My concerns about the recent news about the Pope and disaffected former Anglicans

Man. This is... awkward. I started out in the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1980s. I wound up Episcopalian though I wondered off and on, especially while wrestling with certain doctrinal issues, if I'd end up coming back to Rome. Some of those issues are ones held in high importance by the "continuing Anglicans," though it still saddens and frustrates me that it was sexual and not Creedal matters which led to their departure. The RCC that I experienced back in those days was very Vatican II. A new openness to dialogue, etc. [i]Christ Among Us[/i] as the CCD book. And so on. Things seem to me to have changed, especially recently with the current Pope, in the RCC. I perceive a kind of reactionary anger -- bumper stickers that say "The cafeteria is CLOSED!" and things like that. A growing sense that Rome is trying to throw out Vatican II. I'm very much a doctrinally orthodox Anglican/Episcopalian Christian who almost left over issues like the ordination of women (since convinced of their validity). My views on sexuality don't easily fit into any specific modern model (and I don't want to derail this into that). I'm aghast when clergy deny the Incarnation, redemptive death, and Resurrection of Jesus. But the people who left the Episcopal church for "continuing Anglican" churches -- at least the ones I have known personally, and much of what I have read by other people who have left -- have seemed to me to be full of shrill anger, not trying to build bridges and have dialogue with those with whom they disagree, but with bitter, venomous invective, full of malice and resentment, even once they've left still talking nonstop about how those horrible liberal people are destroying all that is good. Honestly, I'm concerned that Rome bringing these people in will not help the former Anglicans to be healthier, and will hurt the RCC -- it sounds like it's bringing in precisely the people who will continue to attack Vatican II and related things. I fear that this is the intent -- that these people are being approached because they seem focused on fighting (and not dialoguing with) those who argue for "liberal innovations" -- in order to shore up the "cafeteria is closed" direction. If this is true, it saddens me. David

Alan Moore's 1980s Super-Hero Work

A discussion on a board I follow on Alan Moore's Watchmen and the "moral of the story" -- or if there is supposed to be one -- inspired this short essay.

The question of which characters were more or less right or wrong in Watchmen is left up to the reader to ponder. Heck, the whole thing with the Comedian and Sally and Laurie is the same way. The Comedian does some absolutely horrible, evil things, yet there's still a humanity there which really comes out later on when you put the puzzle pieces together. I think in this period, basically the 1980s, Moore explores a lot of "what does one do with superhuman power?" concepts in his stories. For those who haven't read all of these, SPOILERS FOLLOW.  

In Swamp Thing, we see Alec decide that if he fixed all the world's ills, mankind would never learn to take care of itself, so he decides to retire with Abby to his own little part of the swamp and take care of the local people there (giving them great harvests, etc.), but leaving the rest of the world on its own.  

In Marvelman/Miracleman, he decides to take over as a benevolent dictator, which makes things better in many ways but still leaves the sense that this is not perfect either; we even see a character feel sorry for Margaret Thatcher when, defeated, she realizes that the world order she's been a part of is basically no more.

In Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow, Superman gives up his powers and fakes his own death to retire with Lois, embracing ordinary humanity and letting the world take care of itself, suggesting that his sense that he had to keep acting as a super-hero was really a kind of arrogance. Still, things are not going to stay that way forever -- his baby has inherited his powers as we see with him crushing a lump of coal into a diamond.  

In Watchmen, Veidt "saves" the world by secret manipulation, but at great moral cost, and possibly all will be undone by the finding of the journal. Meanwhile, Dr. Manhattan just leaves humanity on its own and may be off creating his own world elsewhere.  

In V for Vendetta, V destroys the system but does not put a new one in its place, and becomes a symbol in the end rather than going on to build a new order.  

So I think in each one of these storylines, Alan is exploring the nature of power, how it affects "the system," different answers to "what does one do with power," and so on, and none of it really has a definitive, absolute answer. The closest things to happy endings we see with characters who have power seem to be Swamp Thing and Superman, and in both cases they are pretty much stepping away from trying to "fix the world" and just, in a sense, embracing their basic humanity (living quietly with loved ones). As well, the characters in Watchmen who seem most fulfilled at the end are, despite all the issues they may still have, the most ordinary human ones: Sally and Laurie and Dan, going about their lives. Basic human affection, romantic and familial, seems to be the common thread for the characters who have definitively happy endings in these stories.  

I would even slip The Killing Joke in here, in fact, though it's more subtle than these others -- despite the Joker's horrible crimes, personally committed against Gordon and his daughter, when Batman goes after him, Gordon still insists that Batman does it "by the book." The Joker has put himself outside the system, and Gordon wants Batman to stay inside that system even though it would be easier to step outside it to stop him. In a lot of ways the story is about Batman's rejection of any temptation to put himself truly outside the system of regular, human, societal laws and ethics, even for the perceived greater good -- and in the end, as the police arrive, he is even able to make contact, however brief, with the spark of humanity still in the Joker.  

