A Philosopher Reads...Marvel Comics' Civil War E-Book

Mark D. White

• Herausgeber: Ockham Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: A Philosopher Reads... Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 450

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

We love to see superheroes fight, whether to protect innocent people from supervillains or to save the world. But superheroes also fight each other, and if we can look past the energy blasts and earth-shattering punches, we can find serious disagreements over principles and ethics. This was certainly the case when Captain America and Iron Man went head-to-head over liberty and security in Marvel Comics' epic Civil War storyline, a fictional allegory to post-9/11 America (as well as the basis for the third Captain America film).

In his latest book, Mark D. White, author of The Virtues of Captain America and editor of Iron Man and Philosophy, carefully leads you through the ethical thinking of the three characters on the front lines of the Civil War: Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man.

In his characteristically light and humorous tone, White lays out the basic ethical foundations of each hero's thinking and highlights the moral judgment each must use to put his ethics into action. But also how conflicting principles such as liberty and security must be balanced in the real world, lest both be lost.

Written in a style that will be easily accessible to everyone, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Civil War will be a fascinating read for diehard comic fans and philosophy buffs, as well as those looking for a simple introduction to philosophical ethics.

Leseprobe

A PHILOSOPHER READS…

Marvel Comics’

Civil War

Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man

Mark D. White

Copyright © 2016 Ockham Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

Published by Ockham Publishing in the United Kingdom

ISBN 978-1-910780-11-4

Cover design by Armend Meha

www.ockham-publishing.com

About the Author

Mark D. White is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where he teaches courses in philosophy, law, and economics. He is the author of The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero (Wiley-Blackwell), The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism and The Illusion of Well-Being: Economic Policymaking Based on Respect and Responsiveness (both from Palgrave Macmillan), and Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character (Stanford University Press), as well as over 50 academic journal articles and book chapters on the intersections between economics, philosophy, and law. He has edited or co-edited a number of books on these subjects, including The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination (with Chrisoula Andreou), Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation (with Jennifer A. Baker), and Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (all from Oxford University Press), and he edits two book series: “Perspectives from Social Economics” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “On Ethics and Economics” (Rowman & Littlefield International).

Mark is also author of the ‘A Philosopher Reads…’ series on philosophy and comic books with Ockham Publishing, and a frequent contributor and editor in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series. He has edited or co-edited volumes on Batman, Watchmen, Iron Man, Green Lantern, the Avengers, and Superman, and contributed to volumes on Spider-Man, X-Men, Black Sabbath, Metallica, South Park, The Office, Family Guy, and Alice in Wonderland.

You can find more information about Mark’s books, articles, and blogs (including his popular Psychology Today blog, “Maybe It’s Just Me, But…”) at http://www.profmdwhite.com and follow him on Twitter (@profmdwhite).

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Rob Johnson and Ockham Publishing for embracing this project, and I hope we have a long and fruitful publishing relationship. I thank Louise Spencely for an amazing job copyediting the manuscript (as she also did on The Virtues of Captain America and Superman and Philosophy) as well as providing invaluable and never-ending help with formatting and preparation for publication. I thank S.L. Johnson for providing wonderful insights about publication and promotion. I thank Liam Cooper and Leila Campoli for invaluable advice through the formation of the project. For unending friendship and support, I thank Lauren Hale, Carol Borden, Anita Leirfall, and William Irwin.

I also want to thank all of the brilliant and thoughtful creators at Marvel Comics who participated in Civil War and its aftermath, people such as Mark Millar, Steve McNiven, J. Michael Straczynski, Brian Michael Bendis, Paul Jenkins, Christos Gage, Mike Deodato, Jr., Mike McKone, Ron Garney, Ramon Bachs, Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, Tom Breevort, and Joe Quesada. This is the storyline that drew me fully into the Marvel Universe, and it remains a high-water mark for thoughtful, suspenseful, and action-packed event comics.

Finally, I want to thank the creators of the three characters on whom I focus here: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Joe Simon, Larry Lieber, and Don Heck. Without you, comics, movies, and pop culture in general would not be the same—and neither would this simple philosopher.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

Part I: Iron Man—On the Side of Security

Chapter 2: Introducing Utilitarianism

Chapter 3: Tony Stark, the Utilitarian Iron Man

Chapter 4: Do the Ends Justify the Iron Man?

Part II: Captain America—On the Side of Liberty

Chapter 5: Introducing Deontology

Chapter 6: The Principles of Captain America

Chapter 7: The Integrity of a Hero and a Country

Part III: Spider-Man—Caught in the Middle

Chapter 8: Peter Parker Joins the Avengers… and Iron Man

Chapter 9: Revealing the Man Under the Spider Mask

Chapter 10: Whose Side Are You On, Peter?

Part IV: The Aftermath of the Civil War

Chapter 11: Spider-Man, Back in Black and Out for Blood

Chapter 12: The Trials of Iron Man

Chapter 13: Steve Rogers Returns

Conclusion

References

Notes

Introduction

After a tragedy involving tremendous loss of life, the United States government quickly passes a law that favors security over liberty, and then engages in secretive and questionable methods of detention, with both aimed at preventing a similar tragedy in the future.

Sound familiar? If you were old enough to realize what was happening on September 11, 2001, or have learned about it since, it should. The tragic events of 9/11, as that day has come to be known, made Americans all too aware of a growing threat of terrorism that, until then, seemed to be confined to the rest of the world. Afterwards, the US government scrambled to ensure a similar catastrophe could never happen again, and in the process took actions that ignited a new debate over liberty and security that continues to this day.

