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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/a ... -good-guys?
The meat of the matter is probably this one passage:
"In previous eras, superheroes such as Michael Keaton’s Batman or Christopher Reeve’s Superman operated in more abstract fantasy worlds, but as superheroes began to interact with vaguely here-and-now political reality, their methods came under new scrutiny. Alan Moore’s seminal 1987 comic Watchmen was one of the first to suggest that people who enjoy dressing up in costumes and beating the crap out of people might be in need of psychological evaluation, or a war crimes tribunal. Vigilantism looks a lot like authoritarianism, which looks a lot like fascism.
Where does that leave a “good guy” such as Batman, who operates as both judge and jury, even applying the death penalty, with zero tolerance or oversight? Put him in the real world and you get someone like Vladimir Putin or Rodrigo Duterte."
Actually, what the writer missed is that this very situation - superpowered beings taking over the world and running it authoritarian-style - has been done numerous times. The Guardian writer probably doesn't read a lot of comics so he doesn't know about The Authority by Warren Ellis, for example (featuring the very sexy Angela the Engineer) where a group of superheroes took over the world and molded it to their own aims. But then again, he probably also doesn't know about Gail Simone's The Movement, which was an attempt to create a comic solely about a gang of lawless superpowered millennials bent on social justice. Of course they were vigilantes, but since they were left-wing, it was all OK. Can you guess which of the two series was critically acclaimed and well-received, and which was a drop in the bucket which quickly disappeared from sight?
Anyway, when you read this article, you get the sense that there is a sentiment among the "progressives" that if they could only grab the enormous reins of power that control movies such as Infinity War, they would irrevocably change the whole concept of superheroes. And that we would end up with a lot more characters like Killmonger being admired for their attempts at violent worldwide militant overthrow, rather than admiring Black Panther who is regarded as a sellout. The article even says that much. Malcolm X vs Martin Luther King.
I think that the hard left desires to eliminate the whole concept of superhero stories as we know them. Let alone, dog forbid, any stories about sexy superheroines. I think they regard superheroes as tools of neoliberal corporate capitalism as well as glorification of right-wing vigilantism. I believe, if they had their druthers, they would replace the superhero in the mask with the Antifa kid in the mask (since vigilantism is just fine, as long as it's left-wing) and that they would replace mythical hero characters with stories about real-life far-left revolutionaries, condensed for your convenience in a Little Red Comic Book.
But hey, what do *you* think?
