Are Doctor Strange and Ghost Rider the biggest authorities of right/wrong in the Marvel universe? I feel like these two actually get shit done, protect the world from horrors that go unnoticed on a daily basis, and morally are in the right 9 times out of 10. Why do The Avengers treat Johnny like shit? Is Strange annoyed constantly advising The Avengers?
>Ghost Rider is ultimately just Mephisto's attack dog on a leash, and no matter what he accomplishes he'll ultimately be hauled back to Hell to deal with his boss
>Doctor Strange upholds the Vishanti's law despite KNOWING how flawed they are and was party to what the Illuminati did
Look, I like Strange and I appreciate that he's been on a real winning streak recently. But at this point Marvel HAS no heroes. Only monsters and victims.
The closest thing it has to true moral authorities are Beta Ray Bill and Conan the Barbarian, who instead of trying to change the world just accept it for the bloody shithole it is while living to their own standards of honor.
You mean as independent capes/vigilantes, or actual justicars? Cause you're not wrong in that they aren't usually held up by the kind of silly red tape a number of other Marvel heroes willingly abide by, but Johnny Blaze and Stephen Strange definitely have had their share of mistakes that created far-reaching consequences.
I don't know if I'd call Conan a moral authority, since he's not even remotely trying to be one, but I can dig Beta Ray Bill.
I absolutely consider Conan a moral authority after spitting these hard facts, NOT being involved in Avengers vs X-Men, NOT being involved in the Illuminati and NOT going crawling back to the Vishanti despite the fact that the other 10 people on Cinemaphile who follow Dr. Strange lore can confirm the Vishanti have fricked him over time and again even before the current crisis with the wartime Strange.
>that time Conan gave Vision a motivational speech to inspire him not to lay down and accept death
Good times.
A LOT of characters in fiction needed to hear that speech. Frick that gay "I'm going to be mortal again, nominally because it is somehow morally superior and actually because the writer is a piece of shit that wants to keep milking me for stories while being too much of coward to write me as an immortal" noise.
Fair enough, I suppose. Granted, I don't see him as a moral authority only because I feel claiming him as such does a disservice to the character, since his thing is that he is 100% honorable and willing to do what's right...but what's right is not always in line with how we live our life in the 21st century, which includes misunderstandings galore or dropping some hard truths that people don't want to hear but must.
I want to like this page but the art layout of talking heads is just so BORING! This needed to be a thunderous splash page of Conan holding Vision by the neck and telling him all of this amid the thunder of battle all around him. Not some looking at the viewer real world shit.
what issue is this?
Avengers: No Road Home #9
Oh, and NOT pretending like Krakoa or muties deserve any kind of empathy after declaring themselves a superior species, banding together with absolutely vile former enemies like Destiny/Poccy/Selene/Mr. GODDAMN Sinister and acting surprised when the world kicked back.
What's Strange's problem besides occasionally using dark forces for a greater good?
If I had to boil them down to his three main flaws, it'd be;
1) His arrogance, which leads him to either vastly overestimating his capacity to handle a problem, or how he overlooks the capacities and expertise of his own friends or just massively alienate them in the process when he tells them to stfu cause he's the Sorcerer Supreme damnit
2) His need to do "what is right" vs what his conscience tells him and his inability to tell which is motivating him, meaning that he's willing to betray his allies "for their own good" one moment, while in the very next refusing to be involved in an incredibly large and costly conflict between them because he personally can't handle it, ex. His involvement with the Illuminati especially launching the Hulk into space and his response to the Superhuman Registration Act
and biggest of all 3) His martyrdom complex, meaning that he has a tendency to bottle in his guilt until he's constructing massive elaborate plans to "fix" his mistakes, usually as a result of (1) or (2), that will invariably involve either getting himself killed or some other horrific cost that horrifies all his friends and loved ones who would rather NOT see him taking such drastic measures just to fix shit he could have chosen not to do in the first place.
There's probably more, but in general his ruination has basically consistently been those three elements coming back to haunt him in some manner. Dude does have far heavier responsibilities than say Spider-Man or Captain America, but that means that the times he does frick up there's a larger consequential fallout in turn.
Yeah when you put it like that, Dr. Strange really is just Bigger Spider-Man. Sooner or later all of that responsibility is just going to break a homie.
Choosing to champion a greater good that objectively isn't a greater good at all. Refusing to break ties with the Vishanti after they have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy, if not actively malevolent to Earth.
