Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The

by White, Mark

  No One Needs to Know

  Like Glaucon’s example of the unjust person who is granted a reputation for justice, Osborn consistently works to maintain a positive public image for himself and his team. For example, some members of the newly assembled Dark Avengers suggest that they make the public safe by going after Tony Stark, to which Osborn replies, “No. For now, Tony Stark is a court of law matter. Kicking a man while he’s down is hardly a way to win over the public.” Bullseye asks, “Who cares about that on any level?” Osborn responds, “I do. So you do, too.”12 After the Dark Avengers’ first public appearance, Osborn tells them, “Let me make something perfectly clear. . . . None of you—I mean none of you—talk to the media ever again.”13 Osborn plans to control every aspect of the Dark Avengers’ public image, because the “rings” must be polished if they are to work properly.

  Osborn’s concern with the public image of the Dark Avengers continues when Clint Barton (the genuine Hawkeye) claims on television that “Norman Osborn is employing criminals to do his black ops dirty work, right here in the United States.”14 Barton says that Osborn himself is “a criminal sociopath. Most people don’t even know, or seem to have forgotten, but he used to be the murderer known as the Green Goblin.”15 Of course, Osborn goes on television to dispel Barton’s claims. While not denying that he was the Green Goblin (but pointing out Barton’s criminal past), Osborn appeals to public pity and says that he was once mentally ill but is now healed. He claims that he sought therapy and even took medication to relieve his “condition.” To bolster his appeal he says, “And really, do you think for a second that the president of the United States and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would allow a murderous costumed maniac to lead an important initiative in this, the most important time in our history?”16 Osborn knows that he must manipulate public perception so that he and the Dark Avengers can pursue their own unjust agenda.

  While Osborn works hard to maintain a squeaky-clean image for the Dark Avengers, Barton is not the only one who knows the true identity of some of the Dark Avengers. Fellow villain Morgan Le Fay knows, as does Maria Hill, former deputy director of S.H.I.E.L.D. After being fired by Osborn, Hill tells him that she needs to talk to him in person: “I wanted to look you right in the eye. I wanted this moment with you. I wanted to tell you that when you do crash and burn—and . . . oh you will—I will be there when it happens. Laughing my ass off.” At the end of the first issue of Dark Avengers, Hill stands with Nick Fury and others who understand the true nature of the Dark Avengers. As Fury says to his newly assembled team, “You will be my army. The world needs us. These are dark and desperate times.”17

  Recall that Glaucon (channeling Thrasymachus) asserts that most people would love the opportunity to do what they want and take what they want for themselves but also maintain a reputation for being good and just. So according to Glaucon, we are actually jealous of the Dark Avengers and their blatant lack of morals. If you disagree with Glaucon, then you probably believe that there is a deeper sense in which we are “good” or “bad.” While you might not wish to appear unjust in order to be just, you would do it. And, of course, so do some of the characters in Dark Avengers.

  Being Just

  The real Avengers’ Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), the Dark Avengers’ Captain Marvel (Noh-Varr), and dual Avenger (and Greek god) Ares are willing to risk everything—reputation and life—in order to be just. When Osborn tells Danvers that he is the new head of the Avengers, she refuses to work with him, saying, “No one worth a damn will side with you, Norman. There will be no Avengers. None.”18 So strong are her convictions that she goes AWOL from her military position to avoid working with Osborn. She would rather be perceived as having abandoned her duties than merely appear to be a just and good soldier by working with Osborn. But Danvers is a “true” Avenger, so we wouldn’t expect anything less.

  Likewise, Noh-Varr leaves the Dark Avengers as soon as he finds out that his fellow Dark Avengers are actually criminals. He discovers this when Moonstone, posing as Ms. Marvel, hurries to turn on the TV to hear Osborn’s interview shortly after seducing Noh-Varr. She says to him, “I’m dying to see how Norman sells the fact that he put together a team of psychotic criminals and murderers and calls them Avengers.”19 Noh-Varr is genuinely shocked as he says, “He put together what?”20 That night Noh-Varr defects from the Dark Avengers and goes into hiding. Everyone who shuns the Dark Avengers seems to think that there is something deeper to being good than simply being on the winning side.

  Ares is yet another example of someone who would rather be just than merely appear to be just. When he joined the Dark Avengers, he, like Noh-Varr, was naïve in his belief that he and Osborn served together on the side of justice. After the real Ms. Marvel refuses to join the Dark Avengers, and discovers that Ares did, she says to Ares while pointing at Osborn, “Do you know who he is?” Ares responds, “He’s the warrior who bested my own enemy in battle.” Along with the general public, Ares thinks that Osborn is a hero who stopped the Skrull invasion. During the Siege of Asgard, however, Ares discovers that Osborn had lied to him and used him. He attacks Osborn, saying, “And I told you what I would do, Osborn! I told you true! I’m going to pull off your head, armor and all.”21 The Sentry steps in to defend Osborn, literally tearing Ares in half. Ares gives more than his reputation to be just—he gives his life. (But he’s a god—he gets better.)

