It's All a Fucking Joke

I haven't written in three weeks, guys. I'm sure you're all wondering what's been happening. Did I get arrested for a crime? Did I just now get acquitted because the crime was totally justified? Did I perhaps murder someone for trying to defend Wolverine?

No guys, I was doing training for the Army National Guard. Now, having said that, I feel like I have to let you know something. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm obligated by army rules and whatnot, and I'm not trying to get sent to some army prison, or worse yet forced to take down my blog.

Here goes. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the United States Military, the Army, the Army National Guard, or any other part of the US Government.

Yay! Now my blog isn't in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice! I'm pretty sure you could have figured out that these aren't official opinions either way though. I mean, why would "fuck Wolverine" be an official Army position?

Other than the obvious reasons, of course.

But these past few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the military, if only because they have been making me walk up and down mountains with all my gear plus a fifty pound javelin, only to get told that we wouldn't even get to fire it.

Sure, we stayed up all night, waiting for the vehicles to shoot at. "Here comes an enemy tank!" Nope, that's one of ours. "Enemy helicopters!" Nope, that chopper sound was the wind. "Watch out, enemy dismounts in military trucks!" THAT'S A FUCKING CIVILIAN VEHICLE. Who was even calling in this information? Daredevil?

Daredevil, for those who don't know, is blind.

But anyway, I decided that I should probably talk about a superhero who served in the military, particularly one that represents the character of soldiers everywhere, someone who you can look at and say, "Yes! That is America." I'm talking, of course, about Watchmen's Comedian.

Two weapons and a belt of ammo slung over his shoulder? Looks more military than that boy scout with the flag costume.

I'm sure you're waiting for the "just kidding, I meant Captain America" moment, but it's not coming any more than my senior prom date was. I actually want to talk about The Comedian, a costumed vigilante from Watchmen who served in Vietnam. He calls himself a comedian but the only comedy he's into is jokes about the impending nuclear apocalypse.

Alan Moore, in his 12-part series Watchmen, takes an in-depth look into the kind of person that would put on a costume and fight crime. Specifically, a crazy person. The Comedian, for example, is someone who really just wants to fuck shit up. He smokes cigars, rejoices in violence, and is only nominally on the side of justice.

Now, if you're clever, you're probably realizing something right now. "Caowin, isn't there another cigar-smoking vigilante that you criticize all the time for being hyper violent? Someone who's also really dark and edgy? Perhaps someone with adamantium claws and the ability to regenerate?"

"Perhaps this man right here?"

My first response would be to tell you to tie your Wolverine bed sheet into a noose and hang yourself. But, of course, I wouldn't have brought up your pointed question without having an answer for you, and besides, you only ask these questions to hear me rant more, and I'm trying to make this article longer anyway.

So here's the rant right here.The Comedian and Wolverine are both dicks. But The Comedian is supposed to be a dick. You're not supposed to like him. You're supposed to be like, "Goddamn, a world where this passes for a hero would definitely be a pretty shitty world to live in."

But what Alan Moore didn't anticipate was the fact that his stories would lead to comic books with heroes just as dark and edgy as his, the only difference being they are still somehow being portrayed as good guys.

"A world where this passes for a hero would definitely be a pretty shitty world to live in"? That's the world we live in now. I don't want to sound like I think I know what's best for people, but when I hear someone say "Wolverine is awesome!" all I hear is "I have lost all hope."

A despair-inducing image

Wolverine is given a tragic back story that lets you know he's only a douche because he's been hurt before. The Comedian is given an awful back story that lets you know that he likes to kill Vietnamese civilians, encourage riots, and rape people.

Wolverine is shown being praised by more traditional heroes and always doing the right thing somehow. The Comedian is constantly shown killing people who really aren't that bad, not getting along with his teammates, and, to reiterate, raping people.

And this is really where my disdain for dark and edgy superheroes comes from. If you're trying to portray someone as a role model, as a warrior for light, as a paragon of everything that is good, then you better make damn sure your character is exactly that.

I mean, that's the awesome thing about superheroes. No matter how corny the values they represent are, they always win. They prove that you can be 100% good and still win the fist fight. If you take away the saccharine goodness of a superhero, all you have is one person punching harder than another.

Wolverine is meant to be a hero. The Comedian is meant to be an omen. And that's why The Comedian's motto isn't "I'm the best at what I do, and what I do is whatever I'm about to go do right now." Instead, Alan Moore gives him a catchphrase that much better reflects the sort of moral apathy his character clearly has. Specifically:

And if your good guys aren't actually that good, then a fucking joke is all it'll ever be. 

The Killing Joke - A Review

If I'm being honest, I'm a bit reluctant to review comic books on this website, for a few reasons. Like I've said, tracking down every comic book in a series can be tiring, especially when you're trying to follow the Blue Beetle story line, and the one comic book shop has hole in the middle of the series, and then the other comic book shop doesn't have any of the new 52 comics at all, and all you want to do is figure out how a fucking Latino deals with superpowers.

I mean, do you know how hard it is to find representation as a Latino comic book enthusiast? Yeah, Tony Stark, Kyle Rayner, and Bane are all Latino comic book characters. And what do they all have in common?

Tony Stark. White name. White face. No discussion of Latin American culture.

Kyle Rayner. White name. White face. No discussion of Latin American culture.

Bane. Super interesting background as a Guatemalan who dresses up like a luchador. (Wait, that's different!) Becomes a popular supervillain in The Dark Knight Rises, where he has a white face and no one even mentions his Latin American culture or heritage. (Oh yeah! I knew there was a reason I mentioned him.)

Latino representation in the 2010s.

So yeah, long story short, comic books piss me off sometimes. But when you can actually get your hands on the one you want, they can be pretty amazing. For example, "The Killing Joke" by Alan Moore, published in 1988, was a great way to make people realize that The Joker didn't have to be some hilarious splash of dandyistic color.

So if you really liked the way Heath Ledger portrayed the Joker, you can thank Alan Moore for crafting a story where The Joker is exactly the kind of sociopath who would dress up like a clown and kill schoolbuses full of children for laughs.

In this story (watch out: heavy spoilers, in that I tell you the whole plot in detail and if you try to read the comic book afterwards nothing will surprise you), The Joker escapes out of Arkham Asylum (again? who would have guessed!), shoots Barbara Gorden in the spine, kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, strips him down naked, puts him on some creepy old amusement park ride, and makes him look at pictures of his daughter before, during, and after she became paralyzed from the waist down.

The climax of the story isn't even a fighting scene. It's The Joker's villainous rant to Commissioner Gordon, which is basically the same speech he keeps trying to give in The Dark Knight. You know, the old, "I'm crazy because I had one bad day. Now I'm going to give you a bad day and you're going to become just as crazy as I am."

Meatloaf again? That's it! I'm going to become a serial killer.

Now you guys know my two standards when it comes to entertainment: fun and interesting. And this was definitely fun, in a horrifying kind of way. The scene in the beginning, where The Joker is playing cards with Batman, works as both an eerie "Let's Have Tea with Chthulu" moment, and as a shout-out to The Joker's motif. Then, after he's escaped, The Joker manages to make buying abandoned property exciting.

And honestly, as psychopathic as this may sound, I think the most fun thing in the world was watching as The Joker does every shitty thing he can imagine to Commissioner Gordon. I honestly started rooting for The Joker in that scene. (Is that evil of me?)

"We have to take him to Joker. But first, let's piss on him!"

But what was interesting was the ending. Now, you might remember, at the end of "Batman Begins," Batman lets Ra's al Ghul die, sort of a "good guys don't kill people so I'm just going to leave you on this train that's about to crash instead." At the end of "The Dark Knight," Batman tackles Harvey Dent off a building and kills him, not even looking for a "well it's not really killing" loophole.

And, I think worst of all, at the end of "The Dark Knight Rises," Batman defeats Bane by cutting off his access to his anesthetic, which is about as badass as hiding a diabetic's insulin. Then Catwoman kills him, and Batman's kind of like "Thanks! Now I don't have to break my no killing rule that I only really pay lip-service to anyway."

But here's where the ending to "The Killing Joke" differs. When Batman saves the Commissioner from The Joker, Gordon hasn't turned into a hateful clown who uses The Stranger as his go-to life guide. He hasn't lost his internal moral compass. He hasn't even lost his dedication to the law. He tells Batman that he wants the Joker caught "by the book."

So The Joker kills a bunch of people and gets brought in by the book, but Mike Brown steals a cigarillo and gets shot six times?

Christopher Nolan's Batman disregards the judicial system, the privacy of innocent citizens and the rights of the accused. And he treats his "no killing" rule like something to work around at best and ignore at worst. The criminals Batman faces are dark, Nolan reasons, so Batman must become even darker.

But "The Killing Joke," for all its darkness, puts Batman firmly in the side of light. The victory at the end isn't just about catching the bad guy, but proving to him that, no matter how much evil a good man encounters, no matter how much you torture and humiliate him, no matter how bad you make his day, a good man can and will do the right thing, always.

Why Do Superheroes Need Angst?

Recently (and by "recently" I mean since the eighties, so pretty recently considering the history of the superhero, which is still a comparatively short amount of time in the history of Western storytelling), there has become this trend in superhero movies to portray them as misunderstood loners with tragic personal lives and chasms of unfathomable depth in their heavy hearts.

My point with that ridiculously long run-on sentence was that there must be a reason people like these kinds of stories. I mean, there has to be reason that so many like "The Dark Knight Rises" even though it's basically the story of a whiny cripple who tries to relive the glory days and breaks his back in the process.

Also, he looks like a dirty hobo the whole time, despite the fact that he's one of the richest people in the DC universe.

I mean, superheroes didn't start out this way at all. Superman, the first superhero, was basically designed as a man beyond human limitations, with the ability to jump high, run fast, and punch hard (there's a more poetic description with bullets and buildings but that's basically what it boils down to).

And you might argue that superhero fans secretly craved realism back then. But consider Captain Marvel - who's basically like Superman but his powers are based on magic, not science, and also he's like double the boy scout Superman could ever hope to be because he's actually a ten-year-old boy who's literally a boy scout.

In the 1940's, Captain Marvel consistently sold more copies than Superman, and he was way less realistic than Superman. Yeah, that's right. At one time, Superman was the realistic superhero.



Realism in the 1940's.

Captain Marvel, in addition to being magically powered and childishly innocent, also had one more difference between himself and Superman - he could fly. So what did Superman's writers do? Did they try to market Superman as being a more human, more realistic, more gritty depiction of a superhero? I'll give you a hint.

Does he look "gritty and realistic" to you?

Instead, they said, "Oh, yeah, Captain Marvel? You can fly? Well anything you can do, Superman can do better!" and thus Superman became a flier. You could argue about whether this actually makes for a better story, but my gut tells me they didn't give a fuck about the story. They were just trying to figure out whose dick was bigger.

Maybe they thought that the only way that Superman could beat Captain Marvel in sales was to make it so Superman could beat Captain Marvel in a fight. The whole comic book industry might have been an arms race that took place entirely in the imagination of nerds.

But then everything changed. In 1986-8, three comic books came out that led people away from the "Superman with a bald eagle perched on his shoulder" archetype of a superhero and more towards the "hobo Batman with a broken back has to stop a crazed terrorist and by the way Batman's love interest is also a terrorist" archetype of a superhero.

These comic books were Watchmen (which is about a disbanded group of ex-masked vigilantes reacting to the death of their comrade The Comedian, starring a character who is basically The Question but crazier), "The Killing Joke" (where it is revealed that The Joker's murders are actually a form of absurdist expression, like Waiting for Godot but not quite as horrible), and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (which is about Superman giving up his powers and retiring to spend more time with his family.)

Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow? He's teaching some snot-nosed kid the ABC's.

Because these comic books offered a new, fresh, realistic take on superheroes, they were exhilarating, interesting and shocking. Back in 1986. You know, when there wasn't a hundred thousand other comic books/shows/movies trying to do the exact same thing.

You see, thirty years ago, no one was giving superheroes human flaws, world-weariness, and varying degrees of insanity. But nowadays, you can't get away from writers who think they're clever because they made Batman even edgier. The next Batman movie will be three hours of a black screen with a voice-over by what sounds like a smoker with pneumonia.

Although I'm not entirely sure that isn't the plot of the last movie.

But that's the thing, isn't it? Kids don't like superheroes because of the air of painful realism. Kids like superheroes because they punch the bad guys! I think every child is born with something in their psyche that wishes all the problems in the world could be punched in the face before dinner.

And being an adult doesn't mean you grow out of that. Everybody wishes that there was an easy solution for all of the world's problems. But there isn't. The world is a dark, cold, scary place with racism, poverty, disease and famine. And it's very hard to punch these problems away.

Superman's first encounter with an unpunchable problem.

So there's the appeal of superhero angst - it's a dark solution to a dark world. But I have to believe - and maybe this is my quixotic inner child speaking - that we don't have to believe that Superman has to cry like a baby whenever he fights General Zod. Adding darkness to darkness doesn't make the world any brighter.

Many comic book nerds argue, as they put down their Mountain Dews and brush the Dorito crumbs out of their neckbeards, that this dark, edgy brand of superhero is a good thing. They're finally taking superheroes seriously. These superheroes are profound.

But what if we could see superheroes in all their overoptimistic, idealistic, and even campy glory? What if we could see them facing this cruel world with childlike hope in their hearts instead of the despair which would provide such a comforting numbness? How much more profound could a superhero be?