The Avengers

Finally saw The Avengers last night.  It will come as a shock to nobody who has read this blog for even a limited amount of time that I am overly fond of superhero movies.  Such fondness stems from being overly fond of comic books.  The movie was, in a word, amazing.  Best superhero movie ever.  The Dark Knight Returns used to have that crown.  The comparison is instructive.  Partly, the comparison is personal preference—The Avengers is always the comic book I wanted to like the most.  In its run, there have been good and bad years—which is hard to avoid when the composition of the team changes constantly.  But, I always loved the superhero team-ups.  (Though, oddly, Spider-Man, the ultimate non-joiner, is my favorite superhero.)  I also always liked the Marvel Universe better than the DC universe.  But, the real reason The Avengers trumps Dark Knight is that it is truer to the spirit of what makes superhero comic books fun.  Dark Knight captures the post 1980s, Miller/Moore dark world of comics perfectly.  It is brilliantly done.  But, The Avengers has the fun along with the drama. 

At their best, superhero books are more than just brooding depressing tales.  They are fun exaltation of the human spirit—showing us the greatness of superheroes gives us something to which to aspire.  The genius of Stan Lee’s Marvel era was that the superheroes become human; they are flawed people with personalities.  Sometimes they don’t get along.  They have different motives.  And yet, in the face of great peril, they rise above themselves to do great deeds.  This movie captures that part of superhero comic books perfectly.  It’s movie that reminds us all that while we may not have superpowers, heroism and greatness requires an Aspiration to be heroic and great.  We need superheroes to remind us of what we can become.  But we need superheroes which take on mortal form so that they too can sympathize with our plight.  We need to see Tony Stark become an alcoholic and Peter Parker get bullied in school and the Avengers to be persecuted by the government and Steve Rogers to watch Bucky die and Bruce Banner to become an outcast.  When these gods walk among us suffering from mortal temptations and real pain, it draws our thoughts upward. 

The book Marvels by Busier (drawn by Ross) thus provides an interesting example of the Death of Faith in the modern age.  The book looks at the early years of Marvel through the eyes of a mortal.  It’s clever in a way.  All the events from the early years—in particular the first few years after Lee and Ditko arrived at Marvel—are here.  The book asks us to imagine living in a world where Galactus arrives to destroy the earth and we sit helplessly hoping that someone can save us.  We imagine what it would be like to hear the announcement that Reed Richards and Sue Storm are getting married or read that the Avengers have been declared a public menace and then vindicated followed by the celebration of Avengers Day.  But in the end, fear of mutants reigns and the X-Men are outcast; people show insufficient gratitude for being saved time and again.  The protagonist of the book watches Gwen Stacey die and realizes that faith in superheroes is misplaced.  There are no heroes.  Gwen dies because Spider-Man tries to save her.  And so, the book closes with a celebration of normalcy.  No need to aspire higher, no need to become better than we are.  Look down, young man, ignore that spectacle in the sky.

Or take Moore’s Top Ten, which I also finished recently.  I reviewed part one some time ago, noting it was just Hill Street Blues with superheroes.  The whole series had that feel.  (Well, expect the utterly pointless, let’s cash in on a preexisting title, The Forty-Niners—it’s a prequel to Top Ten.  And it realizes none of the potential a prequel could have had.  Other than the coloring—the book has the look of an old movie reel—the book doesn’t do much interesting.)  What about the original series is interesting?  There are some clever superheroes here; it’s an ensemble cast, so it has the potential to be like The Avengers.  But, in the end, it too shows the same lack of faith in heroes as we saw in Marvels.  The central bad guys are stopped, but of course the chief villain is the Commissioner.  The only being who ends up celebrated at the end is the robot, who, of course was the object of speciesism and discrimination until he proves that he is as good as anyone.  It’s a nice tale, well told—this is Alan Moore after all—but uplifting?  Hardly.

The same is true of another comic book I recently reread: Loeb, Lee and Williams, Batman: Hush.  This is one of the best modern Batman comic books.  I can’t figure out if they really thought the identity of Hush was going to be a surprise—if you haven’t figured out who Hush is very early on in the story, you just aren’t paying attention.  This is a beautiful book, and Batman gets to battle a host of villains.  And yet, after battling that host, Batman is still a lonely man, fighting his own demons.  That is the Batman’s story, of course, so in this case the lack of an uplift is suitable—the Batman as happy-go-lucky hero books are always a bit jarring.  This is why, I suspect, that the Nolan/Bale Batman movies get such critical acclaim.  Batman is the superhero of the modern age—as Batman says at the end of Batman Begins, he will be exactly what the people need.  Right now, people want their superheroes dark, brooding, and dangerous.  (Lovely: dark and deep—not a bad description of Batman (the colon is meant to clear up the nagging question of whether there is a second comma).)

So, consider this the summer when the soul of a nation is put to the test.  We have the final movie in the Batman trilogy and the first Avengers movie being released.  Which movie’s spirit is a better description of the modern world?  That’s will be easy to answer.  Which movie’s spirit captures better the world in which you would want to live?  That is your test question.