Comics and Facism

[Shadowmancer]

ron man is my favorite super hero in the marvel universe these days, and I'm more into Marvel these days then what's going on at Dc, so that kind of makes him my favorite.

And let me tell you why, not that you asked. yes, here comes another patented Warlock ramble, just nod your heads and pretend like you are listening...

Tony stark is the most human superhero. He's what most people would be like if we were in his position. I think he may be hard for some comics fans to relate to. but he's what most of us who aren't totally warped would end up actually being like, as opposed to the psychopathic acts of Mark Millar's Wanted.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby didn't beleive in Evil. This is something I should talk about elsewhere, but it's a key to the Marvel Universe. All of Kirby's villains aren't evil (and that includes Darkseid, despite what Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, with all due respect are claiming. I've got a number of statements from kirby in print saying that Darkseid and Doctor Doom aren't evil, and that he didn't believe in evil, only moral relativism). Iron Man is a genius. He is a futurist. He is also a fascist. Super hero comics, like science fiction in general, typically have right wing subtexts. Some comics like the Dark Knight returns, have explicitly fascist themes, that's in most of the DC superheroes to some degree, but that's more then others as Miller has some extremely fascist personal politics that show up in his other works like 300. Iron man is without doubt the most fascist super hero out there today. If Iron Man was real, if I lived in a world with such a bastard in it, I'd hate him. I'm a political exile, I'm extremely sensitive to this type of fascism that Iron Man represents, in addition to which half of my family was killed by fascists in the holocaust. But the thing about fascists is they always believe what they are doing is right. They are obsessed with control. That's what Stark has done. He sees a world of Chaos. He sees that he is the one person who has the intelligence, the will, and the strength to make it right. He doesn't love power. He doesn't love being a hero. He's sacrificed and lost everything dear to him, for his vision of creating a perfect world, of order. Look at what he's done. Created and funded the avengers. Created and funded Shield. Long before he was director, every single bit of Shield technology was designed by Stark. Right there, the two greatest forces for order and safety in the marvel universe, made by him. Look at his involvement in right wing American politics. And that goes back to Civil War as well. Tony has a plan for the world. And he's willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. He's a lot like Dr. Doom, and that dichtomy between him and Doom was explored masterfully in the Camelot trilogy by David Micheline and Bob Layton. According to Jack Kirby, Doom also is a control freak like Stark. He's a perfectionist. Kirby once drew a FF page showing Doom's face that Stan Lee refused to publish. All those years we heard Doom was terribly disfigured. So what Kirby wanted to show was that it was just a tiny little scar on his cheek. But in Doom's utter perfectionism, that in his mind equaled disfigurement! See, that shows a whole insight into Doom that a lot of people don't grasp (and kirby saw Darkseid in the same way, a man obsessed with order and control). Darkseid, Doom and Stark all beleive that they are the only people superior enough to do what is best for the world (or the universe in darkseids case). That they are going to exeret their will over everything to make everything right. Such people are very dangerous in history, but there is also something in political science known as Lyotard's paradox. This states that the only forms of government that have ever actually helped the poor and meek were occasional "enlightened" monarchies, such as Cyrus the great, Marcus Aurelius, a number of the Abbasid Caliphs, several of the Fatamid emperors, The great Mughals like Akbar, etc. There are some Flaws in Lyotard's theory of course, the anarcho syndicalist/libertarian communist state founded in Catalonia during the spanish civil war by Durutti being a great example, but that is seen by many political scientists as a fluke. This is Stark, he thinks he's absolutely right, as most of us would also with that kind of power. What separates him from Doom, is love. Doom sees himself as superior to the man on the street. The man on the street must be protected by Doom, and therefore Doom feels he should be worshiped. Now, Stark is one arrogant sumbitch. He typically thinks of himself as the smartest dude in the room. But he's also a man who loves