Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (17 page)

To begin with, he had not been a criminal long before reforming, whereas the Thunderbolts were mostly longtime villains before pretending (and later deciding) to be heroes. Akin to the distinction between virtue and continence is that between vice and incontinence. Vice is due to a negative trait, like cruelty, and incontinence is more like a lack of self-control with regard to exercising good traits (like kindness) when temptation to do otherwise strikes. A cruel person hurts people and takes pleasure in it, while an impulsive person may hurt people but feel remorse or regret about it. Since he or she is not truly vicious, the incontinent person is someone whose disposition is still open to change. The incontinent person could learn to overcome bad habits and embrace good ones. For example, Hawkeye never took pleasure in his criminal actions and felt bad about what he was doing when he was working with the Black Widow. So he was primed for rehabilitation.

The longer someone engages in a life of crime, though, the more likely it is that they will become twisted into a vicious person. We can see this if we look at the original Thunderbolts. Moonstone had spent her entire life learning how to manipulate people to get what she wanted. So when Hawkeye offers to lead the Thunderbolts so that they can earn their chance at redemption, she supports it because she thinks she can manipulate Hawkeye. She even tries to seduce him, though it seems that she actually ends up developing feelings for him—feelings that appear to go against her tendency to manipulate, suggesting the possibility that she will be truly reformed. However, their relationship falls apart and she embraces her old ways. Her manipulative nature is just who she is, an element of her viciousness.

In contrast to this, several other Thunderbolts were driven to the Masters of Evil originally by circumstances that would probably have made anyone engage in antisocial behavior. Songbird (who started her career as the villain Screaming Mimi) was abused by her father and later her partner in crime. Her resulting villainous behavior was simply a way to protect herself. As she began to feel more secure, she found it easier to embrace the heroic lifestyle, and eventually she became the warden of the Raft, a prison for supervillains, under the command of Luke Cage.
¹⁶
Part of her sense of security came from the relationship she formed with Abner Jenkins, originally the Beetle and then MACH-1, a mechanic who built his own super suit to commit crimes. By his own admission, he was really just looking for some respect, which he found with the Thunderbolts. He was then able to put his villainous persona behind him and become a hero. Unlike Moonstone, Songbird and the Beetle do not have negative character traits that are too solidified to reform, so they can successfully be rehabilitated and serve the world as heroes.

Avenging or Saving?

When Hawkeye took over the Thunderbolts, he lied to them, saying that the Commission on Superhuman Activities had agreed to pardon them if they started operating as heroes. Actually, when Hawkeye approached the commission about amnesty, he was told that it was impossible because they were longtime criminals and deadly threats. One commission member summed up the objection with a simple question: “If they act nice from now on, they don’t have to pay for their crimes?”
¹⁷
This is the heart of most people’s objection to rehabilitation as an alternative to punishment: it seems like an inappropriate, if not blatantly wrong, response to criminal behavior.

Most philosophical justifications of punishment fall into one of two general types: deterrence and retributivism.
Deterrence
focuses on preventing crime, punishing criminals both to prevent those criminals from committing new crimes (specific deterrence) and also to provide incentives for other people not to commit them (general deterrence). An advocate of deterrence would worry that rehabilitation programs could lead to higher crime rates if they are seen as “softer” or providing a way out of traditional punishment. On the other hand, proponents of
retributivism
maintain that criminals deserve punishment as a matter of justice, not because of any beneficial consequences from it. Before taking over the Thunderbolts, Hawkeye demands that any murderers on the team be prosecuted, saying murder is “one crime that I can’t overlook. That can’t be glossed over no matter how heroic you are afterward.”
¹⁸
Retributivists give different reasons why crimes deserve punishment: some argue that punishment restores the balance of right and wrong after a crime is committed, while others stress the importance of expressing condemnation or disapproval of the wrongdoing.
¹⁹

The reluctance to forgo punishing a hardened criminal is understandable, but our intuitions often change when it comes to young offenders. In these cases, it is difficult to balance the desire to give young people a chance to redeem themselves with the fear of suggesting to them that their crimes are not serious wrongs against society. After bringing an end to Norman Osborn’s “Dark Reign,” the Avengers had to decide what to do with the children that Osborn had detained and tortured in order to jump-start their superpowers. The Avengers feared that the kids’ experiences being tortured by Osborn, coupled with the deadly side effects of their powers, would make them much more likely to become supervillains in the future.

To prevent this, Hank Pym had the idea that the teenagers should be enrolled in an Avengers Academy and trained to be heroes. Before long, though, the students crack Pym’s files and discover that the Academy isn’t about training those with the greatest potential for heroism, but instead about trying to intervene with those who have greatest potential for villainy.
²⁰
The Academy is put to the test when several of the students sneak off to torment the Hood, a villain who had led an assault against their teacher Tigra.
²¹
When Tigra discovers what the kids did, her immediate response is to expel everyone involved. Pym thinks this is too harsh, though, and convenes a meeting to discuss their punishment. Another Academy teacher, Speedball, who was involved in the Stamford incident that killed six hundred people (and led to the Civil War), argues against expulsion because “these kids haven’t done anything that they can’t come back from.”
²²
The students are put on probation and told that the next mistake they make will get them kicked out of the Academy. They may have had tragic lives before coming to the Academy, but these kids are not hardened criminals. Rehabilitation seems (even more) justified in their case because they have their entire lives to try to be good, virtuous people.

