Amazing Spider-Man #54

[cyberghostface]

Comments

[themajesticmoose]

"All I did was bring back a psychopathic serial killer and have him assemble an army of white supremacist terrorist gutter trash and go on a spree of violence and terror!

I can't POSSIBLY be blamed for any of the bad things that happened as a result!

Actually it's all your fault that everything bad he did happened because you tried to stop him!"

I really hope we're supposed to think that Harry is a psychotic moron here because if we're supposed to take any of this raving seriously...yeah no

This is the same bullshit from Secret Empire where Spencer had all the heroes wringing their hands and crying about how it was all their fault bad things were happening instead of...you know...blaming the Actual Nazis who were the ones DOING the bad things

God it's like Nick Spencer's writing gets worse with every new "Story" he works on.

[dan_ingram]

The crux of Harry's point is that Spider-Man is responsible for every bad thing that's happened while he was a hero

Which, from a meta point, is technically accurate. But a dumb meta point all the same

[themajesticmoose]

And in universe is clearly absolute nonsense

Apart from Green Goblin and Venom NONE of Spidey's other villains are wholly motivated by some personal vendetta with Peter

If there was no Spider-Man there would still be a Vulture, a Doctor Octopus, a Chameleon etc...the only thing that would change is that they'd have gotten away with their various deranged supervillain schemes and thousands, possibly MILLIONS more people would have died horribly

It's the same tired nonsense arguement as those writers who are like "Oh if there was no Batman there'd be no Joker!" when the actual truth is that if there was no Batman there WOULD be a Joker and Gotham would be a city sized mass grave full of the horribly disfigured bodies of his millions of victims

Superheroes don't create villains. Villainy creates heroes.

This is especially true in the Marvel universe where almost EVERY SINGLE HERO (Spider-Man included) came into existence as a reaction to some terrible injustice or threat.

This is not a chicken or the egg scenario. There's no question of what came first. Injustice came first and the heroes of the Marvel universe rose up to fight it to protect and save whoever they could

Saying that the heroes are bad people because they can't save everyone is like saying no one should be a doctor because they can't cure every disease

[cyberghostface]

It's the same tired nonsense arguement as those writers who are like "Oh if there was no Batman there'd be no Joker!" when the actual truth is that if there was no Batman there WOULD be a Joker and Gotham would be a city sized mass grave full of the horribly disfigured bodies of his millions of victims

That may not be the case. Joker's entire being revolves around Batman and it's been shown that if there weren't a Batman he would undergo a significant change. I.E. 'Going Sane' and the end of Snyder's run both had Joker living a normal life only to revert when Batman resurfaced.

This doesn't make Batman responsible, obviously.

[dcbanacek]

That may not be the case. Joker's entire being revolves around Batman and it's been shown that if there weren't a Batman he would undergo a significant change. I.E. 'Going Sane' and the end of Snyder's run both had Joker living a normal life only to revert when Batman resurfaced.

I don't know, the guy IS crazy so it's entirely possible he'd have fixated on someone or something else as his "raison d'etre".

Jim Gordon or Harvey Dent for example. So there might be an Elseworld out there where Two-Face protects Gotham from the Joker. Hmmm.

[donnblake]

At least one, in the Old West, but in that case Bruce was the Joker, having developed a split personality in an attempt to cure Harvey.

[owlbrigade1]

We have people in this real life world who dress up as "superheroes" [which is all Batman is, a dude in a costume] and we have yet to have them inspiring a superpowered mass murdering clown to terrorise any city. Unless McDonald's PR team is hiding something big that they aren't telling us, of course. If it hadn't been Batman then Joker would have latched on to someone else, he's an obsessive looking for an obsession. The illness always comes before the target, not the other way around.

Although we've also a surplus of asshole billionaires who exist above the law, and we've not had any superpowered icon of justice rise up to take them down either. Well, apart from Sacha Baron Cohen.

[cyberghostface]

"We have people in this real life world who dress up as "superheroes" [which is all Batman is, a dude in a costume] and we have yet to have them inspiring a superpowered mass murdering clown to terrorise any city."

