I’m guessing we should remember it’s graphic novel time, rather than comic strip time, for all that we read it a page at a time.

But yeah, there’s a major shoe (or sword, I could get behind sword) hanging over her, waiting to drop.

Just thought of this idea off the top of my head 🙂

Alison and Clevin get into a relationship. Clevin comes down with an illness that requires a liver transplant. He gets one from Feral since she is now the sole provider of all organs on the planet. After a week, suddenly the liver goes bad and starts becoming toxic, which was not a factor when in Feral because of her natural healing ability, and not seen before her augmentation because the toxicity was minor compared to what it is now. Clevin dies from the transplant, and he’s buried with his heart-shaped glasses…. then people around the world who got transplants start dropping dead for the same reason. It becomes public that the reason for the mass deaths was because of a poorly regulated, highly experimental medical procedure that the doctors used without public disclosure, then when they say it had not had any problems until Alison ‘upgraded’ Feral, it comes out about HOW she did the upgrade. Horrified by what Alison did and all the deaths that are now on her head, Feral goes into seclusion, breaking up with Paladin, who she would have just started getting into a relationship with (and they both had discovered they were soulmates in love). Paladin blames Alison and tells her she doesnt want her involved in Valkyrie anymore.

If something like that actually happens, then yes. I doubt anything even close will happen though at this point, if anything at all. Time will tell tho.

“Edit: Now that I think about it, Clevin’s friend was going through open heart surgery…”

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnn….

I figure that breaking up the ship would be more shocking to a lot of people, oddly enough.

I prefer a storyline in which the victim, Max, isnt made to be the villain. Seems too much like victim-blaming otherwise.

Before I post, just want to let you know my ‘adversarial’ stance on this is against your opinion, not against you personally. Just need to make this clear. Okay…. to begin:

“While I have sympathy for Alison’s ethical dilemma, and there is merit in the argument that she stepped over a line in forcing Max to use his powers – I have some difficulty in casting Max in the role of “victim”.”

So if someone is a jerk, they can not be victimized?

Think about it. If it was a woman, and the woman was stuck up, and because she was stuck up, selfish, and standoffish, some guy decided to rape her to ‘teach her a lesson’.. you wouldnt see HER as a victim either? Max was attacked, he was kidnapped, he was forced to do something against his will. By ANY stretch of the imagination, he is a victim. The fact that you don’t like him doesnt change that he is a victim, and it is scary to think that someone’s being a victim of someone who is an abuser should be dependent on whether they are likable or not to your (or anyone’s) satisfaction.

“I can’t help but imagine that Alison’s attempt to convince him to help would have included explaining exactly what she was trying to do and just how many millions of people it would save – after all why would she omit that detail, it’s a persuasive argument! At which point Max says “No, because I’m a selfish a-hole” (or at least, he might as well have).”

Actually, her reasoning was HORRIBLE and vague, and he even brought up good points about why he wouldnt want to do it because it would risk people knowing what he is, which would put him in danger (and it actually DID put him in danger from even ALISON knowing, so he has a definite point there). And she took all of five minutes to go from ‘you should do this’ to ‘if you do not do this, I will kill you.’ THIS is an abuser, and a victimizer, and a tyrant. Even if you like her, she’s a horrible person after what she did to Max. I’m sure that a lot of tyrants thought they were doing good while they were committing atrocities. No villain, and Alison is a villain, even if they’re trying (although failing in my opinion) to portray her as a likable villain – and villains almost never think what they’re doing is villainous while they’re doing it. And if they DO think it’s villainous, and do it anyway, somehow that’s actually WORSE, because you have a guilty mind AND are doing a guilty act. You can’t even then use the excuse that ‘you did not know you were doing something bad.’ She even said to him, in order to drive it in, that she can do this to him WHENEVER SHE WANTS.

That’s evil. No matter how you try to twist it. (which brings me to the next part of what you said :))

“I don’t entirely see Max as a villain either, at least not yet.”

He’s not even REMOTELY a villain. NOT doing something heroic and selfless does NOT make you a villain. Otherwise almost every person on the planet is a villain. You’re a villain. I’m a villain. Molly and Brennan are villains. Everyone who has not used their time and abilities to do the maximum good for the world, especially if there’s personal risk to them, is a villain by that standard.

“But just for a moment, if we consider a “villain” to be someone who does evil things”

Yes, because that IS what a villain is. Someone who actively does EVIL things.

“to what extent does someone who refuses to perform an act of great good, that he can do with little or no effort on his part, count as being evil? ”

Simple answer. It does not. NOT doing something does not make you evil. I’ve used this analogy before, and I’ll use it again:

By this definition…. Do you donate blood regularly? If not, you’re evil. There’s minimal risk to giving blood. If you’re scared of needles, someone can come to your house, forcibly strap you down, and take your blood. And then you should thank them for making you do something good, and making sure you are not a villain.

