A long winded introduction to the world of ugly heroes...

So I'm sitting here, one in the morning, reeling from a combination of cold medicine, coffee (what?) and THE PLAGUE. I should be asleep, but I can't breathe, and tomorrow I have to teach a room full of undergrads the wonders of queer theory when most of them think that feminism is a bad word.

And of course, in response to all this, I'm sitting in front of my computer working on my comic book database... and that's when it hits me...

I have some incredibly ugly superheroes in my collection.

And I don't just mean that literally, though I kinda do.

You see, I'm a fan of Warren Ellis. You know, the guy who did The Authority, Transmetropolitan, and a little ditty known as Hellblazer? And one thing about Ellis, he's dynamic, but he's very rarely pretty. No clean lines, no CGI shine, and when folks get hit-- it gets ugly.

And I got to wondering, why? Why be drawn to a style that's so grotesque? If comic books are supposed to represent abstracted forms ready to read oneself into, imaginative landscapes the reader enters into, then what's up with the visual mess that makes up 80% of my collection?* And dude, what's up with the violence? I mean, yeah, everyone gets my love of The Authority if only for the fact that it includes ass-kicking-gay-superheroes-who-ADOPT-A-FREAKING-BABY, but it's so flipping violent. And messy. And morally problematic.

I mean, in the first volume, Apollo gets raped, Midnighter (his boyfriend) responds with unholy-medieval-jackhammer-O-DOOM violence, and they symbolically slaughter Thor, Captain America and the rest of the Avengers and then burn them in a pile.

And dude, that's like... only volume one.

So what's up? Is my imaginative landscape just jacked, or is there something more going on here?

And here it is, here is what I came up with.

I don't trust pretty people.

Now, I have some totally smokin' friends, and this has nothing to do with that. No, this has more to do with the idea of the heroic and everything we're told to believe about it. You know how it goes, right? Superman comes to save the day. He swoops down, scoops up some little kid and flies away, illuminated in the flash of a hundred cameras?**

And we're supposed to be okay with that. We're supposed to love that. We're supposed to want to be that. We associate beauty with goodness, certain colors with heroism, certain bodies with moral superiority... and we see the same in the lucky few to be rescued.

But where are all the bodies in all this? The mess? The bad nights and the heroes who don't look like they're one 'roid rage away from a nasty fall from grace?

And dude, what's with all the neon tights??

And Ellis, well, he won't let you take the easy way out. You don't get to sit back and say, "Yeah, it's totally okay that the only people who ever get rescued are busloads of beautiful children." You're not handed the easy answers, color coded and neatly labeled "HERO" so that all you have to do is point to the right color palate and get rewarded for finding the good guy. **

Ugly art makes you work for it, makes you dig in and think about it. And I know, I know, this isn't exactly a new argument and, honestly, it's one that I normally hate. But with comics, and these grotesque heroes, it just works.

Take Midnighter and Apollo as our uneasy (and at times, ugly) heroes. We love them, but it's not always fun and it's not always easy to call their actions 'heroic.' While I'll get more into the specific issue about the "Alleged Rape of Apollo" (which is an... illuminating... debate) later, Midnighter's revenge is uncomfortable even as we justify it. It makes revenge into something that you have to deal with. This isn't Bruce Wayne getting off because he finally caught the dude who killed his folks, it's not even Hamlet wandering around debating ethics. It's just... hard to process, hard to look at, difficult to deal with.

Heroes should push us to be better people, to think harder about our decisions and actually take into account the horrific ramifications of, say, trusting somebody who runs around in spandex just because they say we should. Sure, they're signs of hope in troubled time and blah blah blah, but it takes more than just a flash suit to be a hero. Superman can't just keep destroying Lex Luthor's empire, but he can't just keep letting him go, either. There has to be some sort of productive change implemented and his failure to make that change is what kills him for me.

There has to be a choice, and that choice will come with repercussions. That's just fact. The lesson is in the acceptance of the choices that have to be made, and the assumption of responsibility for those decisions.

Which may help explain my fascination with Midnighter. Because, you see, the people who make those decisions, the ones who make the productive changes? Well, often times we call them villains for making a choice that cannot be undone. And yeah, for Midnighter... that just might work...

... and well, as for me... I always did have a thing for the bad guys.

DrV

*Here I'll just note that I'm poaching from Scott McCloud and doing it rather meanly. That is, I mean that in the sense that I've pulled very little, and that I'm being rather unfair.
**Oh yeah, I totally just called you out, Superman: Doomsday. Whatcha gonna do about it, huh? Huh? "A mature comic for adult fans of the genre," my left butt cheek. Go suck an egg.