People like Joker don't exist in real life period. Not even the more realistic ones like Ledger or Phoenix. (For that matter, neither do people like Batman. Anyone who actually tried to fight crime in a homemade costume as opposed to just dressing up for publicity would get shot in the face immediately.)

In the context of the fictional universe he's a part of Joker is very much dependent on Batman.

[themajesticmoose]

That may not be the case. Joker's entire being revolves around Batman and it's been shown that if there weren't a Batman he would undergo a significant change. I.E. 'Going Sane' and the end of Snyder's run both had Joker living a normal life only to revert when Batman resurfaced.

Though Zero Year made it canon that the Joker was a serial killer and a monster long before Batman ever showed up in Gotham and the only thing that changed when Batman appeared was that his skin got paler and his hair got greener.

Which I much prefer because I've always found the idea that the Joker is some kind of victim to be ridiculous. Trash like the Joker aren't victims who had a bad day. Their animals who just wanted an excuse

[cyberghostface]

And before that someone else did a Joker origin where he was already a criminal (the one where he talked to a bunny in the moon). Other writers have given him different origins (who knows how long Three Jokers will last) and explanations. The one in The Killing Joke is the only one that has stayed the test of time.

[delanna]

I think this argument would hold more weight if the Joker's initial crime spree was a response to Batman in some way. But, from what I recall, the Joker was a criminal and a killer first, and only became obsessed with Batman after he repeatedly stopped him.

The closest we have, to my knowledge, of Batman being intrinsically tied to the Joker's creation is the 1989 Batman movie. And even then, the Joker was a murdering psycho before he got a clown face.

[cyberghostface]

The Killing Joke, the definitive origin, showed that he wasn’t a killer until after he fell into the acid.

[nyadnar17]

Now. Joker is latched at the hip to Batman now.

Batman didn't inspire Joker. Joker was a monster before Batman, he was a monster before he ever imprinted on Batman, and if Batman died he would be a ticking time bomb just waiting for the next "interesting" person to latch on to.

[cyberghostface]

Joker was a monster before Batman, he was a monster before he ever imprinted on Batman

There are different takes but for the most part it's accepted (again, 'The Killing Joke' is and will always be the most known origin) he was a normal sadsack before he fell into the acid after being chased by Batman.

[sabertoothlotus]

I mean, isn't Batman at least sort of responsible, tangentially, for creating Joker? No Batman to foil the Ace Chemical plant heist, nobody falls off of a definitly-not-up-to-OSHA-standards catwalk into a vat of who-knows-what... No Joker, right?

[mazway_75]

There is a great Animated episode of Batman put "on trial" at Arkham with the new DA (who hates him) forced to defend him. She gets through on how scores of the inmates were already on their way to be freaks, Batman had nothing to do with it.

" I used to believe Batman was responsible for you people, but now I see nearly everyone here would have ended up exactly the same, Batman or not. Oh, the gimmicks might be different, but you'd all be out there in some form or another, bringing misery to Gotham. The truth is, you created him."

[themajesticmoose]

I love that episode so much

What I find hillarious is that writers keep trotting out the same "Do heroes create the villains they fight" arguements over and over when the truth is that a saturday morning cartoon from the 90's already addressed and debunked that idea better than most of these stories that think they are being so Deep and Mature ever did

[repto]

Yes! Also, quite doing meta-commentary that you won't actually address. "The existence of Batman leads to the existence of the Joker." Okay, so get rid of the Batman, then, as well as the Joker. Problem solved.

[angelophile]

I would like to give this comment a high five please.

[deh_tommy]

“White supremacist terrorist gutter trash”? Weren’t all the people Sin Eater ate the sins of rendered passive and docile through said sin eating?

Also, wasn’t the whole blame game a plot point in Secret Empire?

[dan_ingram]

If you're not blaming the hero for something at Marvel, you seem to be doing it wrong.

[dan_ingram]

Minor nitpick, but I don't recall Sin-Eater's people being white supremacists, just the usual idiot citizens being idiots.

Honestly, who was clamoring for the return of Sin-Eater? He had a good enough exit, he should have just stayed dead.