But if you’re a comic book fan, my description of events also brings forward images of a group of young inexperienced heroes triggering an accident that caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent people (including dozens of schoolchildren), after which the US government passed a law required masked superhumans to register and reveal their identities, culminating in a lengthy battle between heroes—in particular, one with a red, white, and blue shield fighting against another wearing golden armor.

Marvel Comics’ Civil War was a self-conscious allegory to the events of September 11 and its aftermath (even though the actual events of 9/11 occurred in the world of the Marvel superheroes as well). It cast two of the premier Marvel superheroes as figureheads of the two ideas being debated, with Captain America fighting to preserve liberty and Iron Man struggling to ensure security. Nearly every other hero took sides—the promotional materials for the storyline asked readers, “Whose Side Are You On?”—and the most popular Marvel superhero of them all, Spider-Man, was caught in the middle.

In this book, we’ll follow the paths of these three heroes through Marvel’s Civil War, which took place in 2006 and 2007 in the seven-issue Civil War comic book and in about 100 tie-in comics in other titles such as Captain America, Iron Man, and The Amazing Spider-Man. We’ll look at the actions and motivations of Cap, Iron Man, and Spidey, in terms of the personal ethics behind their decisions as well as the broader principles of liberty and security at the heart of the Civil War—the same principles that still motivate debates in the real world over controversial issues such as surveillance, detention, and torture.

In the decade since the original series, Marvel Comics has revisited the Civil War several times, in several issues of What If? in 2008 and 2009 as well as a new Civil War miniseries in 2015, all exploring different ways the conflict could have gone and ended—or, in the case of the miniseries, if it never ended at all. There was also a novelization of the storyline in 2012 and a Civil War II miniseries in 2016, the latter coming out around the same time as the feature film Captain America: Civil War, which portrays the ideological battle between Captain America and Iron Man on the big screen. The Civil War storyline never seems to go out of style, largely due to the issue at its core: conflicts between important principles, whether the broad societal principles of liberty, privacy, and security, or the more personal principles of duty, loyalty, and care. The way we balance these principles in our personal, public, and political lives is a topic that this philosopher loves to write about, and Civil War gives him the perfect opportunity to discuss them with you.

Whose side are you on? Let’s see…

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

“In everyone’s life, Peter, there’s an ‘it’… your wife leaves you, or you get cancer. There’s your life before ‘it’ and your life after ‘it.’ 9/11 was an ‘it’ of national magnitude. And Stamford… is going to be another one.”—Iron Man to Spider-Man1

The world of Marvel Comics, known to fans as the Marvel Universe, has always been more of a mirror of our real world than the world of DC Comics is. While DC has Metropolis (home to Superman), Gotham City (Batman), and Central City (the Flash), the architects of the early Marvel Universe chose to put most of its heroes in or around New York City.2 This enables readers to connect more closely to the locales in the comics: they see Spider-Man swinging from the Chrysler Building, Daredevil chasing a criminal through the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, and the X-Men training in Professor X’s Westchester mansion, all real places they can live in, visit, or see on the news.

This aspect of realism in Marvel Comics also allows the creators to portray real-world events in their stories. Because most Marvel stories are set in New York City, celebrities and political figures often show up, from mayors to talk show hosts like David Letterman. When the president of the United States is shown, he (or, someday, she) is usually the real-world president at the time (although often depicted in shadow to preserve some degree of timelessness in the story). And when something cataclysmic happens, especially in New York City, the comics show that too, as they did with the events of September 11, 2001. A very moving issue of Amazing Spider-Man showed various heroes (and a few villains) mourning the death and destruction from that day, and a story arc in Captain America modeled the ideal reaction to the tragedy, perfectly balancing sensitivity to Americans of Middle Eastern descent while focusing the military response on the individuals responsible.3

While we can assume that the US government in the Marvel Universe reacted in the same way to 9/11 as ours did—they passed the PATRIOT Act, for example—readers had to wait until 2006 to see the Marvel superheroes react to their own tragedy.4 Even though, unlike 9/11, the incident that launched the Civil War was caused by a handful of inexperienced heroes, following a series of catastrophes involving other heroes, it prompted a similar public outcry and legislative response as occurred in response to 9/11 in the real world. Unique to the comics, however, the tragedy in the Marvel Universe resulted in a wholescale war that posed hero against hero.

If we peel away the superhero façade, under the capes and masks we see the same debates in the Marvel Universe as we do in the real world. These include conflicts between liberty and security in the political realm as well as between defending the right and advancing the good in the personal realm. For these reasons, I call the Marvel Comics Civil War a war of principle: on the surface, it’s an exciting battle between superheroes, but dig a little deeper, and you find a battle of ideals. And this isn’t your ordinary good-versus-evil battle, such as when Captain America protects freedom against the Red Skull’s dreams of tyranny. Instead, this battle of principle is amongst the forces of good, where each principle is valid and admirable on its own, such as liberty and security. Yet, as we’ve seen numerous times since 9/11, these principles are not compatible, and we have to decide which one to favor over the other at any particular time. Rather than choose one principle to favor over others, we must find a way to balance them, and the proper balance will not always be the same—nor will anyone likely agree with anyone else on what the proper balance should be.