So in all of these cases I'd say that if there is a consistent message in Moore's 1980s super-hero work, it's that one's basic humanity, with all its flaws, is to be embraced, and that those who put themselves truly outside the system -- even for the potential good that could arrive from doing that -- are still missing something vital.

Silly "who would win" comics contests

Posted from elsewhere, and then running with it...

I think about stuff like this all the time. Instead of all of those "Who's stronger, Hulk or Thor?" things I'd love to see (as parody. I think) "Who would win, That Which Endures or Sublime?" It would be an (ironically) huge crossover called "Germ Warfare," but it would probably all come down to viral marketing in the end, though...

(For those who don't remember, "That Which Endures" was a sapient bacteria colony from John Byrne's run on West Coast Avengers, and Sublime is a sapient virus from Grant Morrison's X-Men and Frank Tieri's Weapon X. You kind of wonder, do they know each other? Exchange infections for the holidays? Etc.)  

And let's not forget The Thousand (a hive-mind colony of sapient spiders that eat their way inside their victim and control him, connected to the original radioactive spider, in Spider-Man's Tangled Web) vs. those sapient cockroaches from the She-Hulk graphic novel (which did exactly the same thing). Would they compete? Team up? Try to eat each other? Fall in love? Start an online marketing pyramid scheme? Oh, and there's also Swarm, another hive-mind of bees which surrounds this guy's radioactive skeleton, I think. (Glowing radioactive skeleton-characters -- of which, thinking about it, there are quite a few (Atomic Skull, Dr. Phosphorus, Negative Man et al), and that doesn't even count characters who just have transparent flesh (Mr. Bones, Glob Herman, etc.) -- would be a topic for another time.)

Marvel Comics, Post-Disassembled: The Obvious Solution

I was holding back on posting about this since I assumed (I think incorrectly) that mentioning it would automatically mean no one at Marvel could use it, but someone beat me to the basic concept on a discussion board, so I might as well.

As readers of my posts, oh, all over the internet, may know, I've been very displeased with Marvel's treatment of its characters since about mid-2004; I think they've had their heroism dragged through the mud, including in a host of retcons which more or less establish that any of their long-standing characters have really been complete bastards for the whole of their careers, we just didn't know it all this time.  I've had a lot of trouble not only enjoying this, but also I can't see it fitting with the way they were depicted before that, from Wolverine's "recovered memories" to the whole idea of the Illuminati.

I won't go into the whole history of what happened here -- anyone who wants to can look up the relevant bits on Wikipedia -- but if I were going to repair all of this damage, I'd simply say that after House of M, and probably before it, the Scarlet Witch didn't put reality back the way it was before, instead making the heroes -- and their now-altered pasts -- more corrupt, probably in ways which could reflect her own paranoid delusions -- Reed Richards being not only a bit of an absent-minded professor, but positively cold in his calculations of "what must be done"; Iron Man as not just a bit of a control freak, but a fascist; Wolverine as not only savage and feral, with being manipulated in his past, but positively murderous as well as controlled far more than anyone would ever think, killing innocents and such (which he never did before these retcons), Wanda even giving him a convenient "big, bad enemy" responsible for it all (who is also, conveniently, claiming to be the oldest mutant, even older than Apocalypse, so we get the "bad mutant" vibe as well as hints of Eastern European bad-wolf-related folktale imagery, right from Wanda's subconscious)  rather than some more mundane explanation, like that along with the memory implants which were established before, memories don't heal even when your healing factor brings back brain cells (which I think should be the simplest explanation for why he doesn't have a good set of 150-year-old memories).  Even Spider-Man's situation could be explained some by this -- in House of M, Wanda paired him up with a living Gwen Stacy rather than Mary Jane, and then Peter is placed in a position where he has to let Aunt May die or give up Mary Jane, so a case could be made that the nonsensical Mephisto "I want your marriage" deal is connected to all of this.

This would also mean that once reality is set right, which could also involve the healing of Wanda (I had already been thinking that Chthon possessing her would explain it all away, before Dan Slott used Chthon in Mighty Avengers; it could still be done, because if Wanda can reorder reality itself, and Chthon has already got a connection to her, this really could be used to fix just about anything) so she can be a hero again, any change which is felt to be positive -- such as, for instance, the Young Avengers, including Wanda's kids -- could be kept in the new restored reality.  Various heroes could remember what happened before, so they can make sure that something like Civil War never happens in the first place. 

But also, just as in Age of Apocalypse, the mid-2004-to-whenever-it-gets-repaired world (you know, the depressing What If we've been reading the last few years) could still exist in the multiverse, just as the Ultimate universe does, and it could go off in whatever direction people want to see, while the classic-style MU gets back to normal.  So all the readers would win.