Hope for the Future?

Kang, one of the Avengers’ greatest enemies, seems an odd candidate for rehabilitation, but let’s give our favorite time-hopping tyrant a chance. At one point, Kang traveled back in time to spare his younger self a savage beating by bullies, and then proceeded to show young Kang all the “great” things he would accomplish later in life. Older Kang didn’t count on his younger self being appalled by what he would become, however. Instead of accepting his future, the young Kang stole his older self’s time-travel technology and went even farther into the past. Masquerading as Iron Lad, he formed the Young Avengers to fight Kang.
²³
To protect his friends, Iron Lad killed Kang—which is to say, he killed himself, albeit a different version of himself. By killing himself, Kang creates a new reality in which the Avengers died early in their careers and many of the Young Avengers were never born. Iron Lad then comes to realize that he has to go back to his own time and become Kang in order to undo his own death at his own hand.
²⁴

The story of Iron Lad illustrates several themes of this chapter. The only way that an unrepentant villain like Kang could become a hero would be if he were caught at a young age before his villainous nature had solidified. In fact, it is revealed that the severe beating that Kang rescued his younger self from was the catalyst for his transformation into a villain. Without that experience, his intellect and sense of adventure led him in a different direction. We also have evidence of Iron Lad’s good character because he makes the ultimate sacrifice for the common good: he gives up his existence as a hero in order to save his friends. As even more evidence indicating a fundamental change in Kang’s character, Iron Lad’s brain patterns become the model for the revived Vision, who has since rejoined the Avengers as a trusted hero.

The Young Avengers—at least a generation away from Cap’s Kooky Quartet—also give us a great example of when rehabilitation should trump punishment. Patriot is the grandson of Isaiah Bradley, the “Black Captain America” from
Captain America: Truth
(2009). He wants to be a hero like his grandfather, but he did not inherit his grandfather’s super-soldier physiology. So in order to join the Young Avengers, Patriot claims that he got his grandfather’s powers after a blood transfusion. To maintain this ruse, he began using the drug MGH (Mutant Growth Hormone) to give himself enhanced strength and durability. Since the drug is illegal, he obtains his supply by busting MGH dealers and seizing some of their product.
²⁵

When an attempt to get some MGH from a supervillain’s lab goes awry, Patriot’s lies are exposed. Although he has committed a crime by possessing MGH, no one demands he be punished, presumably because his intentions were good and he had not been engaging in this behavior for very long. Most important, he recognizes that he should give up being a Young Avenger because he lied to his teammates. Patriot’s regional character traits (his desire to help people, loyalty to his teammates, and ability to inspire them) are the seeds of a real hero. The rest of the Young Avengers recognize this and invite him to rejoin the team, reaffirming the value of rehabilitation over punishment in his case.

Avengers Rehabilitate!

Rehabilitation can be a justifiable alternative under certain conditions. It works best if it is done early in someone’s character development, before they develop truly vicious character traits. Rehabilitation can be appropriate if it is in response to crimes that are not deemed inexcusable. And finally, there needs to be a clear indication that the person to be rehabilitated is already trying to resist the negative effects of their regional character traits. Patriot’s willingness to give up his spot on the Young Avengers suggests the kind of remorse that deserves a second chance, but Hawkeye always seemed to be an odd case. To try to impress the Avengers he broke into their mansion, tied up Jarvis, and then freed him with an impossibly difficult trick shot—which hardly seems to be a sincere and effective way to announce that you’ve given up a life of crime in hopes of becoming one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!
²⁶
To merit rehabilitation, it is important that our former criminal display the underlying heroic traits, such as concern for others and lack of interest in being rewarded for one’s heroic actions. Out of the three “problematic” members of Cap’s Kooky Quartet, only Hawkeye shows clear evidence of rehabilitation, because only he has the right kind of regional traits that show promise of future heroism.

NOTES

1.
Doris’s arguments are summarized in his book
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

2.
The full setup of Milgram’s experiment and an analysis of the results can be found in his book
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
(New York: Harper and Row, 1974).

3.
Tales of Suspense
#57 (September 1964), reprinted in
Essential Iron Man Vol. 1
(2002).

4.
For more on Hawkeye’s self-doubt and need for validation, see the chapter by Mark D. White titled “The Way of the Arrow: Hawkeye Meets the Taoist Masters” in this volume.

5.
Reprinted in
Avengers: The Contest
(2010).

6.
They quit in
Avengers
, vol. 1, #49 (February 1968), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 3
(2001).

7.
Avengers Disassembled
(2005). On the relationship between the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, see the chapter by Charles Klayman titled “Love Avengers Style: Can an Android Love a Woman?” in this volume.

8.
House of M
(2006).

9.
For more on the effects of Pietro and Wanda’s parentage, see the chapter by Jason Southworth and Ruth Tallman titled “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Family” in this volume.

10.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #16 (May 1965), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 1
(1998).