Captain America 3- Civil War: The Choice is Between Collectivism & Human Emancipation

Article by: Mark. A Pritchard (aka Rorshach1004)
Date: 28th August 2015


The original Civil War arc in Marvel comics (written by Mark Millar) was all about the registration of superheroes. Captain America was against registration. Iron Man was for it. Cap thought it was anti-freedom. Tony Stark argued that it was needed in order to protect the people. It’s the old argument, fear versus freedom. We all know how that went in the real world (NSA, Patriot Act) don’t we?

In Marvel comics (SPOILER ALERT) it goes pretty much the same way. At the end of the Civil War Arc Captain America meekly surrenders and fear wins over liberty. It’s a terribly depressing ending, and is carried on in the new Civil War arc (by Charles Soule) that is part of the current Secret Wars event in Marvel comics. Quick note, get the book, it’s great.

So, in Marvel comics all of the superheroes must be registered with the government, and everything they do is monitored in order to 'keep them safe.’

In other words, it’s a soft tyranny, centrally controlled and enforced with a legal mandate over the use of coercive violence.

It’s France, it’s England, it’s America, and it’s every country in the west. All are enslaved underneath the loving, caring eyes of big brother government. And how do they get away with this soft tyranny, both in the comics and in the real world? Through the use of a heavily propagandised, relentlessly programmed ideology called ‘Democracy.’

Democracy has no regard for moral truth, individual liberty, or spiritual enlightenment. You vote for a master, and that’s exactly what you get. Democracy is about tyranny, order following, centralised control, collectivism, ‘sacrifice,' death for the system, joining a cult, becoming a brick in the wall, a cog in a machine of human enslavement. You better join it, or you will be punished for your failure to assimilate. I should know. That’s why I’m writing on my own personal blog, and not for some crappy comic book website.

Here’s a definition of the Borg from Star-Trek:

‘The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones in a hive mind called the Collective, or the hive. The Borg's ultimate goal is "achieving perfection".

Here’s a quote from the hive-mind Borg themselves:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)

Does all of that sound familiar? To me, it sounds like the neoliberal, mainstream corporate hive mindset of TODAY.

If you fail to comply with the neo-liberal corporate (mainly Marxist), politically correct consensus then you are a thought criminal, to be ostracised and accused of crimes against the perfected, progressive collective. This is particularly true when it comes to today’s comic books. These politically correct vehicles of neo-liberal corporate consensus feature narratives that explore every single facet of identity politics, but fail to touch any of the vital, underlying issues of our times.

But what about the racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, Islamaphobic right-wingers? Their very existence disproves what I am saying here, right? They might not dominate the comic book industry, but look at Fox news and all of the other racist, right wing bigots in the mainstream. If the media really were so ‘neo-liberal’ as I suggest, then Fox news and all of the other right wing ‘bigots’ wouldn’t exist, right?

No, not really. I’ll explain why.

Are all of the people that identify themselves as ‘right-wingers’ primarily concerned with freedom, liberty and individualism? No, of course they are not. Some are, but they are in the minority. The vast majority of those on the ‘right’ of the political spectrum just want to get what they can from government, just like the left. They want to use the power of the state to line their own pockets. As the state has a monopoly over violence it’s natural that both left and right wingers would be doing all they can to influence it, and make it serve their own needs. Makes sense, right?

The main difference between the left and right is that the left wants to suck off the state, whilst the right wants to pay-off the state. That means that they both have one thing in common, that being the state.

The left sees the state as Mommy, and the right sees the state as Daddy. Mommy protects, and Daddy corrects. Both are wrong. The state is neither Mom, nor Dad, it’s coercion through violence, always has been, always will be. The left knows this, and so does the right. They know, and that’s why they both support the violence that is the state, as long as that violence benefits them, of course.

In America (and the EU) today there is an alliance between the collective left, the collective right and the state. The state and large business collude, and as a business grows it can afford to pay off those working within the state apparatus with bribes/donations. As for the left, it needs the state like a baby bird needs his Mommy.

The state feeds the baby left, funnelling money into welfare handouts and their intellectually vacuous educational institutions that teach reliance on the state and victimhood to mythological oppressors like evil white men and patriarchy. The state is happy to do this as it keeps the left on the plantation, dependent upon its largesse and unable to identify the real oppressor, which of course is the state itself.

It’s not a particularly complicated equation. The collective right uses the state, and the collective left desperately needs the state. The distinction between the two collective ideologies of left and right blurs into one ideology, that being the ideology of collectivism under state control.

The end result is what we have today, a handful of large corporations paying off the state to ensure they maintain a monopoly over the world’s resources, a bankrupt intellectual class of leftist fools, and millions of people dependent upon state handouts. The mainstream political class in the west then is reduced to a choice between left and right collectivists, all reliant on the state, all supporters of the state. There are plenty of wannabe Iron Men, whilst Captain America doesn’t even get a mention.

Social control of the masses under collectivism is easy.  The status quo is maintained through a divide and conquer left versus right identity politics strategy relentlessly pushed from the aforementioned government sponsored collectivist left and their mainstream educational programs, and their right-wing ‘foes’ on channels like Fox news. This divide and conquer strategy is funded by the collectivist right in big business and the collectivist left in government. The young are taught all about identity politics, but know nothing about the big violent ape in the room.