humanity. He would die tomorrow to save the life of a total stranger. His capacity for self sacrifice is limitless. Doom has no love for anything other then Doom, and would never sacrifice his life for another. Doom has good intentions in his Kirby roots, he wants to make the world a better place as he imagines it. So does Stark. But Stark does love humanity greatly. He's put aside his own happiness for this, sacrificed his own friendships, his own loves. Being Iron Man has cost him everything dear to him. And he's done that all out of love. When Kirby designed him, it's interesting to note that he chose his heart to wound. The symbolism there is obvious. Kirby was a pacifist, he had served in the infatnry during WWII and had nightmares the rest of his life about the atrocities he saw. He was drawing in a foxhole once and the guy next to him had his brains blown out and splattered over Kirby's drawing. He said that didn't screw him up. But what did screw him up was seeing hordes of hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced and made into refugees by the russian army in eastern europe. The sight of these hordes traumatized him, there is a story in the forever people about this, he couldn't believe man's inhumanity to man could exist at this level, and it even effected his theological views. Kirby's two views of god are shown in FF 48 when they meet, God as the watcher, All powerful, but only watching, never helping, and Galactus, God the all powerful devourer. So then we have humans who try to make sense of it, and some of us, the most dangerous of us as Kirby would tell you, are those who think they've got it all figured out. They become control freaks, they want to put their views on us. That horrified Kirby, he hated American politicians and religious figures, and attacked them in his works. He saw free will as what made us human, hence the anti life equation is that, it gives it's wielder control over all free will in the universe. without free will, kirby saw no life. Stark is willing to put his will over on everyone else, just like Doom and Darkseid. But he does have heart. He didn't originally, he was a bastard arms manufacturer, the single most evil profession in the world. He made himself rich from this, and he was wounded by his own evil, and his lack of heart. that armor was made to keep him alive, to support that damaged cold heart, but it's what made him have heart. In many of the worlds esoteric traditions it's noted that it's serving other humans that gives us our humanity. And Stark does serve humanity. he's misguided, he's a bastard. But he's so human, and that's what I love about him. The problem with Iron Man in the last two years is there have been a number of writers who didn't get him. Mark Millar didn't get him at all. JMS doesn't get him at all, and just see him as a stand in for Bush, and attacks him as such in his own rather myopic left leaning politics, which disappointed me in his Thor so much that I quit reading the book, as I think it's a politically naive. Dirk Deppey said it best as being a Blue State's fantasy about what a Red State is actually like, from someone who'd never actually lived in a red state. His depiction of Tony Stark in that Thor issue is the single worst depiction of the character I've ever seen, I've been reading Iron Man comics since the seventies. I've read every single issue of his title and the avengers. While my own politics certainly is closer to JMS's then Tony Starks, I think he did a great injustice to the character. Stark has never backed down from a fight, and has no fear of dying of any kind. He would never had cowed to Thor like that. Never. He bows down before no one, and would die first. Would he have backed off and given Thor what he wanted? I think so. But he wouldn't have been sniveling about it. JMS has made it know he hates Stark and wrote that issue to appeal to the hardcore anti Stark crowd. The way he wrote Iron man in Spider man also was as a villain, and I think a lot of the anti iron man sentiment has come from that and from the way Milar wrote him. But the main Iron man series has been fantastic over the last year. I think people who have missed out on that, should check it out. Really great espionage comic, with really incredible art by Butch Guice. Bendis and Brubaker write really great Tony Stark, they both get him perfectly. But to my eyes, as a long time Stark fan, the guy who really got him best was Greg Pak. The speech that Stark gave to the people of earth in World War Hulk #1 is exactly what he's about. Everything he has done, whether it was right or wrong, he did for the people of earth. To help them. He's a hero in that sense, he'll give his life to protect humanity without thinking twice.

