Axiom - Part 2

[history79]

"I think that sadly we live in a very cynical time and I’m not sure that we haven’t earned that cynicism. The pendulum swung more heavily towards optimism after 9/11. We had ordinary people looking to each other for heroism and we really raised the bar in that sense. There were a lot of stories of heroism that arose from 9/11 and other acts of domestic terrorism. But sadly as pendulums do, it swung back in the last few years because of fifteen years of fear and living under a cloud of domestic and international terrorism, fear has become the norm for us. I think that’s why we’ve become more attracted to a slightly more cynical point of view of the world.
With that said, that’s kind of where I was coming from with this story. This story to me is about my own frustrations with fear and my own frustrations with how we as a society have accepted fear as part of our daily lives. Kyle is the personification of what I’d like us to do, which is face our fears head on and not be ruled by fear anymore. To me, he’s the real hero of the book."

- Mark Waid



16.66 pages of 143

Comments

[thezmage]

Okay, I actually like this. Appears that they didn't drag it out and there's an interesting tease about what is to come

[donnblake]

Ah, a good old fashioned superhero debate, with punchuation.

[dcbanacek]

“Are you familiar with the thought experiment, ‘The Ship of Theseus?’ in the field of identity metaphysics?”

[leahandillyana]

I really dislike that thought experiment. Japan has wooden temples and other buildings over a millenium old that hold not a single element they were built with. The materials decayed, sometimes the whole thing burned down, it was rebuilt many times, and there's no question the building is a copy when it stays in the same place, built according to the same plan. It's the same building. Even in Europe, churches and castles were massively modified through the ages and we still consider them to be the same buildings. Most of Poland was burned to the groundduring WW2 and some buildings of crucial cultural importance like the Palais Royal in Warsaw were not fully restored until the 1980s. I dare you to publicly call it a copy.

[shadur]

It is still my grandfather's axe.

As usual, Sir Terry Pratchett had it right.

[silverhammerman]

I'm sat here trying to puzzle out that intro quote you've provided up top, and I can't for the life of me get a good handle on it.

[thanekos]

Good to see that there was a little more thought behind this than " Legendary Entertainment growing a ' superhero goes bad ' story in their IP farm ".

[tcampbell1000]

Waid is one of my favorites, and this is a solid improvement on his other "Superman but evil" project. Once you defeat your undefeatable hero-gone-bad, your story is over: Axiom grasps that where Irredeemable didn't. (Some other instances like Invincible aren't really the same because Omni-Man isn't the primary focus.)

Also, Axiom's shift from tyrant terrorist to sick man in need of help works a lot better here. Part of it is that they sold his connections to Kyle and Vanessa, whereas the Plutonian seemed pretty much beyond normal relations altogether.

I still think "ENOUGH ALREADY" whenever I see a Supermal, we've got enough of those now to form their own Injustice League if not their own Legion of Super-Villains. But for this, I'll make an exception.