That ape has a gun, and his name is Collectivist Statism.

Democracy in the west is exposed as a lie, and is nothing more than a combination of left and right collectivism that is funnelled through the violently coercive power of the centralised state. It is legitimised by something called ‘democracy,’ where the slaves on the plantation get to vote between left fist or right fist every few years or so.

This illusion of choice ensures that nothing of major importance ever changes. The only change allowable within this current system of soft tyranny is the race, gender and sexuality of the oppressor. This is exactly what Marvel and DC comics are all about in 2015, and that is why they say nothing and mean nothing.

The problem isn’t that businesses are getting too large and powerful. You should be rewarded for success, that takes hard work, that takes creativity and drive, and it moves the human species forward as your competitors struggle to keep up, and even overtake you in their hard work and innovation.

The problem is that the wealthy are the only people that can afford to pay for the violent protection of the state, a state that has given itself a monopoly over the use of legal violence. Their competitors cannot afford to pay, so they end up failing, not because they didn't work hard enough and not because they weren’t good or innovative enough, but because they couldn't pay for the violently coercive gorilla state that has been given a monopoly over the use of violence.

If you can pay the Gorilla, great, if you can’t, tough luck kid. The end result is a minority of obscenely rich individuals who own and control everything as they can afford to pay off the state, and the 99% of the rest of us fighting amongst ourselves for the scraps that fall from the table of the lucky few.

What we need to do is to level the playing field, and the only way to do that is to abandon the empty lie that is our programmed devotion to the violent, destructive, inhumane, coercive force of the state.

How do we do this?

We remove our consent. We stop voting, for anybody. We stop supporting violent coercion, and we stop supporting the monolithic oppressor that enslaves us all.

Our oppressor is collectivist statism, and we need to stop legitimising it through the ballot box. A violent revolution is not necessary. What is necessary is peaceful, non-compliance with our collective, Borg oppressors.

I can already hear the fear kicking in:

‘What will we do without the state?’

‘How will we protect ourselves from ISIS, or whatever new bogeyman that crops up in the msm next week?’

‘What about the roads?’

What about the children? Somebody think about the children?’

What we will do is evolve. We will talk it out, come to arrangements, make deals, choose for ourselves, defend ourselves, do things for ourselves. We are smart people, and we will adapt. Yes, the beginning will be difficult, but nothing worth having is ever easy.

The number one goal for all liberty minded individuals in the world today should be the abolition of the state. Let’s get rid of it, and let’s start living our lives as free human beings.

Before I finish off, and because this article is supposed to be about the new Captain America 3 ‘Civil War’ movie from Marvel, here’s a quick message for all of the comic book fans looking forward to that movie.

Let’s join Captain America and leave the Iron Men collectivists in the dustbin of history where they rightfully belong. The era of enslavement to the state is coming to an end. People are looking for something new, and that something new is a world where the power of the centralised state no longer dominates our lives. Don’t be scared, don’t give in to fear, as you already know, the only thing to fear, is fear itself.

Take care of each other, and spread the word. Change is inevitable, let’s make it real change this time. A new age is dawning. It’s an age free from the violently coercive power of the state, and free from the robotic, machine-man, destructive ideology of collectivism. It’s a world based on liberty, free choice, morality and respect for the individual. We can have this world, if we want it, but the first barrier that we need to clear is the barrier to human emancipation that is the modern, democratic, centralised, collectivised left/right state.

Comic review: Secret Wars #5- Atheism, propaganda, dictatorship, democracy, truth and lies

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Esad Ribic
Publisher: Disney/Marvel
Released: 12th August 2015



In my previous review (18 Days #2) I bemoaned the fact that contemporary neo-liberal corporate hegemony supporting comic books are pretty much all the same.

I moaned and complained that their narratives feature crazy dictators as the villains, and order following agents of democracy as the heroes. These ‘heroic’ agents of the state just want to bring ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to the world and to stop evil dictators from killing their own people, or something.

‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ (George Orwell)

The lie that democracy means freedom is the lie that allows western governments to propagandise their own populations and to enslave them to a centralised control system.

Through the repeated telling of this lie the numerous wars that have become ever more apparent since 2001 can be sold as wars for peace, and not the wars for resources, profit and control that they actually are.

The wars are now sold as protecting people (by bombing them) and bringing democracy, which of course equates to freedom, seeing as we are all so free in the west, cough Edward Snowden.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” (Adolf Hitler)

“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.” (Upton Sinclair)

The first thing that we need to recognise is that we are living in a lie. Your life is a lie, and so is mine. The west is a lie, a lie that we drink, eat, and bathe in, daily. It washes over us, flowing from everything and everywhere, yet the lie is so big, and so relentlessly repeated that we come to think of the lie as truth itself. We work for the lie, we feed the lie, we caress the lie, we nurture the lie, we treasure the lie, we love the lie, and we get careers as writers, and repeat the lie until the day that we die.

