Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (8 page)

The issue of appropriateness has to do with whether the bearer of the mantle has the right kinds of abilities and whether the bearer is heroic. With Captain America, the abilities are a collection of extraordinary physical features, such as the strength and agility that were given to Rogers through the super-soldier program. (Some proficiency with the round shield is also a key element.) Both Walker and Barnes satisfied these requirements, adding their own unique character to the mantle (Walker was considerably stronger than Rogers, and Bucky carried a gun). They also both acted with an appropriate kind of heroism while they wore the mantle. Neither Walker nor Barnes had a squeaky-clean past, but it is common for heroes to have their unheroic moments. What is important is that while they wear the mantle of a superhero, they are expected to be heroes; repeated failure on this score would put their superhero status in jeopardy.

Legitimacy is the more interesting issue when it comes to considering multiple people being Captain America. For Walker, the moment comes when a government commission, whose job is to manage the “superhuman resources” in America, seeks a replacement for Rogers as Captain America. The government is worried about the bad press they might get from Rogers quitting in an act of protest, so they settle on Walker, another all-American who is making a name for himself as the Super-Patriot, a Cap-esque hero. They offer Walker the role as Captain America and he accepts, while having the following conversation with a member of the commission, Valerie Cooper:

Walker: I couldn’t just do the job without changing my name and costume . . .?

Cooper: No, Captain America is a tradition that goes back decades. We want to preserve it. Well?

Walker: Hmmm . . . Ma’am, if Uncle Sam wanted me to be Mickey Mouse, I’m that kind of American—the kind you can count on. When do I start?
⁵

By the end of the issue, Walker is wearing the Captain America costume and everyone is calling him by that name. It seems that now he really
is
Captain America.

For Bucky, we have a different kind of moment, but one that is just as illuminating and decisive. Bucky picked up the available mantle of Captain America in 2008, supported by Tony Stark, who was director of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time. Then, in 2009, when Rogers came back, he publicly endorsed Bucky as Captain America.
⁶
So in 2010, the slice of time we are considering for Bucky, Steve Rogers now had a superhero identity similar to that of Nick Fury (a kind of superbureaucrat, with a license to requisition), and Bucky was Captain America. Bucky’s legitimacy came first from Stark claiming that Rogers would have wanted Bucky to continue the Captain America legacy, and then from Steve Rogers himself giving him his endorsement.

We see the legitimacy requirement fulfilled in two different ways here—Walker was given the mantle by a government committee (which also took it away from him, giving it back to Rogers), and Barnes was given it by Stark and then Rogers. In the specific circumstances, it makes sense why different mechanisms are legitimate. The mantle of Captain America is sometimes considered to be owned by the government, though it is also in some sense the property of Steve Rogers. And in both the Walker and Barnes cases, viewed in this light, we should be happy to say that people other than Steve Rogers
really were
Captain America.

Case Study 2: Pym Particles

When it comes to Hank Pym, we have a different, and perhaps more subtle, issue concerning the condition of legitimacy. Over the past fifty years, Pym has been Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, and the Wasp, moving back and forth between them from time to time.
⁷
Is Pym all of these superheroes at once, or just one at a time? How can we evaluate this question? The issue of appropriateness is important, though not the key element to evaluating the situation, so I will discuss that briefly first, and then the subtlety of the legitimacy question at play in Pym’s case.

All of these personas are clearly of the appropriate kind to count as superhero mantles. First of all, Pym has been a hero for virtually all of the past five decades, fighting the good fight with the Avengers.
⁸
Next, it is plausible to think that at most times in his history, Pym has had the ability to perform the superhuman or extraordinary tasks that his identities require. His size-changing abilities are based on the so-called Pym particle, which allows access to another dimension called Kosmos. Pym discovered how to use these particles to send mass to Kosmos (shrinking to ant size) and to draw mass from it (growing to giant size). His other abilities, such as communicating with ants through his Ant-Man helmet, or electrically “stinging” people and flying when he is Yellowjacket, are technological advances that stem from his own abilities as an extraordinary scientist, so it is reasonable to see him as having these abilities any time as well.

The key issue for deciding whether Pym is one superhero at a time, or many at once, is really a conceptual issue linked to the notion of legitimacy. On the mantle view, the question, “Can Pym be multiple superheroes at one time?” becomes the question, “Can Pym legitimately wear multiple superhero mantles at one time?” A similar question arises in issues about personal identity: suppose Pym develops multiple personality disorder, and we ask whether the personalities count as distinct people. According to the body theory of identity, the question, “Is Pym multiple people?” would hinge on whether he has multiple bodies, which he does not; while on the psychology theory it would depend on whether he has multiple sets of psychological features such as memories or personalities, which he may.

How do we decide if Pym can legitimately wear multiple superhero mantles at one time? Think about what it means to wear a mantle or persona. Can David Bowie wear his Ziggy Stardust and his Thin White Duke personas both at the same time? No, certainly not. These personas look and behave totally different. Ziggy is a glammed-out alien, and the Thin White Duke is a classy-looking madman. Aside from the fact that these two personas are radically different, the concept of a persona itself requires us to say that a person can only adopt one at a time. Your persona—however glam or mundane it is—is the face that you put on for the world, and you can only have one face at a time.