The general point I want to make in this book is that these conflicts of principle occur all the time, in both our political and personal lives, and even though we have to prioritize certain principles in particular cases, all of the principles remain important and valuable. Even though we may decide to privilege security or liberty at some point, both of them must still be valued and promoted; we wouldn’t choose one and dismiss the other entirely. In terms of personal decision-making, even though some people try to do what’s right, according to rules and duties, while others try to promote what’s good, in terms of welfare or well-being, they are all advancing important principles of morality. With all due respect to Iron Man, the choices here are not stark ones—they’re not about right answers and wrong answers, but about finding the right balance between equally valid principles for a particular situation, and recognizing that different situations require different solutions with their own unique balancing of principles.

In this chapter, we’ll summarize the main points of the story and the aspects of it that we’ll focus on throughout this book. If you haven’t read Civil War yet, I highly encourage you to do so now. As they say in the biz, there will be spoilers! There is much, much more in the over one hundred issues of comics in the Civil War storyline than I can include here (although I do try to cram in as much as I can), so this book is no substitute for the real thing. Here, I want to draw out some topics of philosophical interests from Civil War; if you haven’t read the original, I’ll give you enough information to get the points I’m making, but to enjoy this book to the fullest, it would help to read at least the main Civil War series first. (Wait, don’t put this book back! Buy this and Civil War. Whew, that was close.)

A Snapshot of the Marvel Universe Before the Civil War

The Civil War did not start out of the blue; events had been leading to it for quite a while. What did the Marvel Universe look like heading into the Civil War? Let’s set the stage and see what embers were smoldering before the final match was lit, and also introduce the main characters involved.

One of the most common sights in superhero comics (and blockbuster action movies of any type) is wide-scale destruction, especially in the middle of a major metropolitan area such as New York City. Occasionally comics creators will make note of the damage caused by battles between superheroes and supervillains, and sometimes attention is paid to the clean-up efforts (as in Marvel Comics’ Damage Control series), but less often to the human costs. We may like to think that no one is seriously hurt when Iron Man fights the Wrecking Crew in the middle of Times Square, and that the resulting harm is “merely” property damage for which victims can be compensated (usually out of Tony Stark’s deep pockets). But this stretches even the generous disbelief that readers may engage in to believe that people can fly, shoot energy beams from their eyes, and return from the dead more easily than you return from the dentist.

The Civil War was born out of the realization amongst the ordinary citizens of the Marvel Universe that enough is enough, that they could no longer bear the increasingly frequent, costly, and sometimes deadly catastrophes that resulted from their superheroes mixing it up with their arch-nemeses (or even their fellow heroes). In fact, leading up to the disaster in Stamford, Connecticut, that directly led to the Civil War, a number of lesser disasters had occurred in the Marvel Universe.5

Genosha: After an abhorrent history of mutant apartheid, the island nation of Genosha was designated by the United Nations as a mutant sanctuary to be ruled by Magneto, master of magnetism and former head of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Its population numbered over 16 million—about half the mutants on Earth—when the villain Cassandra Nova and her mutant-hunting robot Sentinels destroyed all life on Genosha.6 The world of the Marvel Universe, already plagued by anti-mutant prejudice, was now faced with a 21st-century holocaust (directly analogous, of course, to the Jewish Holocaust during World War II).

Avengers Disassembled/House of M: The Scarlet Witch, a longtime Avenger and mutant, suffered a mental breakdown which led to the deaths of several Avengers, including Hawkeye and her ex-husband the Vision, the destruction of the Avengers Mansion, and the (temporary) dissolution of the Avengers.7 But that wasn’t all: even under the care of her father Magneto, now returned to Genosha, the Scarlet Witch’s condition continued to deteriorate until she lost control over her reality-warping powers, reforming the world into a mutant paradise in which her father Magneto was ruler and the two children she had lost years ago were still alive.8When reality reverted to normal, only the heroes involved remembered the incident—but the three simple words the Scarlet Witch uttered had enormous ramifications for the Marvel Universe going forward: “No more mutants.” With these words, the Scarlet Witch robbed nearly all remaining mutants on Earth of their powers, leaving only 198 mutants (give or take) left with their powers.9

Nick Fury’s Secret War: When Nick Fury, longtime director of SHIELD, uncovered a plot by the prime minister of Latveria, Lucia Von Bardas, to carry out terror attacks in the United States by arming minor villains with advanced technology, the US government refuses to act due to its new diplomatic ties with the country now that Doctor Doom is no longer ruler.10 Fury then assembles a clandestine group of superheroes, including Captain America and Spider-Man, to attack Latveria; they destroy the seat of government (Doom’s castle), only to be brainwashed by Fury afterwards so they retain no memory of the incident. But the heroes start to remember as they’re attacked by Von Bardas’ villains, and together they (and Von Bardas) strike back on American soil, detonating a massive antimatter bomb in New York City. Fury blames the State Department for what he sees as a repeat of 9/11, and the heroes blame Fury for the extreme measures taken in Latveria and for brainwashing them. As a result, Fury goes underground, and Maria Hill—who will play a significant role in the Civil War—takes over as director of SHIELD.

Philadelphia: The City of Brotherly Love was rocked by a terrorist bombing masterminded by Captain America’s arch-foe the Red Skull, who framed Jack Monroe (one-time sidekick to Cap as well as to the 1950s Captain America, William Burnside). To make matters worse, the bombing was carried out by the Winter Soldier, who turned out to be another person associated with Captain America.11 Regardless of the truth, the public came to associate the deadly bombing with a former superhero.

