Colin Smith considers the morality behind the origin of Miles Morales’ costumed alter ego, and makes it seem much more troubling than you may have originally thought:
In fact, the supposedly heart-torn Fury not only avoids fulfilling any measure of care for Miles Morales whatsoever, but he actively encourages the boy on his superheroic career instead. In doing so, he does nothing but legitimise the second Ultimate Spider-Man’s adolescent dreams without doing anything to ensure that they don’t end in disaster. For on the day after Miles is released from Fury’s detention, the lad’s tracked down on the street by Spider-Woman, who, in her civilian identity, and before the unbelieving eyes of Miles’ best friend Ganke, hands over to him a sparkling new spider-suit. “You’ve got one chance.” she tells him, in what’s clearly supposed to be a rites of passage moment, in which the reader is intended to feel that Miles has somehow earned the respect of his super-elders and thereby his spurs. Yet, what could be more ridiculous? Fury’s already helped create the conditions which did for Parker, and yet now he’s enabling a 13 year old neophyte super-boy with both his blessing and a new all-body set of crime-fighting togs? And, to cap the absurdity of all this off, the handing on of the torch is shown occurring in the streets, before the eyes of another youthful boy barely into his teens? At what point beyond that of golly-gee-wow-awesome does any of this make sense?
Smith is, I think, creating an alternative narrative to the one that’s Ultimate canon; there’s almost no way that Bendis and company are considering the kind of amoral, misanthropic story that Smith comes up with in the post, after all. And yet, Smith makes a convincing argument, and it’s one that’ll end up creating a wonderful (and wonderfully creepy) subtext to the whole thing…
June 18th, 2012 at 10:59 am
It is a plot point. Fury is a serial killer, but having someone else do it, all he has to do is push the hero to action and watch what happens.
June 18th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“At what point beyond that of golly-gee-wow-awesome does any of this make sense?”
It’s completely consistent with Fury’s machiavellian ethical code. He wouldn’t have a problem endangering the life of a single child if he thought that by doing so he could save the lives of other innocent people.
Of course Colin wouldn’t let the actual character logic interfere with an opportunity to drive hits to his blog with a rant fueled by phony moral outrage.
June 19th, 2012 at 11:58 am
“He wouldn’t have a problem endangering the life of a single child if he thought that by doing so he could save the lives of other innocent people.”
Except that even the characters themselves have acknowledged that this approach was a complete and total failure even in serving their attempts to achieve the supposed “greater good,” but please, continue to be ignorant and incorrect.
Pretty much every bad thing that’s happened in the Ultimate Marvel Universe has happened because Fury’s plans and responses were both logically and morally wrong.
June 19th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
“Pretty much every bad thing that’s happened in the Ultimate Marvel Universe has happened because Fury’s plans and responses were both logically and morally wrong.”
I don’t know what point you were trying to make here but it’s hilarious how you sabotaged your own argument: “Fury is consistently evil and stupid in the extreme. NO WAY would he ever endager an innocent child!”
I guess I owe you a thanks for helping to take yourself down?
June 19th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Tenebrous: It’s obvious that you don’t know the point I was trying to make, but it’s through no fault of my own, because you are apparently illiterate.
The point that both I and Colin Smith have made is that Fury is both evil and incompetent, but in spite of Bendis making token admissions of this, Bendis’ own writing treats Fury as heroic and admirable BECAUSE he has committed such evil, incompetent actions.
The point of a Machiavellian moral code is that the ends STILL have to justify the means, but the problem is that Fury’s actions AREN’T redeemed by their outcomes, not even by HIS OWN PRIORITIES, because not only did he needlessly sacrifice Peter Parker’s life, but Fury actually would have saved a lot of OTHER people’s lives if he’d treated Peter better in the first place.
Take the time to actually READ Colin Smith’s piece, which you obviously DIDN’T (and if you say you did, you’re a LIAR), because all these points are already made. Even if Fury is MEANT to be evil (which is highly doubtful, even though his actions are OBJECTIVELY evil, given all the tricks that Bendis pulls to make Fury seem sympathetic), the fact is that Fury’s actions are still so spitefully, short-sightedly stupid that THEY DON’T EVEN SERVE HIS OWN AGENDA.
June 19th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Basically, it’s writing that glorifies fascism for its own sake, by trying to make the fascists seem sympathetic and noble even when the story itself is forced to admit that their fascist methods are both logically and morally wrong. It’s written by and for people who masturbate to 24 and believe that the real world would be better if Jack Bauer actually existed.
June 21st, 2012 at 10:56 am
Why are my coments being blocked? I’ve said nothing objectionable. I see, they want to censor my comments while allowing me to be subject to repeated personal attacks. Wow, who knew Newsarama was run by Democrats?
June 21st, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Also, why are we ignoring the real issue here? In that article Colin Smith uses a racial slur to describe Nick Fury! He refers to Ultimate Nick Fury, an African American character as an “unmensch”: an old German slur for people of African descent which translates roughly as “non-human”.
And this clown has the balls to complain about the dangerous subtext in Spider-Man comics!?