A superhero mantle is very much like Bowie’s persona, and this limit to one persona at a time transfers to superhero mantles as well. Pym cannot coherently be both Ant-Man and Giant-Man at the same time, for the simple reason that the former is a superhero who shrinks and the latter is a superhero who grows. The prediction of the mantle view that someone can only be one superhero at a time is supported by the way the characters themselves treat the transitions. Even in less clear-cut cases, such as when Pym changes identity from Giant-Man to Goliath (a change mostly only in name and costume), we still see that the superheroes—Pym included—take him to have dropped the Giant-Man persona and picked up the mantle of Goliath.
⁹

For example, shortly after Pym becomes Goliath, he ends up stuck at a height of ten feet, which is very unsettling for him. A doctor is called in to give him a checkup, and we have this exchange as the doctor arrives and is let in by Captain America and Quicksilver:

Doctor: I got here as soon as I could, Cap! Where is the patient?

Captain America: Major Carlson! I knew you wouldn’t let us down! You’ll find this an unusual case! Have you ever heard of . . . Giant-Man?

Doctor: Of course! Then, he’s the one I’m to treat?

Quicksilver: He’s Giant-Man no longer, Cap! He changed his name to Goliath . . . remember?
¹⁰

Of course, when superheroes change identity, people naturally slip and use old names, but Quicksilver’s correction strongly indicates that Giant-Man is gone now, replaced by Goliath.

We also see this when another Avenger, Clint Barton, sheds his Hawkeye identity and becomes Goliath. (At this point, Pym is Yellowjacket, so we don’t have two Goliaths at once, though there is to be another Goliath later.) When Barton reveals himself to his fellow Avengers as Goliath after secretly taking Pym’s growth serum, Pym asks, “But Hawkeye . . . what of your career as an archer?” Barton answers by snapping his bow in half, after which Pym says, “Then the Avenger called Hawkeye is no more! And, since I’ve had to swear off the growing thing—looks like there’s a new Goliath in our ranks!”
¹¹
As we see, it seems natural to everyone that when Barton picks up the Goliath mantle, he puts down the Hawkeye one. And breaking his bow significantly makes clear that he is not trying to combine two mantles to create a new superhero, a giant archer—he’s leaving both mantles as they are and just changing from one to the other.
¹²

Are You the Next Goliath?

After seeing how the features of a mantle theory illustrate and explain the interesting cases of people with multiple superhero identities and superheroes played by multiple people, what should we think? Is this the only way to explain superhero identity? Certainly not, but it does fare better than the theories of personal identity discussed at the beginning. Since superheroes are not just people—they are personas that people adopt—we shouldn’t expect a theory of personal identity to neatly fit superheroes. (They have enough trouble fitting normal people!) But by looking at theories of personal identity, we see things that push us toward the kind of discussion we should be having when investigating superhero identity—luckily, we didn’t need to talk about superhero costumes, or we’d have to spend an entire book just on Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp!
¹³

NOTES

^1.
Locke’s example is of a prince’s soul or consciousness inhabiting the body of a cobbler, from
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1690), book 2, chapter 27, section 15.

^2.
Two very accessible works on theories of personal identity are John Perry’s
A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), and the first chapter of Earl Conee and Ted Sider’s
Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

^3.
Young Avengers
#12 (August 2006), reprinted in
Young Avengers: Family Matters
(2007).

^4.
Fear Itself
#3–4 (August–September 2011), reprinted in
Fear Itself
(2012). Unbeknownst to Rogers at the time, Bucky was brought back from near death by Nick Fury and later resumed his pre-Cap identity of the Winter Soldier (
Fear Itself
#7.1, January 2012).

^5.
Captain America
, vol. 1, #333 (September 1987). Walker’s tenure as Cap began here and ran until
Captain America
, vol. 1, #350 (February 1989), and is reprinted in its entirety in
Captain America: The Captain
(2011).

^6.
Rogers’s “death” happened in the landmark
Captain America
, vol. 5, #25 (March 2007), and he came back in the
Captain America Reborn
miniseries (2009–2010). Bucky’s run began in
Captain America
, vol. 5, #33 (February 2008), with Rogers endorsing him in
Captain America: Who Will Wear the Shield?
#1 (December 2009).

^7.
Pym’s first appearance as Ant-Man was in
Tales to Astonish
, vol. 1, #35 (September 1962), while Giant-Man first came on the scene in
Tales to Astonish
, vol. 1, #49 (November 1963), both reprinted in
Essential Ant-Man Vol. 1
(2002). Pym’s new identity as Goliath appeared first in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #28 (May 1966) and Yellowjacket was born in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #59 (December 1968), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 2
and
Vol. 3
, respectively (2000 and 2001); and he became the Wasp in
Secret Invasion: Requiem
#1 (January 2009).

^8.
I say virtually because Pym has had a few mental breakdowns over the years that have led to kidnapping Janet van Dyne (shortly before they get married) in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #59, and to scandalously hitting her in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #213 (November 1981), reprinted in
Secret Invasion: Requiem
.