Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (7 page)

The Torch Is Passed

That attention and guidance go a long way to shaping an individual is a lesson the leaders of the Avengers learned early. Iron Man and Captain America have gone out of their way to recruit criminals and troubled individuals into the Avengers family in an attempt to offer them guidance to help them become heroes (and to prevent them from becoming super pains in the ass).

The first major roster change to the team added the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye (Clint Barton), who with Captain America formed “Cap’s Kooky Quartet.”
¹⁰
For those counting at home, that’s two terrorists and a thief. A true Avengers fan doesn’t need to be told how this turned out: all three reformed and have served in several incarnations of the team. Subsequent criminal additions to the team have included the aforementioned Scott Lang, thief and Russian spy Natasha Romanova (the Black Widow), Ultron’s son the Vision (who joined the team in the same issue in which he first appeared as a villain attacking the Wasp), the Swordsman (the first villain defeated by Cap’s Kooky Quartet), and Eric O’Grady, the third Ant-Man, who masqueraded as a superhero for personal gain.
¹¹

Why would Cap, Tony, and the other Avengers risk inviting questionable characters and downright criminals into the group, trusting them to keep their secrets and to cover their backs in dangerous situations? When we think of the mission of the Avengers, our thoughts typically go to the innocent civilians they protect. But it seems another mission of the Avengers has always been to serve as moral exemplars for youngsters in need of direction.
¹²
Tony Stark had this in mind when he offered Scott Lang his first job out of prison, installing the security system in Avengers Mansion,
¹³
and the success of Scott and others offers a fair amount of evidence that moral exemplarism actually does work.

Of these examples, Hawkeye is probably the greatest success. He began his career as an Avenger resentful for the oversight, and he is famous for fighting constantly with Captain America. For much of his early career as an Avenger, he thought he did not get enough respect, and he quit the team several times to prove he didn’t need help to be a hero. In spite of this distasteful behavior, Captain America kept encouraging him. Over time, Hawkeye became one of the most trusted Avengers, and when it was time to start a second team on the West Coast, the Vision chose Hawkeye to assemble and lead the team.
¹⁴
Hawkeye took the lesson of second chances seriously: when the Thunderbolts, a group of supervillains claiming to be reformed, emerged, he supported them, adopting for them the role Captain America had played for him.
¹⁵

At this point, it ought to be clear that a moral exemplar needn’t be a parent, or even a blood relative. Our tendency to praise and blame parents for the actions and characters of their children comes from the fact that most parents do serve as moral exemplars for their kids. Parents are usually the people children spend the most time with during their formative years, and it is natural to develop feelings of admiration for those who care for us when we are vulnerable. However, we also know, and this is increasingly clear in our modern world of blended families, that the nurturing, caregiving role is sometimes provided quite well by a nonparent. T’Challa’s stepmother, Ramonda, is a great example of this. While not his biological mother, she filled the maternal role in his life and certainly acted as a moral exemplar, alongside as well as after the death of his biological parent. Magneto is Wanda and Pietro’s father, but he has never been their moral exemplar—that role was played by Cap and the other Avengers. What is important isn’t blood but action. The Avengers have taught us that providing structure, guidance, and a clear model to follow can have wonderful results, and can form lasting, family-strength relationships among the most unlikely of individuals.

Sins of the Father?

In cases like Pym and Magneto, we might be tempted to say that while we can’t hold them morally accountable for the way their children turned out, since they weren’t involved in their upbringing, maybe we
should
hold them accountable for not being present in their children’s lives. To be fair, Pym and Magneto probably need to be let off the hook for this, since Magneto didn’t know where his children were or how to find them and Ultron’s childhood occurred while Hank was, uh, sleeping. But generally, don’t parents have an obligation to raise their kids?