Las Vegas: Near the jewel of the desert, the Incredible Hulk finds a HYDRA installation with a gamma bomb, which explodes and makes the Hulk even larger, stronger, and more uncontrollable than usual. Two members of the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch and the Thing, fly to Las Vegas and, for three issues, mix it up with the Hulk in Las Vegas, ending only when the Torch uses one of his “nova blasts” to put a halt to the Hulk’s rampage, but not until after 26 people were killed.12

And following these disasters, where were the main players in the Marvel Universe at the time?

Iron Man (Tony Stark): After going public with his identity as Iron Man, Tony Stark was serving as the United States Secretary of Defense when the Scarlet Witch, in the midst of her breakdown, made him appear drunk and dangerous in front of the United Nations General Assembly.13 After the destruction of Avengers Mansion and the dissolution of the Avengers, Tony put together a new Avengers team with Captain America, including, for the first time as a regular member, a certain friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.14At the same time, he also took the Extremis techno-virus to recover from a fatal beating, which enabled him to reengineer his mind and body to more closely interface with his armor on a cellular level.15 However, this also subjected his armor to mind-control through him, causing hundreds of deaths and making him realize the danger his armor posed to the general public.16

On the side, Tony had been meeting in secret with Reed Richards (Mr.Fantastic of the Fantastic Four), Dr. Stephen Strange (Sorcerer Supreme), Black Bolt (king of the Inhumans), Professor Charles Xavier (mentor to the X-Men), and sometimes Namor (the Sub-Mariner, Prince of Atlantis), a covert brain-trust known to readers as the Illuminati. In a bit of revisionist comics history, the Iluminati were revealed to have been operating behind the scenes of the Marvel Universe to steer the course of history since the days of the Kree/Skrull War, and would play a role in the upcoming Civil War as well.17

Captain America (Steve Rogers): Around the same time that he reassembled a new Avengers team with Iron Man, Steve Rogers also discovered that his teenaged partner during World War II, James “Bucky” Barnes, did not die when the rocket he was trapped on exploded, as Cap long thought.18 Instead, his body was recovered by the Soviets, who replaced his missing arm with a robotic prosthetic, brainwashed him, and retrained him to be the lethal assassin known as the Winter Soldier (who later set the bomb in Philadelphia, mentioned above). Once Cap became aware of the Winter Soldier’s identity, he tracked Bucky and managed to break through his retraining, after which Bucky went into hiding.19Meanwhile, Cap also reconnected with his longtime love, Sharon Carter, also known as SHIELD Agent 13, as well as his longtime crimefighting partner in the modern world, the Falcon (Sam Wilson).

Spider-Man (Peter Parker): Shortly after being invited into the Avengers by Captain America, a young man with a grudge against Peter Parker burned down the apartment he shared with his wife Mary Jane as well as the home of his devoted Aunt May.20 The three of them then move into Avengers Tower, where Aunt May is charmed by Captain America (who asked to see pictures of her late husband Ben) and wooed by the Avengers’ butler Jarvis.21Peter also finds himself working closely with Tony Stark, a fellow scientific mind, who builds Peter a new costume—the technologically advanced “Iron Spidey” suit—and asks him to be his right-hand man as the political climate surround the superhero community begins to deteriorate.

We’ll spend a lot more time with these three heroes throughout the rest of this book. Before we forget, however, let’s talk about two important Marvel heroes who were conspicuously absent during the Civil War…

The Hulk (Bruce Banner):Last we saw the Hulk, he had killed 26 people in Las Vegas. The members of the Illuminati, frustrated at their inability to either cure, restrain, or control the Hulk, decide to trick him into a space capsule and launch him into deep space.22 He landed on a savage planet on which he was enslaved, turned into a gladiator, and fought his way to becoming ruler and marrying, only to have his world inadvertently destroyed—by the Illuminati.23 The Hulk managed to get back to Earth with some of his new friends, after the Civil War ended, to confront his old chums. If you think the Hulk caused some destruction before, just read the story that could only be titled… World War Hulk.24

Thor (just… Thor): Just before the Avengers were disassembled, the gods of Asgard experienced Ragnarok, the End of Days, in which they all died.25 They would eventually return after the Civil War ended, but for the time being, all that was seen of the Odinson was his hammer, which mysteriously fell to Earth near Broxton, Oklahoma.26 But in his stead, another wouldst rise, one who wouldst have deadly consequences and turn the tide of the Civil War. (Verily!)

It All Began in Stamford

The incident that started off the Civil War takes all of seven pages in the first issue of the series.27The team of young heroes known as the New Warriors were traveling the country filming a reality show when they became aware of four escaped supervillains—and I’m using the term supervillain very generously—holed up in a house in Stamford, Connecticut. Hoping for their breakthrough episode, the New Warriors engage the villains, more concerned about mugging for the camera than quickly and safely apprehending them. As Namorita (cousin of Namor) attacks the villain Nitro, he mocks her, claiming to be much more of a threat than they’re used to handling, and triggers an explosion, killing over 600 people, sixty of them children playing outside at a nearby school.