Do I think that comic book writers working for Marvel, DC, Darkhorse or any of the other US comic book corporations care much about truth and lies? Perhaps in their personal lives, but I know one thing for sure, I know that it’s not coming out in their comic book career lives.

I read a lot of contemporary US comic books and it’s become very apparent to me that the writers don’t want to go anywhere near truth. They want to tell exciting stories, they want to please liberal, progressive minded readers and they want to keep reality, truth and the real world a million miles away from what they are doing in their comic books.

It’s a choice. They choose the easy life and they echo chamber the thoughts and beliefs of their left leaning audience back to them whilst dreaming of the big television or movie deal. I wish them the best of luck with that and hope that they make lots of money and win award after award after award. It’s meaningless, but as most of them are atheist, solipsist, Darwinian types, that isn’t really an insult to them, it’s just stating a fact about their collective mindsets. Rats in a cage, and they are happy to be so.

Secret Wars #5 is a mainstream American comic book written by Jonathan Hickman. The story is about an evil dictator, and there’s a bit of tame religion bashing going on as well, which is par for the course in contemporary comic books.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Esad Ribic, and doesn’t touch on any real world concerns of 2015. It is an uncontroversial book. It does what all of the other books do, but there’s a lack of jokes, puns and quips in it, meaning (I suppose) that it’s a ‘serious’ comic book.

The ideology that runs through the book compares God to a deceitful, murderous, petty, insecure dictator. It’s an ideology that atheistic neo-liberal types will agree with, and thus is just another continuance of the mainstream echo chamber that stifles all debate and doesn’t address the predominant lie of our times.

I didn’t hate the book. It’s just another lefty comic book. It looks nice, it toes the line, and it does what it is supposed to do. It keeps the neoliberal democratic lie intact, our heads submerged within the corporate matrix, and successfully farts out another unit for the Princess programming, unreality pushing, crazy as a Rihanna video, bathed in children’s blood Disney Corporation.


Rating: 6/10 (It’s all about Doom, how he’s not God, how he created the world and how he’s a big old mean dictator that needs to be taken down by the atheistic democracy squad)



Check out Rihanna's charming new pop video below. Yep, the mainstream sure is a crazy place these days.

Comic review: Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #2- The Art of War

Script: Grant Morrison, Gotham Chopra & Sharad Devarajan
Art: Jeevan J. Kang
Publisher: Graphic India
Released: 12th August 2015



Comic book reviewers shouldn’t really rave over this comic, and if they do so, you need to be very suspicious about their motivations (cough, re-tweets).

That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad comic though, because it isn’t. What it is, is a comic that is establishing what is to come next in the narrative. It’s a comic that is doing the boring work before the big battle kicks off. It’s a comic book about political intrigue, motivations, and the heroes of the upcoming war playing a strategic game of chess in order to set up their enemies for their inevitable defeat.

18 Days #2 features people putting down their arms and armour, and talking about tradition, honour, oaths and fate. The villains have lots of rule about who and when they will, or will not fight. They are all related, and have long histories and grievances against each other. The heroes are exploiting all of this, as they talk to the different people, playing them off against each other, and strategize for the upcoming battle.

The message of course is that success comes from effective strategising, from brains over brawn. The strongest, bravest, fastest, most powerful warrior doesn’t always win, the smartest warrior wins. War is manipulation, about playing sides off against each other.

A modern example of the art of war and deception would be how the US (and EU) is currently using ISIS to destroy Syria, whilst simultaneously using the terrorist group (largely funded through US allies in the Middle East) to justify a Police state back home. The strategy of the US using ISIS as a proxy army allows them to destabilise Syria and to blame it on somebody else. When the country is a complete mess they can then send in their own ground troops to finish them off, murder all of the leaders, install a puppet government, and steal the countries resources, just like they did in Libya.

That’s how you strategise in war. That’s how you use your enemy to defeat a greater enemy, just as the US used the Taliban in Afghanistan to bog down the Russians in an unwinnable war that helped to destabilise the entire Soviet Union. Sure, the Taliban led to Al Qaeda, 9/11, 7/7, Iraq, the NSA and all of the other ‘problems’ in the world right now, but the bottom line is that the strategy worked. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the western banks and corporations that control western governments now have the perfect, permanent enemy in Islamic terrorism. This manufactured, and controlled enemy can now be sent around the world to bomb and maim, thus justifying less freedom in the west, and more western corporate imperialism and hegemony abroad, whilst claiming it’s all about human rights, freedom and democracy. Yeah, the US might be invading your country, but they are only there to protect you from ISIS/Al Qaeda. It’s true, yet it’s a lie at the same time. That’s the art of war, and that’s how you get things done.

The mainstream corporate media sell war as good versus evil, as neo-liberal democracy versus anything that dares to challenge it. They do so because they need to justify the corporate/statist/fascist status quo, and to portray their side as the heroes, and the other side as the villains. Contemporary superheroes play the role of soldier heroes, fighting against democracy hating dictator villains, fighting for freedom, whilst supporting indentured servitude to the corporate state.

Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #2 is a bit more complex than an average neo-liberal comic book. That’s partly due to Morrison himself, but largely because the book comes from ancient Indian wisdom (the Mahabharata) and so it has a bit more substance than the ignorant idiocy that is fed to us today.