I will say he's better than a lot of Avengers if only by merit of simply being involved in a world most of them lack the capacity or interest to interact with, but that's such a low bar to clear there are SUPERVILLAINS with better moral fibre than the Avengers. Strange is basically in the same position as Thor. He's a generally inclined to be nice magic man that just happens to be sworn friends with some deeply unpleasant people he keeps forgiving despite being wronged by said people on occasion, possibly because he literally lives in another world and finds it hard to keep track of their affairs, and his sins lie more in taking the status quo as an absolute good than active malevolence.
Fair enough. I just have such a low opinion about Marvel's take on the 21st century, between all the Hulkshit, the Mutie stanning and the Avengers repeatedly getting away scott free for chimping out among their own, Namor getting a pass for invading the surface world for the nth time, Emma Frost escaping the implosion of Krakoa to joining the Illuminati, Carol never getting any comeuppance for her role in Tony's death over believing one specific kid oracle (and not all the OTHER ones) has to be absolute and infallible despite having no fricking qualifications to make that call etc etc FRICKING etc-
-that Conan is a de facto moral authority simply because everyone else is actively being their worst self.
Honestly, across the board almost every hero has been fricked over hard by bad writing in that regard, so I know how you feel there. Even my fave Spider-Man's fricked over near-permanently cause of OMD. Some days, I swear 616 needs a reboot, and not like the 2015's Secret Wars or Heroes Reborn kind.
And it has. Read the latest Death of Doctor Strange? The story where he had to outright bring out what is essentially a time-displaced version of himself to essentially solve his own pre-planned murder in order to save reality? Dude's been doing shit like that way too often for the past decade or so and left a lot of friends like Wong and Clea very conflicted on how to feel about him pulling that bullshit on them.
>Read the latest Death of Doctor Strange?
Oh, I have. At least the writers AFTER that whole debacle seem determined to let him live his best life now the status quo of him being with Clea has been restored in the most convoluted and drama-mongering way possible. What led up to that-yeah, on-brand for Strange.
To be honest before that felt like writers scrambling to retcon away everything Aaron did to Strange and get him back to his non-gimped self, I remember Waid also did a thing where the real Strange went on a quest to find himself on an alien planet and it turns out the "Strange" that had been forced to eat gunk and had a codependent crush on some brown girl was actually a traumatised teenager LARPing as Strange because reasons
I admittedly didn't know they were going to those lengths to fix Dr Strange, but I'm honestly just glad that they've allowed him to be back on form compared to everyone else in Marvel atm.
Honestly, as a Sorcerer Supreme Dr Strange at his best is generally reliable. But he's still not perfect, especially since he's been hobbled numerous times by writers who need an excuse to keep him from dealing with a problem more decisively, like making it clear to the US Government where they can stick their SHRA for example.
>I will say he's better than a lot of Avengers if only by merit of simply being involved in a world most of them lack the capacity or interest to interact with, but that's such a low bar to clear there are SUPERVILLAINS with better moral fibre than the Avengers.
Going to have to name them, because you can't just make a claim like that then just leave us hanging without some examples and why you came to that conclusion. Are there some Avengers that did shitty things? Oh, hell yes, there are, but if you're going to tell me Hawkeye did anything as morally dubious as Iron Man on anywhere near the same scale, I'd say you're an exaggerating for the sake of it.
Daredevil
I love that Murdock boy. He's a good egg, but he's absolutely his own biggest enemy, and can barely manage his own moral code through all the Catholic guilt, let alone be an authority for anyone else.
You can question Strange's ethics but at the end of the day he's usually right. Ghost Rider, specifically Johnny, is a hammer compared to the scalpel that is Strange. Johnny knows evil when he sees it, and will burn it out like the cancer that it is. I know The Rider is essentially just trying to feed of negative energy but it's the best example of "let's direct a horrifying force towards something productive"
>but it's the best example of "let's direct a horrifying force towards something productive"
Not a fan of what Cates did to Venom, I take it? Not judging mind, genuinely curious.
Symbiotes should have never been explained. Ever
Before the recent series/retcon, didn't the Punisher never kill any innocent person, they were all guilty of something.
Johny storm annoyed me because in the 70s series he gets saved by Jesus Christ but continues to ignore and not seek out God. It's contrived to continue the series so I stopped reading,
Ironically both he and Doctor Strange have encounted God.
Is Jesus Christ even connected to TOAA? I was under the impression the Abrahamic faith as understood is just another random pantheon. Hell, wasn't Lucifer an alien or something?
I don't know how they explain it or retcon it. Jesus explicitly saves Johnny from the devil, at the time of writing, the Mephisto stuff wasn't added and it is supposed to be the actual devil.
Doctor Strange is encountering God as well however they name it or retcon it.