Public outcry was immediate, especially considering the growing trend of superhero-related catastrophes over the years leading to Stamford. Talking heads on television began debating the wisdom (or foolishness) of unregulated superhero activity. Miriam Sharpe, whose son was one of the hundreds who died that day, became the public face of the Stamford tragedy and the legislative response: the Superhuman Registration Act (HR 421), or SHRA (not the snappiest acronym, admittedly). The SHRA requires that all super-powered heroes, including those who get their abilities through technology (like Iron Man), register with the federal government and SHIELD, revealing their identities (but not making them public), and submitting to training and being held accountable for their actions. In effect, they become members of a specialized unit of federal or state police, military personnel, or SHIELD, and would be assigned to one of the sanctioned superhero teams in every state in the union under the Fifty-State Initiative.28Heroes who refuse to register, as well as anyone aiding and abetting them, would be in violation of the law and subject to arrest and imprisonment. (Exactly where they would be imprisoned will be a major point of emphasis to come.)29

As we’ll see in chapter 3, self-professed futurist Tony Stark saw this legislation coming and warned his fellow Illuminati about it.30 He tried to defeat it while still in conference in the US Senate, and having failed at that, decided to take charge of its implementation. With Spider-Man at his side and working with other big brains such as Hank Pym and Reed Richards, Iron Man led a select team of registered Avengers to round up unregistered heroes as well as perform the normal duties of Avengers, such as fighting crime and saving lives (roles that risked being forgotten in the process of fighting over registration). He also engaged in such activities in support of the SHRA that some, both in the Marvel Universe and our own, found questionable, including using a prison in the Negative Zone (an antimatter dimension discovered by Reed Richards) to hold heroes who refused to register, enlisting the aid of confirmed villains to help capture said unregistered heroes, and creating a clone of one of his fellow Avengers that ended up creating a tragedy of his own.

Standing in opposition to registration and Iron Man was Captain America, the Sentinel of Liberty. As we’ll see in Part II of this book, Cap argued strongly against the SHRA from the beginning, becoming a fugitive from SHIELD and the US government—not an unfamiliar position for a hero who has always stood for principle over politics.31 Quickly going underground with his own band of rebels, including the Falcon, Daredevil, and Luke Cage, Cap focused on trying to protect unregistered heroes and rescue those already captured, at the same time that he debated the finer points of liberty and security with Iron Man. (We’ll enjoy analyzing several of those debates later in this book.)

Finally, Peter Parker was the Spider-Man in the middle, starting out on Iron Man’s side as he tried to prevent and then manage registration, but then gradually coming to agree with Captain America and his arguments against it. More so than for either older hero, registration was personal for Spidey, since he regarded his secret identity as essential to keeping his wife Mary Jane and his beloved Aunt May safe from his many enemies (who had struck out against those close to him in the past). As we’ll see in Part III, this gave his decision-making a more grounded flavor; where and with whom he stood on the balance between liberty and security had enormous and potentially devastating consequences for his family.

As seen through the eyes of these three very different characters, we get to look at the ethical principles and ideals of the Civil War at various levels, from Cap and Iron Man’s differences over political ideology and personal ethical stance that supports each hero’s viewpoint, to Spidey’s more personal take that brings the abstract issues down to earth and into his life.

Comparing the Marvel Comics Civil War to the Real World

As I mentioned in the introduction, Civil War was a loose but unrestrained analogue to the events following the attack on the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, in particular the PATRIOT Act and the prison at Guantanamo Bay. These aspects of the story were touched on in most of the related books, but were made explicit in Civil War: Front Line, a series that looked at registration and the Civil War through the eyes of two citizen journalists.32 (We’ll hear much of them in the chapters that follow.) In this section, we’ll briefly discuss the parallels and differences between the world we live in and the one that includes Cap, Iron Man, and the rest of our favorite heroes.33 (Ah, if only we could choose!)

While there was a tragic inciting event and rushed legislative reaction, as there was in the real world, the issue at the heart of Civil War was not terrorism but rather the irresponsible behavior of unaccountable superheroes. While it raised the same issues of liberty and security that the PATRIOT Act did here, the SHRA was more analogous to calls for gun-control legislation after tragedies like that at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. This was made explicit shortly before Stamford when Tony Stark became a victim of mind control and the man controlling him used his armor to kill hundreds of innocent civilians.34 When Stark’s friend assured him that he bore no responsibility since he was not in control, he responded, “every super hero is a potential gun… and the last time I checked, guns required registration.”35

However, there are aspects of terrorism present in the story also, particularly in the fact that the combatants did not represent states or breakaway territories, but rather ideological factions. In a sense, Iron Man and the pro-registration heroes fought on behalf of the United States government and the SHRA, while Captain America and the anti-registration heroes were rebels, considering themselves to be freedom fighters, resisting what they saw as an oppressive law. As Captain America told a journalist after the Civil War ended, “I saw the possibility of a registration act as a basic violation of our rights as Americans.”36 The anti-registration forces were not military combatants—with the possible exception of Captain America, whose official military status has always been vague—but nonetheless were called “unregistered combatants” by the government, SHIELD, and Iron Man. Although Cap’s forces did have to hide to escape detection and fought for ideological reasons—as terrorists often do—they certainly did not use the usual tools and tactics of terrorism, such as creating fear and targeting civilians. At their heart, the heroes on both sides tried to minimize the harm to civilian lives and property; as we’ll see later, both Iron Man and Cap considered their positions to be based on what was best for the people they had sworn to protect.37

Despite a few parallels with terrorism, and the more obvious analogues to post-9/11 America, the conflict over registration truly resembles a civil war, with “establishment” forces fighting off a rebellion within its borders, setting citizens against each other over principles and ideals rather than territory or resources. As he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, after testifying in front of Congress against registration, Tony Stark told Peter Parker that he admired Lincoln for knowing that the nation had to survive even if it meant a civil war in which “brother hunted down brother, friend turned against friend. It was terrible. It was bloody. It was necessary. Because at the end, the republic held, and the nation was restored.”38As is typical for Tony, he saw what was coming better than most, but even he couldn’t know everything that the Civil War between heroes would cost them.