Get the book if you want to explore Indian mythology and culture, but get it if you want to expand your horizons, and understand the complexities behind the art of war.

War is not about dictators and the illusion of freedom that is western style neo-liberal democracy. It’s not what you read in contemporary comic books, see on your television sets, and read about in your corporate newspapers. War is more complicated than what you see on the surface, and that is what 18 Days #2 is exploring.

It’s a book about war strategy, about what to do before the battle, and how to manipulate and weaken the enemy before a shot is fired. It’s about preparing for victory through proactive intelligence, using the most powerful weapon that we, as human beings, possess, that being the power of the mind.

Brains over brawn baby, it wins every single time, and that’s why the US isn’t bombing ISIS into oblivion right now. They could, but what would that achieve? ISIS are there to get rid of President Assad first (he’s an evil dictator, didn’t you know?) and then, who knows how they could be used next? Iran, Russia, something back home if the people start to question government authority perhaps? So many options, but that’s the game of war. We need to understand how it is being played, not for us, but against us, as right now, those in control, the evil people that control the world, are dividing, conquering, and walking over every single last one of us.


Rating: 7/10 (To divide and conquer, it’s the art of war)

Comic review: Civil War (2015) #1- The hour is late, but freedom is still an option

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 8th July 2015



If, like myself, you felt that the ending of Mark Millar’s Civil War arc was a massively anti-climatic letdown (Captain America surrendered because he didn’t want people to get hurt) then this version of Civil War will be right up your comic book alley.

In this book, Cap doesn’t surrender. The war continues, with the ‘nation’ split in two. On one side (The Iron) is the progressively totalitarian Iron Man, with laws made by him (because he knows best), you obey, or you go to jail. On the other side is Captain America’s ‘The Blue’ where freedom and individuality reigns, and the collectivist co-ordinator class is stripped of their authoritarian big brother powers:

‘Captain America made a land with only two laws. Hurt no one, and help where you can.’

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the option to choose between the two in the real world? As it is, we are living in the authoritarian ‘Iron,’ with the ‘authorities’ telling us what we can and cannot do (see the drug laws) because they know best. There is a battle going on, but it’s a battle for power, not a battle for freedom. It’s a red and blue struggle for authoritarian control.

Politics is a battle between authoritarian personality types; to be the ‘expert’ telling everybody else how they should or should not live their lives.

What is happening right now in the west is that the totalitarian mindset of the old right has now switched to the new left. The mindset has not changed, it’s still about control, still about telling people what is best for them, and what is bad for them, and what they can and cannot do.

We now have a situation where social justice warriors (young Marxists straight out of university and loaded up with feminist rhetoric) are trying to enact social change around issues of sexuality, gender and race. All they want is control. They are ‘educated’ and they know best, so they are the ones who will tell us what we can or cannot think, do or say. They want ‘change’ but not real change. All they really want is for you to obey them, to do exactly what they say, they are the experts, they know best.

This collectivist nonsense is all wrapped up in ‘social justice’ but the bottom line is the same. They want Iron Man totalitarianism, you must agree with them, and if you don’t, you will be arrested, thrown in jail, and silenced. It will be for the best, it will help maintain the collective, it will make the world a better place, because they say that it will, and they are right, and everybody else is wrong.

What social justice warriors really want is a communist society, with a mass of order following workers being dictated to and controlled by a select controller class (them), just as is happening today in the slave labour camp called China. SJW's are control freaks. They are the wannabe co-ordinator class of a politically correct communist hellhole. You must grovel, you must obey, and if you don’t you will be called a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot and be ostracised from the new totalitarian paradise that they are creating for all of us.

Sorry, big rant there, but that’s what you get here on my blog.

The original comic book Civil War had to end with a defeat for freedom, because that defeat reflects what is actually happening in America then, and today. Forget ‘conspiracies’ what is democracy, other than a competition between control freak authoritarian mind-sets, of people looking to control the top-down, centralised control system? That is what America is. That is what the UK is. That is what democracy is. Vote for a controller. If you don’t want a controller, tough luck, you’re going to get one anyway. And that isn’t even mentioning the controllers behind the political puppets, the controllers you elect who you don’t even get to see or hear about. That is democracy, and democracy is freedom, even though it’s not.

I enjoyed this book because it takes the defeat of freedom that happens in the original Civil War comic book and retells the end of the story, showing that an anarchist society (meaning freedom from the violent coercion of the state), and based on the no-harm principle, can actually work.

We all instinctively knew that Iron Man was the villain in Civil War, that his argument was weak, that it advocated slavery to government and that his idea of ‘order’ was fascism. But he won, and we all accept his idea of control and totalitarianism in our own lives, even though we know that it is wrong.

We demonstrate this when we go out to vote time after time after time for a new version of Iron Man to rule over us.  The option advocated by Captain America in this comic book, the idea that you should be free as long as you don’t harm anyone, is not available at the ballot box. You don’t get freedom through voting between an old or new slavemaster; of course you don’t, yet that’s what we do when we vote.