  Just How Dark Are the Dark Avengers?

  When you do the “right thing,” is it because you think you are being watched, or is it because you have a deeper belief about “right” and “wrong” that guides your actions? If, like Osborn, you were given the opportunity to direct a team of corrupt superheroes, would you avoid the temptation to punish your nemesis, accumulate wealth, and settle a few scores? If no one knew, and you were guaranteed that no one would know, what would you do? If you commissioned these acts, would you feel guilty? If you would feel guilty, then you are either a truly virtuous person or a great fool. Unfortunately, philosophy has no scientific method for determining which you are, and so we are left wondering: what do we really think about the Dark Avengers?

  NOTES

  1. All of this occurred in the Dark Avengers series, which lasted sixteen issues from March 2009 to July 2010, and has been collected in the hardcover Dark Avengers (2011) as well as separate trade paperbacks.

  2. In Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). Standard pagination is given whenever Plato is quoted, so you can find the relevant passages in any reputable translation.

  3. See Book VII of the Republic.

  4. Civil War: The Confession (May 2007).

  5. Ibid.

  6. Dark Avengers #5 (August 2009).

  7. Republic, 338c.

  8. Although it is worth noting that Glaucon says that he is supporting Thrasymachus’s argument only because he wants Socrates to really defeat it. Glaucon wants to agree with Socrates, but he also wants a good argument. (He may have been the first devil’s advocate!) See Republic, 357a–b.

  9. Republic, 360b.

  10. Ibid., 360d.

  11. Dark Avengers #14–15 (April–May 2010). See Dark Reign: Hawkeye (2010) for more examples of Bullseye’s heinous conduct while wearing Clint Barton’s costume.

  12. Dark Avengers #1 (March 2009).

  13. Dark Avengers #2 (April 2009).

  14. Dark Avengers #4 (June 2009).

  15. Ibid.

  16. Dark Avengers #5 (August 2009).

  17. Dark Avengers #1.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Dark Avengers #5.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Siege #1–2 (March–April 2010), reprinted in Siege (2010).

  Chapter 3

  THE AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST FAMILY

  Jason Southworth and Ruth Tallman

  What makes a hero or a villain? Often, when we talk about heroes we focus on their strong character, on the virtues of courage, determination, and self-reliance that make them remarkab
le. We tend to give them a lot of personal credit for the way they excel in the world. But did you ever stop to think about the people who had a hand in shaping those heroes into the individuals they eventually became?

  There is a long tradition in the Marvel Universe of family legacies of heroism and villainy. T’Chaka and his children, T’Challa and Shuri, all served Wakanda as its protector, the Black Panther. Twins Brian and Elizabeth Braddock have made names for themselves as heroes Captain Britain and Psylocke, respectively. Some families have been involved in superheroics and evildoing for generations. The second Captain America’s (Isaiah Bradley’s) grandson, Eli Bradley, is carrying on the family legacy as Patriot. On the evil side of the coin, father and son Heinrich and Helmut Zemo have both fought Captain America as Baron Zemo, carrying on a tradition of evil that stretches back twelve generations.

  All of these examples are indications that upbringing counts for a lot when it comes to a person’s character. Nature—even in the form of radioactive spiders and gamma rays—accounts for the potential of a person to become a hero or a villain, but nurture plays a pivotal role in influencing which path a person will follow. In this chapter, we’ll consider the issue of parental responsibility for the actions and characters of children, using examples drawn from decades of Avengers comics.

  Of Father and Ultron

  We don’t have to go very far into the history of the Avengers to see that there are inconsistencies in the manner in which parents are credited or blamed for the way their children turn out. More comic book pages have been spent on the relationship between Hank Pym and Ultron, the living automaton, than on any other parent and child. Pym, the Avenger who holds the record for the most number of aliases (Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, Wasp, and Scientist Supreme), developed a super computer with a human-level intelligence based on Pym’s own “brain patterns.”1 Following his creation, Ultron quickly developed self-consciousness and, with it, thoughts of his own. Unfortunately, these thoughts included killing Pym, the rest of the Avengers, and pretty much everyone else.

  Some might find it strange to discuss the Hank Pym/Ultron relationship as a parental one, but this is the way people in the Marvel Universe view it. Ultron and Pym explicitly address each other as “father” and “son.” Furthermore, when Ultron Mark 12 (the “good” incarnation of Ultron) dies, Pym mourns the death of his “son” and is so distraught that he contemplates suicide (actually holding a gun to his head).2 Their relationship is like that of many parents and children—for instance, Hank was there for Ultron’s creation, and the two reconnected for better and worse after Ultron became his own person. However, Pym never had a chance to influence Ultron’s thoughts, and in fact he didn’t even know that his “son” had developed self-consciousness until Ultron attacked him for the first time.

