Tommy threw up on him that time.

[filthysize]

We love the illusion of accountability, basically. How true it is or not is debatable, but we tolerate handing power and authority to cops, soldiers, and politicians in our societies because we believe that when they misbehave, there are official channels in place to hold them accountable (I know, I know).

This take on superheroes is one more akin to celebrities. As free agents, their power and authority over the public is dependent on their best behavior, hence the moral high roads.

I think that's largely why the MCU could get away with their superheroes crossing these lines, because they're more or less conscripted by a governing body in that universe and they can all afford to be unconcerned with their conduct during officially sanctioned missions (but it also makes their Civil War even sillier than the original to me).

[bradygirl_12]

The public will accept costumed vigilantes fighting crime and turning over the crooks to the police and the justice system. They will not accept costumed vigilantes acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

Exactly. Why does Superman rescue kittens from trees? Because he's a nice guy and he knows that such actions lessens any fear of a god-like being. Batman can be fear-inducing. Superman can't.

[wanderersoul25]

For a guy with a lot of disdain towards superheros, Superman's one of the few that Ennis has always held in high regard, which definitely shows here as well as in the big guy's appearance in the main Hitman book.

[lego_joker]

I've theorized before that the reason Ennis really hates superheroes is because he thinks (rightly or wrongly) that they don't deserve to be their own genre. That Superman was genuinely innovative for his time, but pop-culture really only needs one of him, and all his successors have done is dilute the pool and rehash the questions/themes he raises in increasingly-uninteresting ways.

[filthysize]

This is the story that always makes me think of Ennis as one of the great Superman writers. I like it way more than Hitman 34.