He's always been made to be a character that was hard to like. He's supposed to be that way, arrogant, controlling, quick tempered. But he's fascinating. He's such a paradox, the invincible iron man, yet he's incredibly insecure like all womanizers are (I'm speaking as a recovering womanizer myself here, wink wink nudge nudge) based on the issues of abandonment with his mother, he's invincible but an alcoholic, he's invincible but has a weak heart. As it's been shown in the current series, he's working himself to death. Look at what he's in charge of. He's the most powerful man on earth. He could depose the u.s. government tomorrow and no one could stop him. He commands shield, the avengers, AND the initiative, the most powerful army ever created. The fact that he hasnt' abused that power says a lot. Most of us, if we had that suit of armor, would try to impose our will upon the world. We would try to make things right, as we see them. And that's the problem, right is a relative concept. If I has superman's powers, the first thing I would to would be to get rid of every nuclear weapon. I know I would. That's illegal, that's me forcing my will upon the world. Yet I see that as being the greater good, that nuclear weapons are the greatest immorality and obscenity and horror ever created in the universe. I'd see what I was doing as right. But then what do i do next? Start putting world leaders on trial for war crimes? Most of them deserve it. Where do we stop? That conscious deconstruction of the fascist elements of super heroes really starts with iron man, it was formalized better by Alan Moore in Miracelman, and all the works that followed in it's footsteps, from Animal Man to the authority and everything in between. Animal Man is the opposite, an attempt at creating a super hero who isn't a fascist. It wasn't the first, but it was the most consicous. Spider Man is the ultimate anti fascist super hero. the exact opposite of Batman. Spider Man takes no pleasure in violence. He is almost always outside the law. He tries to stop crimes, but doesn't go over the line the way Batman at his worst does. Spider Man is the opposite of Stark, Spider Man doesn't impose his will or his views on reality, or on others. Stark is going to save us from ourselves whether we like it or not, spider man is only trying to save us from those who would prey on us. He see it as responsibility. Where say for Batman and Stark it's an obsession. Spidey doesn't use excessive force, Batman in Dark Knight is above the law, he's actively anti american in that the foundations of american justice like habeas corpus mean nothing to him. Human Rights mean nothing to Batman, you get no trial, no right to remain silent. In DKR he mocks these things, which is overt fascism, which always appeals to people based on concerns of security, which was what Miller was fantasizing about in DKR, and has admitted such. That america needed a violent fascist to attack "criminals", totally ignoring any of the socio cultural elements that create crime. It's no coincidence that most of the dark knights victims are minorities, which I think is partially the socio cultural element but also the problems Frank Millers work has with misogyny and borderline racism. Spidey doesn't do that. He's trying to help, not destroy. Iron Man is somewhere in between, though in some ways he's much more facist then even Batman. Bat's wouldn't impose his views of reality on the world around him, he'd not take an innocent and indoctrinate them, well at least outside of Frank Miller's work, as there's that whole bit of him torturing robin and forcing his views on him. But as a whole, Bats only imposes his will on those he sees as "criminals". Stark is trying to change the entire world. He's concerned with a much bigger picture then "justice". Justice is an abstraction, in this world at least it doesn't really exist. We can talk about it in terms of platonic essentials, or theories, but in reality there is no justice. The worst mass murderers of the last 100 years went unpunished. The few who get brought to trial, what does that accomplish? A brutal butcher like Sadaam Hussein, who killed hundreds of thousands (and no one ever in human history killed more muslims then Sadaam, the irony of some iraqi sunnis seeing him in heroic terms should not be lost), he can only die once. how is that justice? Assuming of course that the death penalty is justice, and I personally don't think it is. But if we say it is, there is no torture brutal enough, no death gruseome enough, that could ever equate the horrors he committed. One of the greatest muslim intellectuals of the last century was Ayatollah Baqr al Sadr, a man who revolutionized Islamic economics, and a great legal scholar as well. His critiques of capitalism and communism were brilliant in the methods he devised to create an economic alternative that was compatible with islamic ethics, he designed the kuwati bank, and the iranian economy was based on his ideas, Qadaffi stole most of his economic theory and published them in his own manifesto the green book. Sadaam had this great scholar forced to watch his sister being raped and murdered, then had him slowly killed by having nails pouned into his brain. Just imagine what that must be like to have your final moments on earth. How can justice be brought to such a man? what could we ever do to him in this world that would equal what he has done? It's impossible. Batman doesn't get that. Stark gets that more then any other super hero, the key is to prevent people like Sadaam from even happening in the first place, and that's what Stark is trying to do. And that means he has to impose his will on the world, as he thinks he knows what's best for us. Whether we like it or not, he's going to make things "right". That's where he and Steve Rogers were so different. Rogers is also anti fascist, at least when done properly. When reduced to a jingo warrior, he's not of much interest, and certainly the short lived explicitly racist and fascist captain america comics of the 1950's were an exception, as were the Gruenwald years when the charachter became very one dimesional. But Cap would never impose his will on others unless it's a fight. Cap's very much a Jeffersonian Utopian in that sense. Stark isn't a utopian, Stark is about getting shit done. He makes it happen.