Civil War #1 then is a look at the possibility of freedom from a centralised control system, of experts, hen-pecking, telling us what we can and cannot do and say, and what is good or bad for us. It offers us the choice between freedom and tyranny that we should have in our real world, yet because of our acquiescence to government, fail to realise is even there.

Here’s a closely guarded secret that you won’t hear the pretty people on tell lie vision discuss. We do have a choice.  We don’t have to choose between a red or blue control system of henpecking authoritarian beaurucrats. In this comic book the choice is easy. Iron Man totalitarianism, or Captain America freedom and the no harm principal. However, in the real world that choice is hidden, with the corporate elite’s doing their best to hide it from us, and with social justice warrior twerps thinking they are making the world a better place, when all they are doing is maintaining the current paradigm of totalitarian control. Their change is stuck in the old control system paradigm, but the possibility of real change does exist.

There is a choice in the real world, as there is in this comic book, but the human slavery control system is not going to broadcast it from their propaganda ‘programming’ machines.

The choice is between voting for slavery, for control systems, or to abstain from voting altogether, to withdraw your consent to be governed. That’s the new paradigm, that’s the one thing that we all need to do en-masse in order to break free from the tyranny that has controlled and manipulated us for far too long.

Civil War #1 is a worthwhile comic book because it continues a story that had an unsatisfying ending, and because it reveals a truth about the society that we are living in today. The truth is that freedom exists, but it can only exist outside of a centralised control system called government.

Iron Man was the winner in the original Civil War, and Captain America was led away in handcuffs. In this version of Civil War, the battle for freedom continues, and just like in the real world, the struggle for independence, for genuine human emancipation from the tyrannical top down control system that is government never ends. Most fight for control, the few fight for individual freedom. Join the few, fight against collectivism, and fight to uphold the no harm principle as advocated by fictional heroes, and their real world counterparts as well.


Rating: 8/10 (Civil War lives again, and freedom is still an option)

Comic Review: Planet Hulk #1- Captain Pony-Tail & His Pet T-Rex

Writer: Sam Humphries
Artist: Marc Laming
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Released: 20th May 2015



I’ve often wondered, and reading Planet Hulk #1 has made me think about it again, that the only thing that makes a comic book hero an actual ‘hero’ is that he fights against dictators.

The hero stands up for ‘democracy, and freedom.’ That is what he does, and that is why he is a hero. The unquestioned assumption of course being that democracy equates to freedom.

So what happens when a democracy becomes compromised? What happens when obscenely wealthy people purchase the democracy, and propagandise the people through their media manipulation machines, thus making the democracy a sham, an empty charade where the people are not as ‘free’ as they might think that they are?

What happens when change is impossible, when the political parties represent not the people that vote for them, but the people who fund them? What happens when a democracy becomes nothing more than a dictatorship of the wealthy, and people go along with it in the hope that they can at least make a decent living out of the corrupt situation that they have found themselves living in?

Where are the comic book heroes to be found in such a situation? Where are the comic book heroes in 2015? What do they do, what do they say, and do they even deserve to be labelled as 'heroes?' Let's jump into the larger than life world of comic books, and see what the heroes of today are getting up to.

Heroes in Marvel comics of 2015 come in many different shapes and sizes, but they all do one of two things:

1- They fight against fictional bullies and dictators (whilst ignoring real ones like the western backed gangster family in control of Saudi Arabia) and pretend that democracy in the west is not broken.
2- They become ‘social justice warriors,’ and fight for all of the politically correct ‘freedoms’ that are pushed by the mainstream media, the same media that is ran and controlled by the people who run and control the sham democracy.

I think it's safe to say that Marvel comic books of 2015 focus mainly on evil dictators, and social justice warrior issues. The writers are almost 100% feminist neo-liberal in their world-views and frequently pat themselves on the back for having stories that deal with issues related to race, sex or gender. Their idea of controversial is what would have been controversial thirty years ago, not what is actually controversial today.

Why am I bringing all of this up in a review of Planet Hulk #1? It's because that backdrop informs what I am now going to say about this particular comic book.

Planet Hulk #1 has a simple story, and reads like any other mainstream comic book that you will find in your comic book shop today. It doesn’t have as many zombies or third-wave feminist empowered young girls as most of the other junk books on the shelves, but its overarching assumptions are very familiar.

The book’s villain is an evil, world controlling dictator. This dictator (Doctor Doom) sits on a thrown and orders people to do his bidding. People follow his orders (just as they would do in a democracy btw) and the world is a horrible place that needs the help of some comic book heroes. Captain America is one of these heroes, and as we begin this story he is a pony-tailed gladiator who rides around on a T-Rex. He works for said evil dictator in order to help his friend, Bucky. The book is about fighting, and if you like fighting you’ll like the book.

Oh, I almost forgot. You also get a backstory about how a place called ‘Greenland’ got to be radiated, and thus turned into a big monster play-park. The story might be fun, but only for those under the age of about ten years old. This add-on story is about monsters, and more fighting. So again, if you like fighting, you'll like this bit as well, and if you like monsters fighting then this will really make your day.