[themajesticmoose]

They're white, they are the kind of morons who think that "Sin" is a real thing and that anyone they don't like is a "Sinner" and that somehow they're "Righteous" in their violent and deranged cause, they're violent thugs following a ranting fundamentalist man-child and it's stated in the comics that they're targeting "Anyone whose different" in their violent and murderous attacks on innocent people

All of that sounds like the usual kind of bigoted white supremacist roaches that America's gutters like to vomit up on a regular basis. Plus given the timing of this story it seems pretty clear that they were inspired by the recent news about the various right wing millitia terrorist groups that have been all over the news with distressing frequency given the way they dress and act

[starwolf_oakley]

I've said Peter Parker's problem is he has a never-ending emotionally-stunting guilt complex.

Harry is saying Peter's problem isn't his guilt complex, it is that he thinks he knows better than everybody else. There MIGHT be something to that.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm going to withhold most of my judgment at this point because Kindred's arguments are laced with teases for what I imagine the next issue will make clear. It seems like he knows about the deal with Mephisto, but also does not know that Peter himself doesn't remember said deal.

If that's true, then it's also unclear whether he's just an agent of Mephisto stirring the pot so that Peter and MJ continue to suffer, or a deranged old friend trying to help them in his very twisted way... or both.

His argument seems to be turning on a definition of "sin," though, that I'm not sure I agree with. One could argue that giving Mephisto any power over the world for any reason is a sin by definition, but that seems a little abstract for a story that hasn't had anything to do with Mephisto himself so far. Beyond that... was it a sin, really?

Look, I know it's a chore, but forget how dumb and plothammered "One More Day" was and just focus on the morality of the choice. If Peter had wiped the marriage without MJ's consent, or vice versa, then you might have a case that someone had been greatly wronged. But the path of their marriage was theirs to decide together, which they did. So who else exactly was hurt or abused by their choice?* Sure wasn't May or Harry: they got to be alive! Now, maybe you think making a choice that even hurts just yourself (like immolating your own marriage) counts as a sin. But you're never going to get Peter "It's Not Tuesday If I'm Not Ignoring Medical Advice To Go On One More Patrol" Parker to believe it.

The only other arguably "wronged party" here is the illusory daughter who ends the climax of "One More Day" by saying "Great job, fuckups, now I don't get to exist." And that's an abortion debate I'd really rather not have, thanks very much.

*Besides the readers, obviously.

[donnblake]

Hmm. "Is resurrecting someone necessarily a positive act in that person's existence," is an interesting question- Season 6 of Buffy deals with it at some length, but nothing else leaps to mind. I suppose it would require more information on Harry's (and May's) prospective post-mortem existence, and I'm not clear if we have any unambiguous answers about that in the Marvel Universe. (Does being shot by a sniper count as dying in battle, thus qualifying May for Valhalla?)

[spider_man6]

I...haven't read this run in a while, and I feel that there's more info to come out before making conclusions, but I honestly just want it to be somewhat worth it, because this is giving me major secret empire and Slott-era flashbacks. Heroes blaming themselves or being blamed for all the problems in their lives? Characters having this agenda where they think a hero likes darkness in their life? And gratuitous actions? I just hope the Kindred storyline wraps up after this arc because it's been teased to death and if Peter and MJ getting married or something equally as big doesn't happen by the end of this, it will feel anti-climatic.

[servant_iskandar]

Not sure, but I get an odd sense of deja vu from Kindred's / Harry's actions here.

It might be unintentional here, but in-universe I'm reminded of the Jackal supposedly killing Ben Riley over and over and over while attempting to perfect what would become the "resurrection" protocol in Slott's run that, among things, would give Otto Octavius a temporarily young, fit body.

Or in a more loose way, plots that entail break the hero over and over and over again until something gives: I mean, you can only have so many villains trying to state the importance of their One Bad Day or heroes being "broken" so that the villain, and by proxy the writer sometimes, can prove a point.

And only so many good storylines and resolutions coming from it, frankly. Only so many Daredevil: Born Again and so on.

I'd like to be proven wrong, but I hope this doesn't turn out to be another Spencer story where a literal deus ex machina is both the initiator and the resolution of the plot (see the contrivances with Nazi Cap and Good Steve). The way Kindred's been written so far, he seems to oscillate between author avatar (and I hate OMD too, but really, this is so on the nose) and the former.