Actually, no, or at least not always. Moral exemplars have an enormous influence on the way their emulators turn out. Raising kids is a tough job, and frankly, not everyone is up to the task. Think about the Baron Zemo legacy. Heinrich’s bad example went a long way to shaping Helmut into the deeply troubled, desperately unhappy menace he became. Wouldn’t Heinrich have deserved some praise, rather than blame, if he’d recognized that he was just not father material and given his baby to a stable family to raise? Shouldn’t we all send Magneto a thank-you card for
not
raising Wanda and Pietro? Think about what the world would be like if they’d grown up hearing bedtime stories of world domination from dear old Dad.

This is a point that some in the Marvel Universe have acknowledged. The villain Count Luchino Nefaria wanted his infant daughter, Giulietta, to have a chance at a normal life that he knew he’d be unable to provide for her. So he gave her to a wealthy couple, Byron and Loretta Frost, to raise as their own. It was only after the Frosts’ death, when Nefaria was unable to leave well enough alone and introduced himself to Giulietta as her real father, that she began the downward spiral that eventuated in her becoming the criminal Madame Masque.
¹⁶

Even if you aren’t a depraved villain, sometimes the responsible thing to do is to turn your children’s upbringing over to someone who is more qualified to give them the help they need. If you think about it, most parents do this to a limited extent. We send our kids to school to gain knowledge we are ill equipped to give them. We help them acquire skills we ourselves lack by paying piano teachers and soccer coaches to fill in where we fall short. And when a child needs extra help, we’ll employ a psychologist or a speech therapist, or even send the child to a special school to get what he or she needs. No one blames the parents of deaf children for sending them away to a specialized school for the hearing impaired. If anything, it is often seen as a noble sacrifice, especially if the children are separated from their loving parents more than they would be at a standard school.

There are clear parallels to these ideas in the Marvel Universe. Professor Xavier and the other leaders of the X-Men are in the business of raising other people’s children for them, but we don’t blame those kids’ parents for sending them to the Xavier School for the Gifted. On the contrary, we are pleased that these children’s parents recognized their own inability to offer their mutant children the guidance they need as they learn to cope with and control their powers, and we are happy that they are willing to sacrifice a close parental relationship with their kids in order to give them the best opportunities available.

In the real world, parents who give their children to the state or to a relative to raise are often judged harshly for failing as parents. While there are surely less virtuous reasons for giving up one’s parental responsibilities—selfishness or laziness, to name a couple—in some cases, placing one’s biological child into hands you know are more capable than your own can be the best and bravest thing a parent can do. This trope is as old as Moses and the bulrushes, and it is something that certainly bears remembering today, when we consider the various forms parental praise and blame can take.

Let There Be an Ending!

The Avengers are one of the elite superhero teams in the Marvel Universe, and the best, brightest, and most powerful heroes would be honored to join the team. Yet Captain America and Iron Man have always made it their business to recruit “wild cards,” young, directionless individuals, often with sketchy pasts. They take a chance on these young people, and through the powerful guidance and support the team can provide, morally questionable individuals are transformed into the Earth’s mightiest protectors. Especially given that many of these individuals had less than heroic biological parents—can it get any worse than Magneto?—we now have clear evidence that the people who mentored you, rather than those who sired you, have a more profound effect on the way you turn out. And because of this, praise and blame should not be given automatically to one’s biological parents, but to one’s intellectual or moral “parents,” whether those are the same individuals or not. Keep this in mind when thinking about Tigra’s young son William: which is worse for him, having a Skrull posing as Hank Pym as the biological father (complete with Pym’s DNA), or the real Pym as a nurturing father?
¹⁷
(Uh, maybe Magneto’s available?)

NOTES

1.
As seen in a flashback in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #58 (November 1968), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 3
(2001).

2.
West Coast Avengers
, vol. 2, #14 (November 1986), reprinted in
Avengers: West Coast Avengers—Sins of the Past
(2011).

3.
Mighty Avengers
, vol. 1, #4 (August 2007), reprinted in
Mighty Avengers Vol. 1: The Ultron Initiative
(2007).

4.
Vision and the Scarlet Witch
, vol. 2, #12 (September 1986), reprinted in
Avengers: Vision and the Scarlet Witch—A Year in the Life
(2010).

5.
Rage was technically younger, as he was fourteen, but when his true age was discovered he was demoted to the New Warriors.

