The superhero genre — always a distorted amplification of what is to be found in real life — has sometimes been a useful vehicle for sharp social satire.
For example, in Dark Avengers 5 (Aug. 2009), writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mike Deodato take aim at the unctuous lies of the Sunday morning gasbag news shows.
Their dramatic device here is Norman Osborn, now disguised as the armored “Iron Patriot,” who is leading a team of supervillains posing as Avengers.
“Its centerpiece is Osborn being interviewed on TV to respond to Ronin’s accusations and to discuss his history as the murderous Green Goblin,” observed Douglas Wolk in his book All the Marvels. “Bendis’s dialogue for him has the earnest timbre of a professional liar on a Sunday morning talk show as he explains away his supervillain career as a trauma he’s overcome (‘I was suffering from a severe chemical imbalance. One I was born with. Like millions of Americans’).”
Bendis’s script shows Osborn deploying various classic gaslighting techniques, including ad hominem argument, psychological projection, populism, phony contrition, religiosity and deflection.
We see them all the time on real news shows, and through them Osborn is able to psychologically manipulate the audience into questioning the facts they see before them.
Playing the victim, Osborn redirects the interview’s focus from the exposure of his criminal background to criticism of the man who exposed his criminal background, the one who’s actually telling the truth. And the cable news show swallows Osborn’s lies whole, with the on-screen chyron shifting from “Norman Osborn Live” to “Norman Osborn Comes Clean.”
Unfortunately for the former Green Goblin, his TV interview has inadvertently revealed to the “Dark Avenger” Marvel Boy that he’s been playing on the wrong team.
Effective satire must always be close enough to reality to be recognizable, but exaggerated enough to be amusing. Looks like a job for superheroes.
This story reminds us that the never-ending battle between good and evil has many fronts, not the least of which is propaganda.
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