Comic book morals

Just the other day, I was reading an article on LA Times about a book recently published on the "superhero" philosophy and in particular, Green Lantern. Coincidentally, Green Lantern is opening next week as a highly anticipated summer film, and should, in true Variety fashion, do boffo business. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/06/08/green-lantern-and-philosophy-heroic-talk-with-the-ring-of-truth/

I wrote a reply to that article, but got frustrated by the site's rejection of my post because it was too long--I figured out a long time ago that the Twitter mentality of using only a limited posting length was going to be the death of me, so I finally gave up on my attempt.

So here it is--my post to the above given LA Times link on heroism, comic books and all that stuff.

As Green Lantern was my favorite character growing up, I was always more drawn to his alter-ego than to what he (Hal Jordan) could do as a superhero. Between GL and Flash (my second favorite), their respective human identities were brilliantly flawed and yet filled with heroism even of the ordinary kind. Both gained their powers in the course of their civilian work identities, so they were both already working in some work which tested them, but were both deeply grounded in their beliefs. Becoming heroes was therefore not unknown to them, but finding out they could do a lot more with their powers was a bonus to them.

Heroism, in real life, is never so black and white. As the authors remind us, action will often compel the "good" man to do nothing if he/she sees it strictly in an either/or frame--moral ambiguity can force all of us to back down if we are put into such a position. Hal Jordan was chosen as a ring-bearer not because he was considered "a good man" but because he was "fearless." Goodness can really be a time waster--a person who is "good" might waver back and forth over options, while a person who knows any action is better than no action at all, is apt to get more things done.

In the early 70s, when GL teamed up with Green Arrow, it was then that there were more than black and white issues began to show up in the DC comic universe, unless the superhero had already crossed that road a lot earlier. Green Lantern hadn't been out in the "real" world much--he had never examined that life, busy with his career and superhero work.

I grew up with the 60s and 70s comics world, mainly that of DC. I always thought the morals of the characters as pretty much the ethics I followed. (I was a kid when I read them) I now feel, in today's world where I am now an atheist, that I didn't have the need for a "something in the sky" to make mostly correct choices and be an ethical person. Comics were always a good way to spell things out in a non-preaching manner, allowing us to be moral, but still allowing us to make our own choices.A