Ultimate Origins

The story of Captain America is that he was a scrawny kid with a gimpy leg who desperately wanted to enlist during WWII, but couldn't, so they let him test a super soldier serum so he could get big and buff and go kick Nazi ass.

In Ultimate Origins #2 (Brian Michael Bendis) there's a scene right after Steve Rogers has become Captain America where FDR comes to him and says something like, "We need you. It's not just about kicking Nazi ass; if we don't have you, we're going to have to use a bomb, a really big bomb, and cause genocide." And then Cap gets frozen in ice and even in the Marvel universe they end up using the bomb anyway.

Superheros first appeared in the 1930s, as the Nazis were coming to power. Bendis exposes the entire genre as an imaginary solution to the world wars - powerful men with moral judgment and discernment who could kick bad guy ass without damaging civilians. And he puts them in that context by comparing them to the bomb we got instead.

It's indicative of why we still find superheros important today. We see it in in Iron Man when his targeting scope picks out the bad guys so he can blast them with pinpoint shots. He's actually able to separate the terrorists from the civilians, which is something we struggle with. We want Superman rather than a smart bomb, because the smart bombs aren't smart enough.

I haven't read it, but I've been spoiled on the latest issue of Final Crisis, where Batman, the well-known hater of guns, shoots Darkseid with a gun. This seems to relate to the same idea, in that the purpose for superheros is to stand in contrast to our real-world methods of crime-fighting and war. Grant Morrison may be trying to tap into the War on Terror zeitgeist, in which people want their heroes to be willing to put personal qualms aside and pick up a gun, but it's more likely that the writer missed that essential element of superheros - they are meant to have better ways of dealing with issues. We want to see Batman winning with his wits, his batarangs, and possibly the awesome power of Legos.

- JC