6.
Marvel Premiere
#47–48 (April–May 1979).

7.
For a modern take on moral exemplarism, see Linda Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,”
Metaphilosophy
41 (2010): 49–52.

8.
This story has been told many times, most recently in
Black Panther
, vol. 4, #1–6 (April–September 2005), reprinted in
Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther
(2009).

9.
He was Phoenix in
Captain America
, vol. 1, #168 (reprinted in
Essential Captain America Vol. 4
, 2008), and the new Baron Zemo in
Captain America
, vol. 1, #275.

10.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #16 (May 1965), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 1
(1998). Iron Man attempted to recruit Namor in the same issue, but he refused to join. While Namor might not be a villain (Marvel characters and readers are split on this one), everyone agrees he has a serious anger problem that he could use some help getting under control.

11.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #19 (August 1965), #36 (January 1967), #57 (October 1968), #100 (June 1972), and #195 (May 1980), respectively. (All but #195 are reprinted in the
Essential Avengers
volumes.)

12.
On redemption, see the chapters titled “Forgivers Assemble!” by Daniel P. Malloy and “Cap’s Kooky Quartet: Is Rehabilitation Possible?” by Andrew Terjesen in this volume.

13.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #181 (March 1979), reprinted in
Avengers: Nights of Wundagore
(2009).

14.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #243 (May 1984).

15.
See
Thunderbolts
#22 and
Avengers
, vol. 3, #12 (both January 1999, the latter reprinted in
Avengers Assemble Vol. 2,
2005).

16.
Iron Man
, vol. 1, #18 (October 1969), reprinted in
Essential Iron Man Vol. 3
(2008).

17.
See, for instance,
Avengers Academy
#7 (December 2010), reprinted in
Avengers Academy: When Will We Use This in the Real World?
(2011).

PART TWO

WHO IS AN AVENGER?

Chapter 4

SUPERHERO IDENTITY: CASE STUDIES IN THE AVENGERS

Stephen M. Nelson

You’re in a comic book store and you see a display of
Avengers
comics from the past five decades. Does it seem a little strange that the founding members on the early covers are still around, half a century later, looking pretty much the same? Do you wonder:
are
they the same superheroes? Of course they are, you say—take Iron Man, for instance. He may have different armor on the covers of the first issues of volumes 1 and 4 of
Avengers
(September 1963 and July 2010, respectively), but they’re both Tony Stark underneath, so what’s the problem?

What may seem obvious at first, though, gets puzzling when we look at some of the other Avengers and the changes they’ve gone through over the years. Two different kinds of cases in particular challenge our initial clear-cut answer. First, we have superheroes who have been “played” by different people, such as Captain America. Second, there are people who have been many different superheroes, such as Henry “Hank” Pym. Both kinds of cases pose problems about
identity
, or what it is to be a particular superhero. Can one person be many superheroes, and can one superhero be many people? Luckily, we have some philosophical tools that we can bring to bear on these issues, stemming from investigations into the nature of
personal identity
, or what it is to be a person.

It’s All about Bodies, Right?

Concerns about the notion of identity, personal or otherwise, come up in the field of
metaphysics
, where philosophers puzzle about the nature of reality. The word “identity” has different uses, but the one that’s important in metaphysics is the kind that is also of interest in mathematics. We even call it
numerical identity
, since it is what we use to talk about two things really being one and the same thing across a span of time. For example, you might discover that the woman who just waved to you and the woman who sold you your first car are actually one and the same woman. Another way we could say this is that those women are
identical.

When philosophers discuss the issue of personal identity, or what it is to be one and the same person over a span of time, we do so by proposing theories that attempt to get at the essence of what it is to be a person. One contender for a good explanation of personal identity is the “body” theory, which says that a person is to be identified with his or her body. So to be one and the same person across a span of time is just to have one and the same body across that span.