The Principles of Liberty and Security and the Importance of Balance

At the heart of the Civil War—and between Captain America and Iron Man in particular—were the dual principles of liberty and security. We’ll discuss them in more detail in relation to each hero (and Spider-Man) throughout the rest of the book, but it might be good to preview the major themes before we start.

For Captain America, liberty in this context means the freedom to operate as a superhero in a larger community that polices itself—an autonomous peacekeeping force, in essence—that also enjoys privacy with respect to their secret identities and activities. To Cap, this is a matter of autonomy, personal security, and efficacy. As he tells Sharon Carter, by requiring registration the government is “endangering innocent lives, and destroying the lives of heroes.”39 He explains that because he chose to make his identity public, his friends and neighbors are in constant danger, which he accepts, but “not everybody is willing to risk what I have… Should they be denied the right to make that choice?”40In a long conversation with Iron Man in the early days of the Civil War—from which we’ll draw much insight in the chapters that follow—Cap acknowledges that the government will be in charge of the heroes’ secrets, but argues nonetheless that secrets get out, especially in a world with supervillains who have access to advanced technology and psychic abilities.41 He combines his concerns for autonomy with a skepticism of politicians and the political process: as he tells Iron Man, “the registration act takes away any freedom we have, any autonomy. You don’t know who could get elected, how public sentiment could change,” recalling the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.42

On the other side of the coin, Iron Man is concerned, above all, with security. After witnessing the destruction caused by irresponsible superheroes—including himself when under the influence of alcohol—he appreciates the negative impression of superheroes among the public that led to the SHRA. As he tells his best friend Happy Hogan, “in order to protect our role in society, there needs to be some accountability.” Like Cap, Iron Man is also distrustful of politicians, which is why he assumed control of registration himself in order to protect his colleagues in the superhero community. “Can you imagine?” he asks Hogan. “Some C-plus-average public-sector schlub in the Department of Redundancy Department riding herd on people like Cap?”43During his long conversation with Captain America, Iron Man cited mistakes made by superheroes that might have been prevented had they been better trained, for which no one was often there to stop them or hold them accountable. When Captain America invoked the internment of Japanese Americans, Iron Man argued that Cap’s laissez-faire approach “is a lot more likely to get us put in camps than mine.”44

At the end of their discussion, the conflict over liberty and security came to closely resemble the gun-control debate in the real world. Iron Man says that his support of registration “is predicated on that premise that superheroes make mistakes. And you’re Captain America. You don’t make mistakes.”45He tells Cap that if all heroes were like him, the perfect, unshakeable hero, registration would not be necessary—but because they’re not, someone needs to make them take responsibility for their actions. This is a clear parallel to gun-control debates: defenders of gun rights emphasize personal responsibility and agency, while supporters of gun control focus on accidents and stolen weapons. Likewise, the examples of superhero malfeasance and poor judgment cited by Iron Man make a similar case for registration and accountability, while Captain America prefers to handle training and accountability on a private basis.

Framed this way, the Civil War in the Marvel Universe—much like many civil wars fought around the world that we live in—was a conflict of principles, wherein one side favored safety and security while the other side favored liberty and privacy. Another way to look at it is that one side favored obeying the law as passed by legitimate democratic processes, while the other side favored standing up for the more general moral principles that laws are supposed to embody. However we want to characterize the ideology of the two sides in the conflict—and whichever side any of us happens to agree with—it’s only fair to recognize that each side sincerely fought for a principle that, on its face, is entirely reasonable and supportable.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, everyone wants to feel safe and secure, and everyone wants to be free and enjoy privacy. Hardly anyone would argue that either of these things is bad, even if they would argue for certain limits or qualifications on some of them. And that’s the most important point to make here—that conflicts, ranging from disagreements at family dinners, to electoral debates, to civil wars, cannot always be cast in terms of grand dramatic representations of Right and Wrong. As I said before, this is not Captain America versus the Red Skull, democracy versus tyranny, or good versus evil. If you look at the US Civil War as a battle over slavery, it fits the good-versus-evil picture, but if you look at it as a struggle between federal rights and states’ rights, aside from the particular rights at issue, it’s a different story altogether. Instead, conflicts often arise when one good idea comes into conflict with another good idea, and one or both have to bend. The idea is not to pick one side and reject the other—bending does not imply breaking—but rather to find a balance between them that works for everybody at that point in time.