He's hugely flawed. I can definitely see why people would hate him if he was real, though I don't understand the legitimate hate a lot some people have. I'm tempted to say they take comics too seriously if they feel that way, but here I am writing my pretentious bullshit namedropping Lyotard and Ayotallah Baqr al Sadr while talking about the political subtext of superhero funnybooks for f@ck's sake!!! HAR~!

Yeah, He's the most pro establishment super hero ever. And I'm a pretty anti establishment kind of cat, you could say. If he really existed in the world today I'd be all about having him arrested and locked up. He'd be too dangerous. I'd feel that way about pretty much all super heroes though, the only one I'd really want to live in world with would probably be the silver age Superman, as he's basically the Messiah. Stark though is the most realistic. If we ever have "real" super heroes, they're going to be something much like Tony Stark. And I very much enjoy reading about him, Starks life story is one of failings and struggles. If marvel does this right, this is all going to fall apart for him eventually. The haters will probably enjoy seeing him down and out, but there will be more to it then that. The most human moment I've seen in a super hero comic in the last year was that epilogue to civil war in which Stark is talking to Steve Rogers corpse. That was very real, the emotion was very well scripted.

So yeah, he's always been a jerk. It's a huge part of what makes him so interesting. But beneath all the asshole, he's a very compassionate human being. I don't get the Iron Man is a super villian crowd, or the whole Iron Man isn't what he used to be. Of course he is. Go back and read Shooter's run on Avengers, or Micheline's run on Iron Man. Millar and JMS wrote him poorly, but the Bendis/Brubaker/Pak/Knauf versions are totally consistent with who he has always been.

In fact, the fact that he's become so prominent in the last year has been one of the reasons I'm enjoying Marvel so much right now. Some of that is the rise of the Avengers again as the franchise, I'm the worlds biggest Avengers fan, and never was a big X men dude, so after 20 years of X mania, getting the Avengers back in there is what it's about for me, and having Stark right there in the middle of it leads me to enjoy it. He's in more comics now then Wolverine, something I never imagined.

So my point here, aside from rambling cause like 3 people like to hear my opinions (and I'm one of the three!!!) is that he's not likeable, but he's not supposed to be! He's supposed to be massively flawed. That's what makes him interesting. Is he a role model like Spidey or Supes? Nope, but he's not supposed to be. He's not an archetypal myth like the DC pantheon. He's human, and the most human superhero that's ever existed. And that leads to some really intersting stories. And like it's been said in this thread, his personality has been explored more then most, and the depth of humanity there makes him much more real then most super heroes. Now in general, I don't like realistic super hero comics, or comic that get that route. It's fantasy after all, and once you start getting all John Byrne with it and trying to explain the science of it, you just start inviting more problems then you solve. But Iron man works for me because the reality isn't about trying to explain why a radioactive spider bite lets peter parker stick to walls through gloves but doesn't give him problems using a camera buttons, but its about the reailty of his personality, of his character. And for me that's what narrative literature is all about, character. Other comics fans look for different things in comics. Some people look for projections of their own personality, their own power fantasies. Stark might not jibe with that. I think he does for me, because I'm also a deeply flawed human, with a taste for women and wine and pills and all the good shit in life. I've also relatively strong political convictions that have led me to make considerable sacrifices. And I know that I was a superhero, I'd be probably doing the same Fraged up shit Stark is doing, I think most of us would. The temptation would be too great not too. He has good intentions. we all do. But I don't beleive we have that right, to force our world upon others the way he is doing. Still, it makes for great comics, and that's what matters most to me.

