Planet Hulk and World War Hulk

I just got done reading the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storyline. And . . . well, I've got some comments on it and the nature of heroism and villainy in Marvel comics.

First, in Planet Hulk - or at least in the Illuminati stuff that preceded it - Doctor Strange, Mister Fantastic, Iron Man and Black Bolt decide to take the Hulk and shoot him into outer space. The only person who objects is Namor.

OK, let's make this clear. None of these people had the right to do this. They kidnapped the Hulk. That's just the plain truth. Was he a danger? Oh, sure, some of the time, definitely. He also did a number of good things, too, and much of the bad he did was done under a variety of duress.

I believe the point they were trying to raise was . . . how do you handle power when the government can't do it. That's sort of the subtext of all superhero comics. The legal authorities can't handle things so superheroes, generally unaffiliated with the government, fill the gap. Y'know, the military can't handle Magneto so the X-Men come in and do that, or whatever.

However, traditionally, superheroes were very reactive and employed a minimum amount of force to handle the situation (and place the well-being of civilians above everything else). They don't do pre-emptive strikes. They went to great lengths not to kill anyone. They took extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties. What I would say the traditionally accepted justification for this is the authorities would regard seeking out fights as vigilantism - but a citizen is allowed to act to save themselves and others in a crisis situation. Going out and finding Norman Osborn and beating him up before he does something wrong is vigilantism. Preventing him from blowing up the Thanksgiving Day Parade is just being a good citizen.

So, Fantastic, Black Bolt, Iron Man and Dr. Strange violated that precept. Furthermore, I mean, if you're gonna do something like that . . . the Hulk? Most of of the time, y'know, the Hulk is hitting the right person or acting in self-defense. We're not talking the Red Skull, here, but a nice guy in a horrible situation. What they did was kidnapping.

But it wasn't just kidnapping. To trick Bruce Banner - a very clever person - into being shot into space, they misappropriated an android of Nick Fury. I . . . I mean, uh, SHIELD is this big, important para-military organization in the MU. They impersonated an officer, they almost certainly broke a dozen security clearance issues, they misappropriated SHIELD resources - just this really big laundry list of security violations. The kind of stuff that would get a person prison time.

Or to break it down in a different way, what would be the reaction of heroes if Doctor Doom reprogrammed an android of Nick Fury in order to kidnap the Hulk and shoot him into outer space?

Or to break it down even further: Marvel decided to turn Strange, Black Bolt, Tony Stark and Reed Richards into villains. They violated a whole raft of laws to kidnap Bruce Banner and they shot him into space.

Then it goes wrong. I mean, not even blaming those four for what happened to the Hulk on Sakaar, it goes wrong and the Hulk comes back and destroys Manhattan in World War Hulk because he's pissed off at being shot into space.

Oh, sure, he doesn't kill anyone. He does kidnap people, torture them (obedience disks?!) and destroy a major American city in the process. Yeah, they were bad guys, but two wrongs don't make a right. STILL. We all know this.

So, they also decide that the Hulk needs to be a villain, too.

I wish people actually read this journal because I'd really like an answer to why Marvel seems bound and determined to turn virtually every "hero" in their universe into a villain? I mean, you've got Cyclops ordering torture and murder, you've got Professor X having been revealed to be doing cruel mental manipulation for decades - I mean, stuff like making Scott and Alex Summers forget that they had another brother kind of horrible mental rape (and, again, not even to someone it could be argued "deserved" it like, y'know, Sabertooth or Mystique, but doing it to hide the fact Xavier was responsible for their deaths). You've got "heroes" kidnapping people and shooting them into space, or putting people in indefinite lock-up in extradimensional prisons. I mean, is there a single major hero out there, as Marvel hero, who hasn't done things that simply can't be justified as being "heroic"? And why have they decided to turn so many of their marquee characters into bad guys? I'm not getting it.

Let's Humiliate People - Iron Man and the Mighty Avengers

I just came across this little gem of an image in The Mighty Avengers #11 and spoilers ahead. Seriously, at this point I think I'm keeping reading just because I'm morbidly curious. It's like seeing a car wreck on the side of the road. But here's the picture:



The story arc, concluding here, is that . . . the Mighty Avengers think Doctor Doom did something bad and they go to Latveria to confront him. Despite the fact he didn't do it, and as far as I can tell he didn't even condone it, his refusal to bow down to Tony Stark prompts a fight. Doom was winning until, having written themselves into a corner, they have the Sentry do his deus ex machina act. I mean, I hope everyone who reads The Mighty Avengers gets it that the Sentry is this total deus ex machina, right? An excuse to have sudden inexplicable victories without having to provide a shred of basic justification? Whenever the writers want the story to end they say, "Oh, the Sentry kicks their ass." Mega-weak, but whatever.

What really gets me about this is that the Sentry just doesn't kick Doom's ass. He humiliates Doom by tearing off his mask, showing the Avengers, who react in a horrified way to Doom's disfigurement. And then Iron Man uses that opportunity to belittle his defeated opponent.

Is this really what people want to see? Heroes degrading their enemies? Shaming and humiliating them, and then bragging about their victories?

I mean, to top it all off, Doctor Doom didn't do it! But several months after this comic was written, that hasn't been addressed. I know that the wheels of comic books can move slowly and maybe it will be addressed that the Mighty Avengers total lack of anything resembling detective work resulted in them invading a sovereign nation, beating up an innocent man (or, at least, innocent of what they charged him with) and then humiliating this disfigured man.

And as far as I can tell, no one really has a problem with this. It baffles me.