How could the body theory work with someone like Steve Rogers, the original Captain America? Let’s call the scrawny kid who hadn’t taken the super-soldier serum yet “Stevie,” and the athletic (post-serum) man “Steve.” Stevie and Steve do not look exactly like each other, nor are they made of exactly the same physical particles. So if the body theory of personal identity required the two bodies to look the same or have all the same particles, then we would say that Stevie and Steve are
not
the same person. But if the theory is more sophisticated, taking into account the normal processes of growth and cell regeneration, a body theory may be able to explain how Stevie and Steve
are
the same person: the former developed into the latter, thus sharing the same body.

Doubts about the body theory come from a thought experiment devised by the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), in which we imagine people swapping bodies.
¹
Suppose one day Steve Rogers and Hank Pym wake up with each other’s memories and personalities. They go to the morning Avengers meeting, and the person who looks like Hank Pym starts reminiscing about fighting Nazis in World War II, while the person who looks like Steve Rogers tells a story about his wife, Janet. After careful questioning, everyone realizes what’s happened—Rogers and Pym have switched bodies. (Just another day with the Avengers.) So who’s who?

If we think the body theory is correct, then we
must
say that the person with Pym’s body is Pym and likewise with Rogers. But it seems a bit strange to be forced to say that the person with Pym’s body is Pym, even when he has no memory of being Pym. This person behaves and talks as if he is Rogers, and he would deny that he is Pym. These kinds of considerations have led philosophers to other theories, such as ones rooted in collections of psychological attributes like memories and personalities.

I Like You for Your Mind, Honest

Let’s call this kind of competitor to the body theory the “psychology” theory. This theory says that some aspect of our psychology is what is essential to us as individuals, so preserving this feature is what preserves personal identity over time. (Proponents of this kind of theory disagree about
which
psychological feature is key, but that needn’t worry us here.) This gives us a better explanation of the body-swapping case of Pym and Rogers, since it predicts that we would think Pym’s identity goes with his memories and personality, regardless of which body each ends up in. A difficulty with the psychology theory, though, can be illustrated with a different kind of example.

Suppose Pym invents a duplicating machine that takes a person’s brain and splits it into its two hemispheres, then creates two new complete brains out of them—each one identical to the original and retaining all psychological aspects of the original person. Let’s say Pym does this to himself and then creates two new bodies to put the new brains in. At the end of it all, we have two new people, each of whom has the same psychological profile as Hank Pym.

Unfortunately, if we think that the psychology theory of personal identity is correct, we have a problem in deciding what we should say about these two new Pym-like men. Is one of them identical to the old Hank Pym? If so, which one? They can’t
both
be identical to Pym, since then they would have to be identical to each other. And since there are
two
of them, they are clearly not
one and the same
person. But they both have Pym’s psychology, and neither of them appears to have any kind of privileged access—they both have equal claim to it.

The body theory and the psychology theory are two of the main candidates for explaining personal identity, but they are not the only options to choose from. And the difficulties I raised for each of them may not be insurmountable. You may already have some ideas for how we might tweak the body theory to get around the body-swapping problem, or modify the psychology theory to get around the duplication problem. These are fruitful exercises, but let’s take what we have discussed here and see how we can use it to discuss superheroes, rather than just “regular” people.
²

Unmasking the Mantle Theory of Superhero Identity

When we discussed Hank Pym and Steve Rogers, we were talking about them as people, not as their superhero personas. Now let’s take up the question we began this chapter with: what can we say about superhero identity that allows us to approach puzzling cases, like the multiple heroic guises of Pym, or the multiple bearers of the Captain America title?

Would it work to simply import a theory of personal identity, such as the body or psychology theory, directly to the case of superheroes? Unfortunately, those theories will not quite capture what we need. Goliath and the Wasp are clearly two different superheroes, but Hank Pym has been both of them at different times. Whatever makes Pym identical to himself over time cannot be the same thing that makes a superhero identical to himself or herself over time; otherwise we would have difficulty saying that Goliath and the Wasp are not identical superhero identities (even though they both may have been assumed by the same person). On the other hand, Captain America is one superhero identity that has been assumed by Steve Rogers (most prominently) and also by others such as John Walker and Bucky Barnes. If Captain America were just a body, or just a certain group of psychological features, it would not be possible for different people (who have different physical and psychological characteristics) to “be” him. But clearly there have been multiple people, all going by the name “Captain America,” so we need a new theory of identity.