Tom Brevoort made the good point that in the real world we'd all want the registration act. Seeing the effect 9/11 had on american society, how quickly people were willing to sacrifie civil liberties for the sake of "security" I think he's right. The marvel universe has thing worse then 9/11 in terms of destruction happening every month! Now, as comics fans, most of us side with Cap in civil war. I know I did. And framed in the way Bendis and Brubaker wrote it, as Cap the civil libertarian vs. Bush/Stark the neo fascists, I certainly side with them there too, and would if that was the issue in our world. But it's not our world, it's comics, and I enjoy Stark very much. I don't think he's a villain, based largely on his intentions, and the fact that he has saved the world countless times. He has made the world a better place. But Doom would say the same thing, in the classic Kirby stories Doom pointed out that Latverians have a greater quality of life then most other societies, there is no crime, no disease, Doom takes care of them all. Stark may end up that way. It will be very interesting to see how the final part of the Camelot trilogy plays out in this new climate when marvel publishes it this year. Most americans reading this preivelge free will, it's a given in american society. It's something I always assume in my own life. However, it's not universal. There are plenty of cultures that do not prize free will, in both theological and political entities. There are readings of Confucian poltics that disown free will. After the major theological shift in sunni islam in the 12th century from the mutazillah to the asharite school free thinking was rejected by the legal entities within Sunni Islam for all but the elite. Now while the legalists in islamic cultures had much less influence the most people think (shariah in islamic empires was rarely enforced outside of economic law, even trials for heresy were largely confined to poltical opponents/dissidents) these factors did in many ways shape the socities that exist today. Take the country I live in Singapore. It's the ultimate nanny state, and most singaporeans want it that way. The average singaporean could care less about freedom of speech. Singapore is unique in that it is a culture shaped both by a conservative reading of Confucianism and the Sha'afi school of Sunni islam, both of which reject critical thinking and democracy. As americans this is unthinkable to us, we are taught everyone wants to be "free". Nope. Singaporeans for the most part are quite happy with the state of affairs. The government takes good care of them, subsidizes health care, subsidizes housing, violent crime is almost non existent, food is cheap, plenty of cheap entertainment from all the american tv shows to cinema to video games to getting drunk with your friends, and some of the hottest women on earth live here. People don't really miss freedom of speech, as it's something they've never had. This is something that is unthinkable to most americans, and it took me some adjusting to. But I agree with Nietzsche, most people love being slaves, mentally speaking. I think if Tony Stark were real he'd have widespread support for his plans and actions. The thing about Fascism, from Bush II to Mussolini, is it is always a populist movement. Hilter didn't institute a revolution, he won the election... And I think that was what happened at the end of civil war, and that's why Cap surrendered. He was fighting for peoples freedom who didn't want to be free. they wanted Iron Man's promise of security. That's the basic Fascist pitch. Follow me and I'll keep you safe. And The way I read that last issue of civil was that seeing this, cap despaired. Seeing that all he was fighting for, meant nothing as the people he was trying to help didn't want it. And that's why he quit. Cap has a long history of grappling with this. Stark doesn't, he's supremely self confident. The only time he doubted himself was when he got too drunk to function. In fact that's a huge problem for him, is that arrogance gets him in a lot of trouble. A great example historically in Marvel has been Starks inability to coexist with Namor. Namor's actually more Arrogant, and he's been known to throw Stark a beating. Stark's got a well documented habit of running his mouth to dudes bigger then him, he doesn't ever think he can fail. He's an ordinary man, just like you and me, and yet he'll get in Thanos face. He's done it more then once. Tony Stark DON'T GIVE A FU%K!

Word to my mama, that's why he's my main man. Or maybe I just relate to him, I'm a genius, I'm a womanizer, used to have a very serious drinking problem (now I stick to pills, cause life's too short to mess around with sobreity and coke, e and kush get you a trip to the gallows in this country), I came from nothing and made myself a fortune that enabled me to become the last of the famous international playboys, and I have my own quasi messianic delusions. I've also got a badass mustache.

Er, shit, I have to run, I've been partying all morning so I know this is probably kind of hard to read. I ain't got time to spell check it, so I beg for clemency from the grammar police. Yes, I could check it when I come back from eating fresh fish flown in from japan and some cuban cigars, but see when I do that I get self consicous and feel foolish writing like this about comics. A few months ago I wrote a post with all the spoilers for Final Crisis and death of the new gods that I got from the "source" in response to some of erroneous assumptions I see dudes making round here, but then when I sobered up and read it I felt again, very self conscious. So really, I gotta post this now or never. And I gotta come in here and lay down some truth about my Boy, Tony Starks.

Like Pete Rock say, I don't keep it real, I KEEP IT RIGHT.

This was in a thread on a Comic book Forum about Iron Man and how he has always been a Jerk. But it raises some good points about Comic Books in General showing a Facist point of View on Life. As well as the distinction between Iron Man and Dr. Doom who are effectively the same person but with differing mental positions on the way that other humans, but this is a good read to see the way that Kirby and other Writers and Artists portray what the characters see the Perfect World as being.