  So is Hank Pym morally responsible for Ultron’s behavior? For the Avengers, the answer is a resounding yes. There are dozens of instances where people have expressed judgment and condemnation of Pym, and he has been explicitly blamed for the death and destruction caused by Ultron. The line of thought seems to be that Hank is responsible because had he not created Ultron, Ultron couldn’t have committed his terrible deeds. Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) sums up this sentiment best when she thinks, “And you created Ultron so $%#@ you. . . . If you can’t [stop him], kill yourself.”3 So there is a strong intuition among the Avengers, and shared by most readers, that Pym did something wrong just by fathering Ultron, even if he had no role in crafting Ultron’s “character.”

  Sometimes the Apples Do Fall Far from the Tree

  A tension arises, however, when we consider the case of two other Avengers, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, known as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. These Avengers didn’t come to know their father until they were adults. Their mother, Magda Eisenhardt, left their father while she was pregnant out of fear that harm would come to her children because her husband, Max, had revealed himself to be a mutant. Magda died soon after giving birth, and the twins were placed in the care of a gypsy couple named Django and Marya Maximoff.4 This is why their surname differs from that of their father, Max Eisenhardt, who later adopted the name Erik Lehnsherr, better known as Magneto.

  Magneto’s actions as a supervillain and mutant terrorist clearly earn him a place high on the list of the greatest villains of the Marvel Universe. But his fatherhood is much like that of Hank Pym: Magneto contributed his DNA to his children, while Hank donated his brain patterns. After that initial involvement, neither participated in the moral education or character-building of their progeny. Pym was ignorant of Ultron’s mental development, and Magneto had no idea where his children were. Yet while Hank is blamed for Ultron, no one has ever given Magneto any credit for fathering two Avengers. The only difference is that Pym is a hero who fathered a villain, and Magneto is a villain who fathered heroes. It is unclear how that fact could affect moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness, however. The cases seem to be the same in all relevant regards, so we can’t have it both ways. If Magneto gets no credit, then Pym should get no blame—and if Pym is held responsible, so should Magneto. So what are we to do? It looks like we are going to need to find something other than mere creation to hang our praise and blame on.

  Let’s think about the underlying factors that prompt our gut response of wanting to blame Pym. It seems like we react so negatively to Pym’s role in creating Ultron because Ultron is so evil, and having a hero for a father just intensifies our visceral response. We think that heroes should have heroic kids, and the jarring juxtaposition of Hank’s heroism and Ultron’s evil is deeply unsettling. We react to our discomfort by searching for someone to blame, and Hank is the most readily available target. When a villain’s child manages to turn out okay, on the other hand, we tend to think simply that the kid got lucky, or had an exceptionally strong character that stopped him from falling victim to the corrupting influence of his evil parent. We don’t seem to mind the lack of symmetry when the child is better than the parent; we don’t need to blame anyone for anything, and we don’t want to give credit to a villainous parent.

  Journey to the Center of the Ant

  This gives us a psychological explanation for why we want to blame Hank but not praise Magneto, but is this justified or fair? Let’s take a look at a paradigmatic example of a hero and his heroic kid to see what we can learn regarding the appropriate designation of parental praise and blame.

  Scott Lang (the second Ant-Man, after Pym) is often given considerable credit for his daughter Cassie’s success as a superhero (Stature). Earlier in her teens she was a founding member of the Young Avengers, and she went on to become the youngest person knowingly admitted into the Avengers proper in Pym’s Mighty Avengers lineup.5 Praising her father doesn’t seem misguided in this case, and a closer look at their relationship should tell us why.

  It isn’t discussed much anymore, but Scott Lang was first introduced to the Marvel Universe as a criminal. After failing as an electrician, he tried his hand at burglary, failed at that as well, and ended up in jail. He first became Ant-Man using equipment he had stolen from Hank Pym’s laboratory in order to rescue the only doctor who could cure Cassie (then a young child) of a heart condition.6 From that point forward, Lang did everything in his power to teach Cassie the difference between right and wrong, a lesson he stressed he had to learn the hard way. This effort paid off, as Scott succeeded in instilling his daughter with strong moral values, a sense of social responsibility, and a willingness to sacrifice much of her own adolescence to help strangers. Cassie consistently makes it clear that she is a superhero because of the lessons she learned from her father, which is what motivated her to adopt a version of her dad’s old costume, both to honor his memory and to make a strong declaration that she is who she is because of Scott Lang. In short, had Cassie not had Scott as a father, it is unlikely that she would have become a superhero.

  One way to understand the influence Scott had on Cassie comes to us through the tradition of
the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Aristotle believed that while we might have innate tendencies to behave in particular ways, much of our moral character is developed through a process of habitual imitation. Aristotle thought that we learn to be good people by watching and imitating those who have already developed virtuous habits. This idea has been met with renewed philosophical interest in recent years under the name moral exemplarism.7 Moral exemplarists argue that when we spend time with strong moral role models, it is highly likely that we will begin to adopt patterns of behavior that imitate those exemplars. This is exactly what happened in Cassie’s case. With Ant-Man as her father and moral exemplar, it is hardly surprising that Cassie became the hero Stature.