Here’s how I read Planet Hulk #1. Captain America is a US marine, a man who is fighting not for a great cause, but because he wants to help his buddy. I’ve read interviews with real soldiers, and when they are asked what they were fighting for their answer is normally the same. They were fighting to help their friends, not America, not democracy, not freedom, they are fighting for their friends, and their friends are fighting for them. Their objective is to get home safely, and if they have to murder people to do so, well, they’ll do it, a lot.

Don’t ask the soldiers why they are occupying a foreign country, and don’t question why they would agree to do such a thing in the first place. You don’t question the troops, and you certainly don’t criticise the troops. They are heroes, just like Captain America. What they actually do is not important. You thank them for your freedom, and you don’t question anything that they do.

Do you see the problem here?

I don’t have to spell it out, do I? You have a culture being created, being celebrated in comic books like Planet Hulk #1, where questioning is something that you just don’t do. But then look at the comic book again and look at the villains. Who are they?

Who are the villains in Planet Hulk #1?

It’s not Doom. He’s the face of it, but look at what he actually does. All he is doing is sitting in a chair. He’s not killing anybody. He’s not forcing people to do anything. All he is doing is giving orders, and people are obeying him.

Doom has an army of ‘Thors’ who fly around subjugating the local population on his behalf. This army of Thors rain death and destruction from the sky, targeting civilians as they do so, indiscriminately using violence to sucessfully complete their missions.

The Thors are the villains, the SOLDIERS. Doom is a politician, the president, and the man who gives orders, but he doesn’t do the actual killing himself, that is what his order following Thor/Soldiers are doing.

The villain in this book is not Doctor Doom. The villains are the people who follow his orders, the Thors, the SOLDIERS.

How do comic book readers read this book, and then look at their own soldiers as heroes? The Thors are soldiers, but they are not heroes. Soldiers are never heroes, because people who follow orders are not acting under moral law. They are voluntarily giving away their moral responsibilities, and acting in an immoral way that is inconsistent with the actions of a good, moral person. This is what soldiers do. It’s what soldiers always do. It’s a part of the job. You cannot be an order following soldier and also be a good moral person, the two things are completely incompatible. People might not like to hear this truth, but truth is what it is, and it needs to be said.

After acknowledging that order following soldiers are not heroes, the book then uses the ultimate order following soldier (Captain America) and attempts to portray him as the hero of the narrative. It’s already contradictory, that a man who follows orders is a hero, but then look at what he is actually doing in this book.  He is also working for Doctor Doom, accepting a mission where he is to murder somebody, just on the say so of Doom. His rationale of course being that he is doing it for his friend, the same rationale I discussed previously in this review.

What is this comic book saying?

To me, it’s saying two things. Firstly, that it’s bad to be an order following Thor/soldier, but if you are doing what you are doing in order to help your buddy (remember, the cry of all soldiers) then, well, that’s okay, you a good moral person now.

I guess that if you are following orders to help your buddies then morality no longer counts? You are not a villain anymore. You are Captain America now.

Tell that to the Nuremberg trials of 1945/6 and see if they’ll buy it. They won’t, and do you know why they won’t? They won’t buy it because it’s BS. You are always morally responsible for the results of your actions, no friendships, no orders, and no excuses. If you do evil things, the only person responsible is YOU.

Do you see the insanity, the self-delusion, and the practised ignorance of reality that is on display here in this (very typical) comic book? It’s quite incredibly really, and that’s what you have going on in most mainstream comic books in 2015. An acknowledgement that following orders is probably not a good thing, but this idea that if you are doing it to help your friends then that’s perfectly okay, and even admirable.

It’s madness, pure madness, encouraged in comic books, like Planet Hulk #1, by Sam Humphries, and on display in countless other Marvel, DC and independent comic books that are on the market today.

Is the world mad, or is it just asleep? They understand that western democracies are broken, don’t they? They understand that following orders is what the Nazi’s did, and that is why we call them ‘evil’ don’t they?

They have to understand, and yet they (I’m talking about the writers and readers of contemporary comic books here) are ignoring these two issues.

I’ll read other reviews of this book and they’ll talk about the plot, the art, the characters. I know they will. The deeper issues will not be discussed. My review will be the weird, ignored one. I know that is going to happen, because that is what always happens. And so I put out this review for one reason only, for the sake of my own conscience. I saw what was going on, and whilst others remained silent, I refused to say ‘cool,’ and ignore what was going on. I’m the bad guy who told the comic book reading world that their emperor is not wearing any clothes. Somebody had to do it, sorry, but it had to be done.


Rating: 4/10 (Get it if you want to see a pony-tailed Captain America riding a T-Rex) 

Book review: Parecomic- Who wants an alternative to exploitation and immorality?

Writer: Sean Michael Wilson
Artist: Carl Thompson
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Released: May 14th 2013
Website:
http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/parecomic-michael-albert-and-the-story-of-participatory-economics


When you are born into a system it can feel that things have always been that way, that the system is organic, natural, and just the way that things are. Going against it can seem absolutely absurd, a bit like complaining that when you go swimming you tend to get a bit wet.

