This great story arc recently came to an end in the Amazing Spider-Man, Vol 6, series by Marvel comics. The main story line was written by Joe Kelly and Justina Ireland, with tie-in issues by Derek Landy and Christos Gage. The series deals very explicitly with the topic of death, …
The Vision ethics
The Vision is a reoccurring character with the Avengers in the Marvel Universe. He is an artificial being known as a “synthezoid” in the comics (a special type of android that that has synthetic humanoid body parts). He was married to the Scarlet Witch (a very significant character), and forms …
X-Men Ethics – Charles Xavier’s Redemption
I think Professor Ewing has summed up Charles Xavier (Professor X) … petty … darn … well. The normative ethics of this character has always harbored underlying issues, dating back to the creation of the X-Men. As I explained on my X-Men Ethics – Introduction page, the initial actions of …
X-Men Ethics – Professor X (Charles Xavier)
Thus speaks Charles Xavier’s oldest friend, Magneto, on his death bed. Like in my recent overview of Magneto’s ethics, I think Al Ewing‘s take on these two well-established characters is among the most thoughtful and well informed (from an ethics perspective) in the comics today. There is probably no character …
Official launch of Comic Philosophy
Welcome to my official launch post for comicphilosophy.com! I have been working for many months on preparing the look and feel of the site, and writing the background pages and initial character ethics posts. It has finally progressed to a stage where I’m willing to share it with the world, …
X-Men Ethics – Magneto
Marvel’s Magneto is an interesting character to profile for normative ethics, as he has gone through a lot of cycles of redemption and reversion over his long run in the comics. He has very much been on the upswing in modern times though, as the opening quote makes clear. As …
Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) Ethics
“Captain Marvel” is an alias that has been used by a number of different Marvel comics characters over the years. When I was first collecting comics in the early 1980s, it was used by Monica Rambeau (currently known as the superhero Photon, since 1996). Before that, it was Mar-Vell of …
X-Men Ethics – Introduction
One of my goals with this site is to show how comic book stories have always illustrated normative ethics principles. But another goal is to show how some normative ethics theories and perspectives have changed over the decades, and how that is reflected in current writers taking a different view …
Spider-Man (Peter Parker) Ethics
As a character, Spider-Man presents a unique challenge in trying to discern a consistent normative ethics theory – he is the most popular Marvel superhero character of all time. Why is that a problem? Because it means he has appeared in more stories – and been written by more authors …