Comments on: Is that a coconut in your arm, or are you just glad to see me? … 15 centuries of German perfidy edition

By: fardels bear

fardels bear — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 03:59:30 +0000

I wish Wildcat would’ve been there when I was trying to work my way through the Daniel Goldhagen/Christopher Browning debate on “Ordinary Germans” v. “Ordinary Men.” He would have made it all clear.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:57:25 +0000

“However, if you are going to write a character who has a special justice sense you actually need to not only give them complex moral situations but come up with the perfect solution. This is a bit more complicated and demanding. So I think the reason why no one has given a character special justice powers is that no one has given a writer special justice powers.”
Or, as Plato might have said, we will only have a special justice sense if all the comic-book writers become philosophers, or all the philosophers comic book writers?
Funny, Russell—I always picture Michael Walzer in more of the Professor X role, largely hanging back from direct combat, guiding others sagely. I think of MacIntyre as more of a Nightcrawler character—the Catholicism, and ability to be one place, and suddenly appear in another (whether the places be geographical, or philosophical). Barber as Wolverine definitely works.

By: paul

paul — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:24:19 +0000

re 13:

I wonder if this provides additional insight into Cordwainer Smith’s “Scanners Live in Vain”. (Ultimately a disappointing story, perhaps because of the concordance between style and substance)

By: Other Josh

Other Josh — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:15:17 +0000

Surely the JSA character who comes closest to having an alleged “justice sense” is not the Spectre but the Champion of Fair Play!

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:38:48 +0000

Rather, no one has ever thought to stipulate that someone has special ‘justice powers’ – i.e. a heightened capacity to tell right from wrong.

If you have a character who can fly, any half-way decent artist can draw them arms outstretched high above the ground. If you have a character who can destroy buildings with a single blow of his fists, provide the artist with some photos of a boxer and some photos from a demolition company and say go to it. If you have a character who can always tell when someone is lying, then the writer simply needs to keep clear in their own head what’s true in the context of the story and who has a reason to lie about it – skills writers have developed for centuries (look at Othello) – without needing superpowers.

However, if you are going to write a character who has a special justice sense you actually need to not only give them complex moral situations but come up with the perfect solution. This is a bit more complicated and demanding. So I think the reason why no one has given a character special justice powers is that no one has given a writer special justice powers.

By: ajay

ajay — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:55:58 +0000

drbb: The Junkers aircraft were actually produced by a company founded by a man called Hugo Junkers. They’re not named after the Prussian noble class; that’s just a coincidence.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:26:56 +0000

My robot Alasdair McIntyre, Josh, would be in the background, Professor X-like, mentally discerning the emotivist weaknesses in his opponents and directing his army accordingly. Taylor would be the Scott Summer/Cyclops point-man actually managing battlefield tactics, besides wrecking havoc with his awesome Canadian super-strength and bilingualism. Barber would be the Wolverine-type, ready to rip up his opponents with berserker-strong democratic relish, but sufficiently a danger to his own side as well that Walzer has to keep an eye on him at all times.

By: DrBB

DrBB — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:30:45 +0000

…talks about things like “the Prussian Junker class” that I wouldn’t expect American ten-year old boys to ever have heard of;

Bet they’d have heard of the Luftwaffe warplanes of that name though. When I first encountered the Junkers in a history class it was one of those “Oh, that’s where that name comes from” moments.

By: MR. Bill

MR. Bill — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:36:19 +0000

I can’t find it online, but
B Kilban had a cartoon of “Philosophers looting a small town”…see http://www.coldbacon.com/kliban3.htm for a citation…

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:59:23 +0000

The Spectre is vengeance, not justice – arguably he simply has a variant form of the “danger sense” that some characters have – in his case, it’s a “murder sense”.

I imagine having only the power to detect injustice and to know what should be done, would result in a pretty frustrated person, especially if the power didn’t extend to world peace. Essentially you’d have a pundit who always had the right ethical plan – but that’s no guarantee of anyone caring. Most superheroes are portrayed as right by definition anyway.

There’s also the modern Wonder Woman’s “truth” power.

By: josh

josh — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:19:49 +0000

“Laugh you should, because I’m going to send my Taylor-Walzer-Barber-Miller army out after them, and they’ll kick their ass.”
Well of course they would—because they’d be a proper army, and actually cooperate, rather than each going off in his own direction. (On the other hand, I suspect that Taylor, Miller and Walzer—and Rorty for that matter—would actually be somewhat useless in a fight, since they’d spend all of their time explaining why the two robot armies didn’t really disagree that much after all.)
Now, if your army included a robot Alasdair MacIntyre, Russell, that would be a scary prospect.
Ok, I may be carrying this a little too far …

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:11:58 +0000

Rich B, the fact that the Spectre is totally confused is no argument against my point. It isn’t that heroes have never wrestled – usually ineptly, yet self-seriously – with ‘tough questions’. Rather, no one has ever thought to stipulate that someone has special ‘justice powers’ – i.e. a heightened capacity to tell right from wrong.

Before I forget to mention it: the Kateb thing made me laugh at my own joke (which is usually considered rude, but I’ll make an exception in my case.)

By: Rich B.

Rich B. — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:39:02 +0000

Do you ever think about how no one in, like, the Justice League, even has any actual justice powers. Never gets bitten by a radioactive philosopher and acquires a tingling justice sense?

Oh, come on! And in the Justice Society itself, no less. You certainly remember “The Spectre”—dead cop by day, ineluctible force of Justice by night—or something like that. By the 1990s, he was wrestling with issues of Justice of a monthly basis, I believe at one point threatening to kill the entire state of New York if they carried out a wrongful—but procedurally proper—execution.

There were also such gay-camp classics as “Are there homosexuals in heaven?” asked imploringly of gay-angel-in-loincloth.

http://content.imagesocket.com/images/spec04d.jpg

By: lw

lw — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:37:06 +0000

I guess I’m missing a joke—Will Eisner’s Spirit was morally complex and well-drawn throughout the US’s participation in WW II. Does choosing panels like this one lead to anything new or interesting to say about wartime public art?

This was a good one, though short on irony.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:33:19 +0000

I can’t stop laughing at the Kateb-Flathman-Williams (and Rorty should be there, too) robot army.

Laugh you should, because I’m going to send my Taylor-Walzer-Barber-Miller army out after them, and they’ll kick their ass.