The United States faced such a situation in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when we as a nation had to decide how much liberty we were willing to sacrifice for greater security (or at least as much security as we thought we had on September 10). Much like with the SHRA in the Marvel Universe, the US government in the real world passed the PATRIOT Act with uncharacteristic speed, and it effectively reset the national definition of where the trade-off between liberty and security stood. Since then, the acronyms NSA and TSA have become part of our collective language, and many have argued that, after fifteen years without a second major act of international terrorism on American soil, that balance needs to be redefined.46

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”47While this statement is often used in an absolutist fashion to warn against any sacrifice of liberty for any degree of security, Franklin was a more subtle thinker and writer than this. He warned only of giving up “essential” liberties to gain “a little temporary” security, not that some liberty must sometimes be sacrificed to gain some security. He questioned the wisdom of a foolish or imprudent trade-off between them, not the idea of a trade-off in general. Again, the question is where the appropriate balance between them lies at any point in time, not whether to endorse an absolute devotion to one or the other.

As we’ll see in the next three parts of the book, which describe the judgments regarding these principles made by Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man, all of them questioned the choices they made and the balance they endorsed. Even though they prioritized either liberty or security (or each at different times), all three saw both liberty and security as valuable principles and did not dismiss any of them entirely. They did, however, endorse different ways of balancing them, based on their judgment informed by experience and formed by their basic moral characters. Throughout the rest of the book, we’ll examine what made each of these heroes of the Marvel Universe take the side he did, looking at their codes of ethics, the way they made decisions regarding the principles at play in the debate over registration, and the consequences of those decisions—which were tragic for each of our heroes in very different ways.

Some Details about Discussing Comics (Especially without the Pretty Pictures)

Before we delve into this fascinating and timely story, we should probably discuss a few of the sticky details about comics, especially when writing about them in a noncomics format such as this book.

Comic-book dialogue

Because of the way that most comics dialogue is represented, lengthier passages are often broken up into numerous balloons in order to fit in and around the magnificent art, with phrases and even words separated by ellipses or em-dashes, as in “But, Tony… what are you—what are you saying?” This makes even relatively short bits of dialogue appear odd when reproduced in continuous prose form. I used my own judgment to break long passages into paragraphs for easier reading, but I did retain the ellipses and em-dashes to retain fidelity to the source material (and simply to reflect my love of the form).

Also, comics dialogue typically shows emphasis using italicized and bold text. Again, while this is accepted as normal in comics, it can look excessive and hyperbolic on the printed page. In this case, I have decided to remove emphasis from the dialogue reproduced here except when absolutelynecessary. (See what I mean?) Even when their words are not emphasized with italics or boldface, superheroes use a lot of exclamation points! Often more than one!! Even after every sentence!!! You don’t see these as much in modern comics as you did in the 1960s, but they still crop up here and there throughout this book. (You’ll pry my extra exclamation points from my dead hands, copyeditor!)

Finally, I do not pretend that the words or dialogue in comics can be represented accurately without the illustrations that are an essential part of the medium. Comics are a visual medium, a melding of words and pictures, and you simply can’t do justice to one without the other. At the end of the day, that is a limitation of the prose form within which I must work, and I have tried to do the best I can. But by all means, go read the comics!!!

Sources

I have cited all of the comics from which I quote dialogue or draw events, and all of the details about these comics are at the end of the book, including where they can be found in collected volumes. Most of the cited material is from the Civil War series and related comics, but I also draw on comics leading into and stemming out of the Civil War (especially in Part IV on the aftermath of the event).

There are several things I should clarify about the references for those of you who are not regular comics readers (yet). You may wonder, for example, why Iron Man #13, one of the key Civil War tie-in comics, was published in 2006 when Iron Man has had his own title since the 1960s. (Comics publishers can get behind on their publication schedules, but that’s ridiculous!) But this is volume 4 of the Iron Man comic, which started in 2005 (and ended in 2009). Sometimes, a comic book series is “relaunched” with a new #1 to attract new readers and call attention to a new creative team, a different approach to the character, or even a different person under the mask. (Some publishers, including Marvel Comics, are now emulating the seasons of TV shows, in which a lengthy story is told over a year or two and then the comic is relaunched for the next long story.) Most of the issues of Captain America cited in this book are from volume 5, for instance; even Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, which were both in the 500s when the Civil War occurred, have since been relaunched. (Since new volumes of modern comics will probably never reach triple digits again, I chose not to list volume numbers for these high-numbered issues.)

Also, you will no doubt notice that I do not include page numbers when I cite specific pieces of dialogue, citing only the comic title, volume, and issue number. This is an unfortunate omission, especially for a writer and editor who is, shall we say, quite fastidious about bibliographic detail. (In other words, I’m a referencing nerd—don’t tell anyone.) But the fact is that very few modern comics or collections include page numbers, and I don’t think you or I want to count pages of all the comics I cite in this book when we can better spend our time reading the comics instead.

Unity of character

Have you ever asked yourself, “Who is Captain America?” or “Who is Iron Man?” I don’t mean their secret identities, but rather the essence of the character himself. Is it the version of the character presented by the original creators: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in the case of Captain America, and Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, and Kirby in the case of Iron Man? Or has the character changed over the years as different creators worked on them, so the original version is no longer canon? If the latter, how can we consider the Iron Man and Captain America of 2016 to be same as in 2006—much less 1966?