What should we say about superhero identity if it is not the same thing as personal identity? One possibility would be to draw from the way we talk about superheroes and apply it to the approach we use with personal identity, respecting the fact that it is a different sort of thing to be a superhero than to be a person. Being a superhero is like being a
persona
, or wearing a
mantle
, like when we say, “David Bowie shed the mantle of Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s, adopting a few years later the persona of the Thin White Duke.” Bowie created his personas as a performance artist, and they were something more than just Bowie himself—they were associated with certain features that went beyond the person playing them.

What is it about a mantle that allows for its continuity over a span of time? If it is not just the body or the personality wearing it, what is it that is essential to being a superhero? Two different features stand out when we pose the question this way. One is that a superhero mantle must be of the
appropriate
kind
; that is, it must be the mantle of a
superhero.
The second feature is that the bearer of a superhero mantle must have a certain
legitimacy.
Not just anyone can put on a Captain America uniform and actually
be
Captain America; there is a process that must be followed to become certain superheroes. Both of these features—appropriateness and legitimacy—take us beyond the kinds of theories we see for personal identity.

Let’s explore these two features in a bit more detail. The aspect of appropriateness of a mantle is just the kind of role that we traditionally associate with superheroes. For one thing, there must be some form of superpower or extraordinary ability associated with it, such as superstrength, lightning speed, extraordinary proficiency with a weapon, and so on. A superhero needs to be extraordinary in some form or other. A superhero must also be a
hero
under some reasonable description, to distinguish superheroes from supervillains. So by “appropriate” I just mean what we would expect—a superhero mantle is one that is associated with some extraordinary ability (or abilities) and some kind of heroism, the reason we call that person a superhero.

The issue of what it is to “legitimately” bear such a mantle is difficult to specify, but we can think of a superhero mantle along the lines of intellectual property. If I invent a new product, I have a legitimate claim to that product, by virtue of the fact that it is my own creation; or if I create some kind of art, I likewise bear a legitimate claim to that art. The David Bowie example illustrates this point well, because he has the only legitimate claim to his Ziggy Stardust mantle. He could perhaps pass it on to someone else who could give concerts or make albums as Ziggy Stardust, but it would be illegitimate if someone did so without Bowie’s blessing (that is, we wouldn’t think that such a person would really
be
Ziggy Stardust, as Bowie was). More generally, the legitimacy of a mantle can be traced to its source or pedigree; the person has to have “earned” the mantle, either by creating it or having it bestowed upon him or her by someone in authority (like when Cap gave Kate Bishop the mantle—and bow and arrows—of Hawkeye during one of Clint Barton’s “deaths”).
³

Now we have a theory in place—we can call it the “mantle” theory—that will allow us to approach the cases of Hank Pym and Captain America in a bit more detail. Our goal with this theory is to capture the essence of what it is to be a superhero, in the same way the body and psychology theories aim to capture the essence of what it is to be a person. If we can do this successfully, then some of the puzzling cases ought to become less puzzling.

Case Study 1: The Supersoldier

Captain America is one of the most iconic superheroes in the Marvel Universe, and Steve Rogers is the first and most prominent person to wear the patriotic costume. But he is not the only one. In 1987, John Walker took over the job after Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, though Rogers took the job back after a year and a half. Then, in 2007, Steve Rogers allegedly died, disappearing for a few years, leading to his old sidekick Bucky Barnes becoming the new Captain America. When Rogers came back, Bucky continued as Captain America until his apparent death fighting Sin and the Serpent during the “Fear Itself” event, after which Steve once again donned the stars and stripes.
⁴

Were John Walker and Bucky Barnes
really
Captain America? Or should we say that they were three different superheroes, all called “Captain America”? According to the mantle view, we have two main things to consider in determining whether they were one and the same superhero: appropriateness and legitimacy. Did each person wear the appropriate mantle, and did they come by it legitimately?