That’s the feeling you get when you complain about something called ‘Capitalism.’ A system where everybody is competing, everybody is stabbing each other in the back, everybody is exploiting, everybody is devious, nobody is to be trusted. It’s an economic system that encourages selfishness. Get what you can before somebody else gets it first. Morality is irrelevant in capitalism. It is Darwinian. Eat or be eaten. But is that really natural, is that what we are as human beings?

Some would argue that human beings are selfish, immoral animals, and that Capitalism is therefore perfectly in tune with the nature of humanity. Capitalism is selfish, harsh, immoral and violent because that is what humanity is. I disagree with that analysis, but I’ve always been a bit ‘weird,’ a bit different to everybody else. Call me a hopelessly deluded romantic, but I hold humanity in a higher regard than that. I see people as eminently mouldable, and if you place us in an immoral system and tell us that immorality is the norm from a very young age I see it as perfectly natural for us to act with no regards to anyone other than ourselves.

But what would happen to our species as a whole if we were born into a system structured around moral fairness and human happiness rather than exploitation and immorality? Would humanity, being the nasty brute that it is, reject it? Or would it flourish and ostracise anybody still clinging to the old capitalist model of selfish exploitation? I still have hope for humanity, so I’m going for the later, but even if you disagree with my assessment wouldn’t you like to give humanity a chance before consigning it to the dustbin of history? I want to give us a chance, and that’s what this comic book is all about.

Parecomic offers a moral alternative to Capitalism. The narrative follows the life story of Michael Albert, and explores his idea of a ‘Participatory economics.’ In this system, which is explored through conversations between Albert and various individuals, people are rewarded for the duration, intensity and onerous (does it benefit society, or not?) of their work. This is very different to our current system where 20% of the working population exist as a ‘co-ordinator.’ This class of managers and decision-makers monopolise empowering work, and rewards itself way out of proportion to the actual good that they do in the world. They exist as a new privileged class above the 80% of workers who spend their lives doing routine, powerless work with no say, no power, no control over their lives other than doing what the 20% order them to do.

There are two aspects of the ‘Participatory Economics’ model that particularly appeal to me, coming from an anarchist mindset as I do. The first was that there are no centralised governing bodies. All of the decision making in this model is done on the local level through democratic committees arguing through their problems, and then voting on it. There is no central committee telling them what they must, or must not do. It is democratic and empowering, as opposed to the current top down control system that we are currently living under.

The second aspect that stood out to me was the idea (that I introduced above) of a ‘co-ordinator’ class monopolising decision making, and therefore power in the current capitalist model. Albert’s new model dissipates this disparity in power by making work more varied, allocating a mix of empowering and routine jobs to everybody. No longer would there be only 20% of people doing all of the fulfilling work, with 80% doing the routine dis-empowering work. In a participatory economic society people would not monopolise empowering work, they would have to do some of the hard, socially beneficial work as well. Does this mean that a surgeon would have to spend some of his time answering the phone and cleaning the toilets then? Yes, it does. It also means that the person who spent 100% of their work life cleaning toilets or answering the phone will have increased opportunities to reach their full potential rather than wasting away their lives doing a job that sees them as a resource rather than as a human being.

I like this model. I like how it empowers people. I like how it is based on social good, on morality over greed and selfishness. I like how it sees the best in humanity and wants to help people reach the fullest of their potentialities rather than fit them into a disempowering system that exists to keep a tiny number of the population rich beyond belief whilst the rest have to struggle in a dehumanising system just to survive. I like how it takes the classic Marxist model of class conflict (Bourgeoisie versus the Proletariat) and adds a third class, that being the new 20% ‘co-ordinator’ class, a class that currently monopolises empowering work, and subjugates the majority through their increased levels of self confidence and access to decision making. But what I like best about this model is that it offers solutions to our current predicament that are non-centralised, democratic and based on morality and trying to make the world a better place for everybody.

Parecomic details this model in much more detail than I do here, so if you are in any way intrigued with what I have just discussed, then please buy the book. It’s part biography and part dissertation on the new economic model of participatory economics as outlined by Michael Albert. It’s a surprisingly entertaining, page-turner of a book, so don’t get hung up on the idea that you are going to be reading a dry academic book about economics. It’s clear, concise, enlightening, world expanding, entertaining and it will have you thinking about solutions to the current capitalist model of exploitation of the masses on behalf of the most ruthless, most privileged, most inhumane, most immoral, most selfish, most satanic of this planet’s population.

If you want solutions rather than complaints then this is a must purchase book. It fascinated me, and I read it as I would read any Stephen King page-turner. That says two things. Firstly, that writer Sean Michael Wilson and artist Carl Thompson did a fantastic job, and secondly, that Michael Albert has a model of change that resonates with truth.  Real change has to be economic change, not political rhetoric, and that is what is offered here. The ideas expressed within are world changing. If you have time for Batman then you certainly have time for this.

Rating: 10/10

Comic review: IXth Generation #1- Supermodel world controllers in space

Writer: Matt Hawkins
Artist: Stjepan Sejic
Publisher: Top Cow Productions
Released: 7th December 2015

There’s not a lot for me to say about this comic book. I know it's a cross-over thing, but as a new reader it didn't offer me much at all.