In all cases of serial fiction in which a character or concept is handled by a series of creators over time, whether it be Captain America or Captain Kirk, these issues arise: who the character is, what elements define the character, and what responsibilities the creators have to maintain those essential aspects of the character. Luckily for us, the people who created the major Marvel Comics superheroes in the 1960s, heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four—and I’ll even include Captain America with them, referring to his revival in 1964—defined their character traits so well from the very beginning that later creators had a clear template to follow, while they continued to develop the characters in new ways consistent with their origins. Tony Stark started “life” as a wealthy, playboy industrialist and inventor whose addictive and indulgent qualities were explored over the years. Peter Parker was a kind-hearted science nerd who felt a responsibility to use his newfound powers for good, even as he struggled in his personal life with finances, romance, and self-doubt—struggles carried through many life changes, such as college, jobs, and marriage. In the 1940s, Steve Rogers was a model of inner strength and integrity even before he was transformed into a specimen of physical perfection; in the 1960s and onward, he struggled to find a life in a time he didn’t belong in and in a country that had changed dramatically. Due to the work of creators who respected the work of their predecessors, these characters grew and changed organically over the years, but rarely in conflict with the integral and basic traits that defined them from their beginnings.

In this book, we’re not looking at characters over decades of comics—most of the Civil War comics were published in 2006 and 2007. However, a number of different creators wrote and illustrated their adventures over that short time period, especially the main characters, Iron Man and Captain America, and to a lesser extent Spider-Man. There were some criticisms at the time that Iron Man was shown to be humble in one comic but arrogant in another, even though the two comics may have come out the same week, and that some events were represented in different ways in different books. This is the unfortunate but inevitable result of an effort by a publisher and its editors to coordinate a number of creators telling different aspects of the same large-scale story. For the most part, I think the characters were depicted quite consistently across the various comics, again based on the stable template provided by the original creators and their dedicated successors over the years. Three different creative teams could tell three different sides of the same story using Iron Man and portray him as a single character because Iron Man had been portrayed consistently for over forty years at that point. And in any case in which he seemed to be portrayed inconsistently, I will give the creators the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a feature of the story, not a flaw with it. (After all, do you act consistently “in character” all the time? That’s what I thought.)

Part I: Iron Man—On the Side of Security

As I write this, Marvel Comics has just announced its “All-New, All-Different” character line-up starting in fall 2015 and proclaimed Iron Man as their flagship character, replacing Spider-Man as the standard-bearer for the company. This is an incredible development for a character who, before his breakout 2008 film, was considered by many to be a B-list player in the Marvel Universe, on a distinctly lower level from Spidey, the Hulk, and the Astonishingly Popular X-Men. Of course, that film, fueled by Robert Downey Jr.’s pitch-perfect performance as Tony Stark, as well as brilliant scripting, directing, and acting by all involved, launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an interconnected series of films that echoes the tightly woven tapestry of the Marvel Comics Universe begun by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others in the early 1960s.

Even though he was never as popular as Spider-Man or Wolverine until recently, Iron Man has been a significant figure in the Marvel Universe almost since his introduction in Tales of Suspense #39 in March 1963. Later that year, he appeared as a charter member of the Avengers in the first issue of their book (Avengers, vol. 1,#1, September 1963), both as a member and, in secret, as their wealthy patron, Tony Stark. As all Avengers did, from time to time Iron Man would leave the team only to return later, but overall he was one of the most stable members; he was even anointed one of the “Avengers Prime” along with fellow charter member Thor and the “new kid,” Captain America, who didn’t join until the fourth issue in March 1964. Furthermore, as founder of the secretive Illuminati, Iron Man embedded himself firmly in the Marvel Universe, pulling strings behind the scenes that would not come to light for years.

It wasn’t until the build-up to the Civil War, however, that Iron Man took his largest and most public leadership role, not just spearheading the registration effort but replacing Maria Hill (who replaced Nick Fury) as director of SHIELD after the conflict ended. Not everybody was happy with Tony Stark’s ascension, however, including many people in the Marvel Universe as well as those in the real world reading about him. Some disagreed with his goals, other with his motivation, and still others with his tactics—and not a few took issue with all three!

In this chapter, we’ll delve into the character of Tony Stark, the Invincible Iron Man, and his actions leading up to, during, and after the Civil War. What moral philosophy stands behind his support of registration as well as the means he took to pursue it? What circumstances in his life made him particularly sympathetic to those concerned with the unregulated behavior of superheroes? And what is it about his moral code that makes him so controversial to the other heroes, one star-spangled one in particular?

Armor up—we’re going in.

Chapter 2: Introducing Utilitarianism

If you’ve read any of his comics or seen his movies, you’ll know that Tony Stark is the picture of an imperfect hero, as all heroes in the Marvel Universe are imperfect (even Captain America). But as Thor would say, Tony is a hero true—verily—and as a hero, he follows a certain code of ethics. In this first chapter focusing on the Armored Avenger, we’ll look at utilitarianism, one of three classical schools of ethics, alongside deontology and virtue ethics (both of which we’ll see in the next part of the book), and the one Tony exemplifies in many ways. We’ll start by defining utilitarianism, focusing on the three aspects of it that separate it from a general ethics based on consequences. Next we’ll look at the crucial role that judgment plays when putting utilitarianism into action, and we’ll finish by looking at some shortcomings of utilitarianism from the viewpoints of other major ethical systems as well as common moral intuition.

What Is Utilitarianism?

Simply put, utilitarianism asks us to take actions that are likely to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. If people’s well-being is one of the things you consider when weighing a moral decision—especially if you try to consider all of the people affected by your actions, not just those close to you—then to some extent you are thinking like a utilitarian.