“Of course take that too far and pretty much everyone’s “evil”, but where do you draw the line?”

You draw the line at freedom of choice. That’s where. You draw the line at the point where one person thinks they’re justified to force another person to do ACTIVELY do something against their will. And remember, forcing someone to do something is DIFFERENT than forcing someone to NOT do something. One is an act of tyranny and removal of agency. The other is the foundation of laws and civilization and prevention of crimes.

“If it helps I’m starting to suspect that one of the things the authors want to address as part of “applying superheroes to the real world” is that there are no truly “good” and “evil” people,”

Possibly, since this is pretty much a superhero mythos deconstruction, but if the author is trying to say that there are no truly good and evil people, this PARTICULAR storyline is doing a bad job of it, since what Alison did WAS evil, even if for what she considered a good reason. It’s a tired trolley problem, where Alison didn’t even give a day to think of other ways to do something good, aside from using her strength and force, like a typical bully, aggressor, and violator.

“we don’t live in a world of absolutes,”

I think in some cases, there ARE absolutes, actually, or at the very least there are some things which are worse than other things. Making false equivalencies is one of the worst tools of the defender of tyrants, which admittedly is probably part of the moral dilemma that the authors are trying to show.

“there are just people that behave or try to behave in a mostly “good” or “evil” way but aren’t completely successful and end up in a morally ambiguous place that they then have to learn to live with themselves in.”

Then those people need to be punished when they do something evil. That’s how it works. When you have someone – even someone normally good, that crosses the line and does evil, their ‘good’ doesnt immunize themselves from punishment or negative outcomes of the evil. The idea that you can is a basic tenet of utilitarianism, which is an extremely flawed concept that has been responsible for and excusing of some of the worst atrocities in human history, because good and evil are not easily quantifiable in a mathematical formula – which is also why trolley problems are annoying and inherently flawed as well.

“Let’s see … first of all, of course selfish people can be victims, it isn’t just Max’s general attitude that prevents me from seeing him as a victim, it’s his attitude to the opportunity to doing an act of great good that causes me the difficulty”

His general attitude is he doesn’t want people forcing him to do things. That doesn’t mean that he’s not a victim when someone does EXACTLY THAT to him. If I came to your house with a gun, and told you that if you don’t donate blood right now, I will shoot you, you would be a victim, and I would be a criminal a-hole. Even if you did not want to donate blood.

“No-one got raped.”

It’s analagous to rape though. The goal is not sex, but rape is usually not about sex either – it’s about forcing one’s control and power on another person against their will. That happened to Max.

“But you’re right in the sense that if someone had we wouldn’t be sitting on opposite sides of this argument. There isn’t any circumstance I can imagine that would have a rape result in a greater good being enabled – and even if there was I couldn’t imagine making that argument.”

Lets actually use sex as an example, since a lot of people (at least in the past when I’ve argued the rape analogy – not saying you in particular) seem to have trouble equating a rape analogy with something other than sex.

If Max’s power was to instantly cure any disease by having sex with them, does that mean that Alison should be able to force him to have sex with people to cure them? And if someone reading this is of the opinion that a man can not be raped, I’m not even going to argue this because they can be, but for the sake of answering a devil’s advocate question….

If Max was a WOMAN and had the power to cure anyone by having sex with them, does that mean that female Max should be forced to have sex with people? It would, after all, be for the greater good. See…. I’m of the opinion that you should not force people to do stuff against their will, because you think it would be good.

“You might therefore fairly make the argument that I’m not being consistent – if I’m prepared to advocate kidnapping and coercion in order save millions of people, then logically I should be prepared to advocate rape, murder, maiming and torture if I truly believed the good outweighed the evil. And of course I can’t”

Lets use an in-story example. What if Feral did NOT want to willingly donate her organs. Shouldn’t she have been forced to donate her organs? Strap her down and harvest them when needed? After all, the greater good, and because of her power, it won’t do her any lasting harm. No, she shouldn’t be. But based on what you had said, she SHOULD be forced.

“Yes, I have given blood. No I don’t do so on a regular basis. I don’t consider myself “evil”. I do occasionally feel guilty when I think about how long it has been since my last donation (like now for example!).”

1) If you did not WANT to donate blood, should you be forced to do so?
2) Does the fact that you do not donate blood on a regular basis, based on what you had said, mean someone else like me should be allowed to break into your home, restrain you, and take a blood donation when I figure, based on my own beliefs, that someone else will need the donation, regardless of whether you want to or not? