The Four Color Media Monitor

Just when you thought Brevoort couldn't stoop deep enough into the abyss, he does again. It began with some posts where he claims Batman killing the Joker would be wrong, even if it's to save an innocent life (strange, wasn't Daredevil shown killing a handful of villains in self-defense, possibly in Frank Miller's stories?), and veers close to acting like Batman is a real person. Now, he's gone overboard again with another stupefying argument against killing murderous offenders that basically says you're also a terrorist if you terminate them. He begins with:

I think this has as much if not more to so sub-textually with the audience wanting to feel good about itself.

I think Brevoort likes to feel good about himself. No wonder he's part and parcel of the crew backing the erasure of the Spider-marriage, and the awful treatment of Mary Jane Watson. And that's just one example of many embarrassments he's been involved with for over a decade.

it started a little bit in the 80s, but especially ever since 9/11, there’s been an underlying narrative throughout popular fiction that amounts to, “In order to fight terrorists, the only thing that can be done is to become a terrorist yourself.” And that seems to me to be a product of a society that knows that things like the abuses at Guantanamo Bay are wrong, but doesn’t actually want to change the behavior or demand accountability. In a world where even Superman can’t find a way other than to become a terrorist, it’s more all right for ordinary people to feel the same way.

What a groaner. All he's doing is blurring the differences between terrorists and counter-terror specialists, for example. You could easily argue he's insulting liberals along with conservatives too. How does he know the entire public agrees with his view of anything going on at Guantanamo, if it really did take place?

And what narrative has there really been in popular fiction that he claims? Not in the fictional stories he's been in charge of, that's for sure, and certainly not since 9-11. They took good care to ensure the narrative would be one of defeatism, and a dearth of creativity. That's why the Marvel Knights take on Captain America was truly awful.

I think grappling with hard moral choices, and the question of where heroism stops, at what point you become a villain, is definitely interesting–it’s certainly been the backbone of the storyline in AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS for months. But I don’t think the example that was given fulfills that quandary. That isn’t a hard choice at all, not for a super hero–if it is, then they’re a piss-poor super hero, and will be dead on in prison soon anyway. No, it’s a false choice that we want to see go the other way because we’ve become societally convinced that doing so makes somebody a “badass” and worthy of emulation. And because, on a visceral level, we want to see the bad guy get theirs. But that isn’t justice, that’s vengeance.

Says who it's not justice? Only a lazy bum like Brevoort. He's long stopped being relevant. Besides, didn't they once try to make various superheroes into "badasses" over past decades? Wolverine's one of those too. But then, that could explain why they got rid of Logan in their recent publicity stunts, replete with a few tie-in specials to milk more money off of the gullible.

I have no doubt there's plenty of terrible messages to be found in the recent Avengers storylines. It's not all that new though. Marvel's surrendered the Earth's Mightiest Heroes to the worst of writers since 2002.

Thank goodness we didn't have anti-warrists like Brevoort around during WW1 and WW2. But tragically, we do have men like him around today, and they do not help one bit.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Batman, Daredevil, dc comics, islam and jihad, marvel comics, politics, Superman, terrorism, violence, X-Men