The narrative is set in a spacey future where an elite group of immortals rule over a race of genetically advanced humans. These ‘nine heirs’ are your usual comic book types, young, attractive, wearing tight costumes and of various PC multi-racial/gender classifications.

I never realised that world controllers could be so cute.

The story begins with them arguing amongst themselves, fighting (although it’s pointless as none of them can be killed) and it concludes with one of their party being revealed as some kind of a threat to their status quo.

The biggest problem that I have with this book is that I’m not sure why I should I care about any of ‘heirs,’ as they are unelected dictators, a ruling elite in the same mould as our own hidden ruling elite of corporate/banking interests.

The protagonists in IXth Generation #1 couldn't help but remind me of the handful of families that control our own, real-world reality.

I’m talking about the real power behind our puppet politicians, the corporate decision makers who hide under the illusion of western ‘democracy,’ using a controlled election system where every few years their slave tax base get to choose between right corporate fist or left corporate fist. A system that cleverly gets slaves to choose the colour of the uniforms worn by tax collectors and prison guards, whilst telling the slaves that they are not slaves at all because they freely chose the uniform colour of their oppressors.

I might be a bit strange, but I don’t naturally empathise with unaccountable, slave controlling elite’s. That’s what you get in this book, so it’s an immediate turn-off for me. I don’t like them, and I don’t want to read about them. It doesn’t help that the story seems inconsequential due to their immortal nature either, and I couldn’t find anything in them, or in their struggles that held my interest. Perhaps if the story focussed on some of the ‘little’ people living in this new world I would have cared, but by focussing solely on the world controllers themselves the book has lost me already.

The art is nicely shaded and coloured in sections, but the story holds no long term interest, so unfortunately this is going to be a one and out for me. Simply put, it wasn’t interesting enough for me, and it falls into the chasm of blah that I’m going out of my way to avoid these days. I wish them luck, but Top Cow needs to put out better stuff than this if they want to win me over and to become a regular reader of their titles.

Rating: 3/10

Comic review: Green Lantern Corps #37 (Godhead Act 3, Part 2)- Democracy is an empty lie

Writer: Van Jensen
Artists: Bernard Chang & Mirko Colak
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 10th December 2014


Without the illusion of democracy the US and all of the other western countries attached, limpet like to the new imperial empire of planet Earth, would have no moral legitimacy whatsoever. Their wars for corporate profit would be naked, displayed as the murderous, anti-human resource and money making schemes that they actually are. Why am I mentioning this at the beginning of a comic book review? I’ll explain.

The evil dictator

The main villain in the ‘Godhead’ arc is a character called ‘Highfather.’ He is portrayed as a tyrant because he is waging a war against various planets in order to defeat a greater evil, that evil being a villain called ‘Darkseid.’ In other words, it’s a preventative war. He’s subjugating people for their own good, at least that’s the way that he sees it, but he’s a villain, remember that. He’s a tyrant, a bad guy.

Now, think about reality for a second. What did the US do in 2003? They invaded a country for preventative reasons. They claimed that the country had secret weapons (they didn’t) and so they destroyed it, murdering hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, stole it’s resources and gave them to it’s multi -national corporations. They did all of this for good reasons, of course. Ask Tony Blair and George Bush, they defend those reasons still to this very day. That is not a controversial thing for me to say. It might annoy people when I say it, but it is fact.

Here’s my question. What does the average comic book reader think when he reads a comic book like the ‘Godhead’ arc where the main villain is doing exactly (and probably less violently) what the US, UK and many other western countries have done, and continue to do today? The character in this Green Lantern Corps comic book is a bad guy, right? So what the Hell does that make our own western governments? Think about it. Think about what is going on here.

And this is where the illusion of democracy comes into play. Without that illusion, that we are different because we get to choose our leaders, the truth is very naked, don’t you think? A very dangerous assumption is at work here, that being the assumption that evil only comes from a dictator (like Highfather in this comic book), not from a ‘free’ democracy. Safe in the knowledge that evil cannot exist in his own ‘democratic’ country, the average comic book reader can read this comic without seeing any irony in it whatsoever.

And here comes the heroic resistance fighters

So when the US gets ready for it’s next corporate election between the Bush and Clinton families, remember what I said here. The illusion of democracy gives moral cover for the actions of the tiny number of ‘elite’ families who own and control the west. No crazy dictator is needed when the political system is owned and controlled by a few corporate and banking interests. Crazy dictators are for comic books and mainstream news networks. That’s the truth, like it or not.

Oh yeah, the comic book review. Sorry, this is a review isn’t it? Green Lantern Corps #37 (Godhead Act 3, Part 2) does the usual crazy dictator thing, that I’ve just discussed, puts the lanterns in position as the heroic resistance, one of the Highfather’s goon’s gets a kicking, and it’s fight back time for the good guys.

All of this comic book action is played out with the usual lack of awareness of the real world reality where US corporate imperialism (backed up by the most expensive military/war machine that the world has ever seen) is fighting real resistance movements all over the world. Funny stuff really. You have to laugh, you really do.

Rating: 6/10 (Decent art and some narrative advancement)