Three of my comics this week were thematically related, and so here I'm doing a set of somewhat in-depth reviews of those themes and those comics. It was strange how these comics, which are from completely different publishers and have nothing to do with one another, all had such similar themes. These all had to do with the idea of utilitarian ethical decision making, and making hard choices in the face of terrible evil.
The world is a place of such terrible darkness sometimes. One of the hardest things about trying to do things God's way is that often it isn't clear what God's way is. The world becomes a place of necessary evils, which seems on the face of it to be oxymoronic. The world is so dark and sinful that you are stuck choosing between two terrible options. Life is sometimes more a series of tragic trade-offs, then choosing the way of God over the way of evil.
This becomes truer the more responsibility one has. Our leaders often have to choose between letting 10,000 people lose their jobs and suffer of letting 100,000 people lose their jobs and suffer, between letting a few soldiers lose their lives or thousands of other people lose their lives. Our leaders exist, at least in part, to take on the guilt of committing the great evils necessary to run large social organizations like countries. But make no doubt, we share in their guilt.
If killing one person saved thousands, wouldn't you have to do that? Yet what is the cost of such a killing to your soul? And what does it profit a man to gain the entire world yet lose his or her only soul? Utilitarianism seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people. All moral decision making is turned into just the kind of calculation I am talking about above. Worse yet, that decision that one makes based on the greatest good, however terrible in itself, is labelled 'good' rather than 'evil'. This kind of calculation leads to some terrible and counter-intuitive results. I could justify any horror based on the assurance that it would lead to some greater good, including horrors that would come to me as inherently unjustifiable.
In Archie Comics' AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, our hero is faced with a kind of 'horror-of-the-world' decision that faces every hero in almost every zombie apocalypse story. His father, infected with the zombie disease, attacks Archie and his mother. The only way out of his house seems to be to kill his now-infected father. So many questions would come up in such a situation, questions with exemplify the problem with utilitarian decision making. For the utilitarian who bases moral decision-making on 'the best possible outcome' pretends to knowledge they do not have. No one knows for sure what the future holds. Could a cure for Archie's father be found? Wouldn't capturing him or restraining him and at least holding out the hope for a cure be better? Yet there is no time and such an action holds within it a terrible risk to both Archie and his mother.
And yet here, now, Archie faces a terrible decision, the kind of decision none of us wants to ever make but we all know we may have to face some day. Not that we'll ever face the zombified reanimated corpse of a parent (or I hope we won't), but we may have to face removing a loved one from life support, or some of us may have dangerous family members who actually could force us into a similar situation to the one Archie faces. Archie has no time: no time to think, no time to gather new resources. He has so many questions: is his father suffering in there? Or is it more like a walking sleep? Will the murder he may have to commit be less terrible or more than the state his father faces now? I won't spoil the comic by telling you what Archie chooses, but sufficed to say, these are the questions that are brought up.
They are very similar questions to the one Batman faces in the new DC comic FOREVER EVIL #6. Dick Grayson, formerly Robin and now Nightwing, has been 'outed' to the public by the Criminal Syndicate and held hostage. Batman and Lex Luthor, now teamed up to stop the Syndicate, find him strapped to a thermonuclear bomb. The bomb is counting down quickly and is tied to Grayson's heart. The only way to stop the countdown is to stop Nightwing's heart...to kill him. Batman tries and tries to find a way out, but is incapable of either diffusing the bomb or killing his friends. Lex then steps in to 'do what must be done'. That is how we WANT to describe it anyways... as something that 'must be done'. But the guilt of killing Grayson would lie on the soul of the man who did it, you cannot stand before God and claim that circumstances forced your hand. To escape responsibility that way is impossible. What you do, you do, and nobody else. You own that moment as your own.
Is the willing-to-kill Luthor more heroic than the principled Batman? Does it take a special kind of moral courage to BE that leader who takes on the guilt of others so that those others can be protected? Yet isn't there another, greater kind of moral courage in the one who is willing to stand by principles 'no matter what'? Where does this line lie?
For me, the real line is not between the 'courageous' person who takes on the guilt of killing another for a greater good and the 'principled' person who is willing to do what is right 'no matter the cost'. The line is rather between the uneasy soul of repentance and the soul that is confident in its goodness. Does the weight of one's decision to act weigh upon one? This is the essential moral and religious question. The opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. If I stand before God with the sense that my conscience is clean because "I did what I had to do" then I am fleeing responsibility and I fail to encounter God through my actions. In such a state, any kind of act can be construed as moral and justified, and standing self-justified before God I have completely failed. I do not see any way out of the moral quandaries of life, any way out of having one's soul ripped apart by this black world, without the reality of judgment crushing one down, and the restoration of redemption lifting one up. Without Christ, without God on the Cross, life is truly lost.
Such a lost life is exemplified in Marvel's NEW WARRIORS #2. The villains in this new series are the Evolutionaries and their leader the High Evolutionary. They are killing off some groups of people, like mutants, to help prepare mankind for a judgment they see coming. These men do evil acts and believe them to be heroic. They are pure utilitarians, any act is justified if it is for 'the greater good'. These beings, standing self-justified in their own mind, contrast starkly with Archie who is broken by what he feels he must do to save his mother, or even with the villainous Luthor, who despite his own inner darkness must apologize for 'that which he must do'. There is no easy conscience in the other two but with the Evolutionaries and their master, the way is clear, and the terrible things they do are indeed the will of 'god' however abstractly conceived by them. Such a heart is capable of truly anything, and more than that lacks any hope of genuine salvation. They are truly lost.
Aesthetically, these comics were all very good. Beyond the thematic richness, they all represent some of the best comics have to offer, though AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE and FOREVER EVIL are the more superior examples. New Warriors has some pacing problems and jumps around a bit too much, and the art isn't as good as the other two. Still, even New Warriors is far above average, and I highly recommend the book.
Archie Comics' AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #4
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 4 Stars
Art: 4.5 Stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars
DC's FOREVER EVIL #6 (of 7)
Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 5 Stars
Pacing: 4.5 Stars
Art: 4.5 Stars
Overall: 5 Stars
Marvel's NEW WARRIORS #2
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars
OFF-TOPIC: Final Comic Book Review of the Week
DC's EARTH 2 #21
While this is not exactly 'on topic' I thought I'd include the final comic book review here. This was a good book, with some deeply dramatic moments. I didn't like the bickering in the Bat Cave between Earth 2's new Batman and Red Arrow, though I did like the way the new Red Tornado took on a maternal role in that situation. The scene with all these wealthy Americans trying to take a space ship to another world, and then being all killed en masse by Superman was very poignant. My friend Kevin Tones would love it. All in all this was a good book, though it had some pacing issues.
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 4.5 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars
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