The goal of this site is to explore moral philosophy (also known as normative ethics) through superhero comic book stories.
To navigate the site, the menu list (top header) shows the key background pages – such as my Ethics 101 page to get you started with the language of ethics used throughout this site, or my Comics page to learn more about the history of comic books.
From the Home page, the main Slider section just below the header shows the nine most recent posts I’ve made. Click on my Posts page to get a full chronological list of all my posts, beginning with the most recent.
You can also find individual posts through the Category sections, located just below the Slider section on the Home page. For the “Big Two” comics publishers (Marvel and DC), I’ve broken these down by the individual superhero – the rest are identified simply by the publisher (e.g., Image, Dark Horse, etc.). There is also a general Comics category for comics articles not related to a specific character or series, and a Brain category for articles that include an explanation of how a feature of our brains work.
A key post to help you find what you are looking for is my Glossary post (also located on the right sidebar). This includes a list (with links) of all the key philosophical concepts and terms used on this site, along with a list of philosophers and other thinkers, and a full list of all comics writers profiled on the site. The glossary is updated with every new post.
And if all else fails, there is a Search feature located at the top of the right sidebar (just above the Glossary and Donation links). I personally fund this site, and there are no fees or ads to access any of the content (for your personal use, as explained below).
So, what is this site about?
The header images on all the background pages are my cheeky way of pointing out how thinking about moral or ethical principles has a long history. From ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers, through to Enlightenment- and modern-era thinkers, moral decision-making ideas and theories have been continually developed, debated, refined, and shared for educational purposes.
To me, comic books are another medium to explore these concepts. As I allude to on my About Me page, my exposure to comic books in the early 1980s convinced me that the superhero stories of that era – which were largely written by young men for (mainly) adolescent boys – served as primers on moral philosophy under the guise of action and adventure stories.
Of course, not all the comics espoused positive moral themes. There were several comic writers at the time whose work I couldn’t stand – although these were instructive in their own way. But there were many thoughtful, insightful writers at Marvel at that time, like Roger Stern, J.M. DeMatteis, and Peter Gillis, for example. Not all the writers may have seen themselves as primarily writing moral stories per se (although Gillis clearly did, and I describe a good example for Stern on my Clea post). But the nature of the medium lends itself extraordinarily well to comparing and contrasting ethical principles. These were the comics that I fondly collected.
Part of what I found most interesting and instructive in those comics was the discussion and arguments between superheroes on the best/right thing to do in a given situation. Typically, the heroes had the same information and had the same options available to them. But those using different normative ethics would weigh things quite differently – sometimes reaching quite opposing conclusions from each other.
These comics showed me how moral persons can disagree with each other – in good faith – based on their personal ethical frameworks (DeMatteis’ Defenders and Captain America runs were good examples of this). I have encountered this a lot in my life, especially in my work life, where I observed it to be a key source of inter-personal conflict. And just like in the comics, I find people often misconstrue a different ethical framework as having lesser moral value, or (worse) lacking any. Conversely, those on the receiving end of this treatment can feel like they are being unfairly judged by others’ moral high-handedness. Neither position leads to a strong sense of friendship and teamwork! I frequently found myself mediating disputes and helping explain one person or group’s perspective to the other.
As the above should make clear – while I hope to provide a meaningful overview of the main normative ethics frameworks different characters use in the comics, my ultimate goal here is to show how this can inform our practical thinking about ethics in real life.
Of course, superhero characters are rarely consistent over time. Many have existed for well over half a century, having been interpreted and reinterpreted by different generations of writers and artists over the years. Indeed, if you try to look up the background history of any long-established character on one of the comic wiki sites (the Fandom ones are great), you are likely to be inundated with tons of inconsistent story lines that seem at complete odds with each other. “Retconning” (or retroactive continuity) is rife in comic books, where later writers try to undo or recast previous story lines by revising them retroactively, to suit where they want to take the character. Over a half-century run, you can imagine how inconsistent so many characters have become.
But through all that, there does tend to be some through-lines that are at least generally consistent for each character. The character’s core trauma or drive, for example (unless we are dealing with a Multiversal variant). But I would argue one of the most important through-lines is the character’s world-view in terms of moral philosophy. While these can and do evolve in the hands of different writers, it is rarely a wholesale reversal and more of a gradual evolution over time – and not coincidentally in a similar direction as the general changes in ethical perspectives over time in society, and across generations and lived experiences.
This is part of what I am looking to explore here – how changing perspectives of creators have been revealed in the stories they choose to tell. That doesn’t mean the earlier stories aren’t still a rich trove of philosophical theories, but newer stories (and newer creators) tend to present things in a more approachable way to modern readers, reflecting the current culture. That said, most modern creators have been long-time fans themselves, so there is often a strong appreciation of maintaining continuity where possible – and adjusting it where necessary.
But more than just changing cultural morals with time, human beings are not internally consistent in how we make moral decisions either. As I allude to on my Ethics 101 page, the neuroscience of normative ethics shows that none of us are purely consequentialist, deontological, or virtuous in our moral decision making (see my Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow, for a detailed explanation of our brains seem to work in this regard). So when it comes to describing comic book superheroes, I will make a point of highlighting their primary normative ethics follow by a secondary one – and how those have changed over time for each character.
All written content on this site is 100% my own creation, and reflects my own (evolving) understanding and opinions about ethics – and comic books. I am not a professional philosopher (and more of an extinguished scientist than a distinguished one at this point). But my professional work has afforded me an opportunity to consider ethical frameworks carefully, toward understanding interpersonal conflict and individual decision making. It is offered here to stimulate your own thinking on ethical issues, so that we may take this journey of further self-discovery together. Where feasible, I will provide links to public comic book and philosophical resources and articles in these posts – which are also all available on my Glossary page.
Donations
I accept no advertising revenue, and fully fund the development, maintenance, and hosting of this site out of my own personal funds.
As such, all donations to my comic book fund are greatly appreciated!
Image credits
I don’t want to get involved with licensing, or infringing on anyone’s potential copyright, so I am not using images scrapped from other websites here. Instead, I am mainly taking photos or screenshots of the actual physical or digital comic books I’ve purchased, provided here under common law fair dealing and fair use exceptions. This is a personal website with no commercial activity, intended to provide commentary, criticism, and reviews of comic book stories, for educational purposes. All comics art is fully referenced, either in the accompanying text (for screenshots of internal pages), or in the Alt field for pictures of comic covers (use your browser “inspect” feature, or a browser plug-in, to read the alternative text captions).
There are a few stock photos and images on some of the background page, but these all have creative commons rights for redistribution. For some of the header images, I initially used online generative AI tools to reproduce superhero-like images in different contexts – often reading or posed in pensive (or unusual) stances to reflect the philosophical (and hopefully entertaining) nature of this site. These were by definition in the public domain without restriction. These were all quickly removed after the site launch, as explained on my Comics, Ethics and AI post. The site currently contains no AI-generated content of any kind, and I commit to not using any in the future.
All the actual written content has always been my own product, and thus under my own copyright. I provide it freely to individuals for personal use under the terms and conditions below – but I do not provide it for others to benefit from commercially. And I do NOT give consent for it to be used to train commercial generative AI models.
And as a final word of warning, I would suggest you apply a high-degree of skepticism of any AI-generated summaries of ethical frameworks you come across online or through apps. Given the complexity of the field – and the diversity of opinions – generative AI text can get things quite wrong. Part of my motivation for creating this site is to ensure that accurate (and hopefully interesting!) information is expertly synthesized and summarized for you.
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See my Glossary post for a list of the key philosophical concepts and related links on this site.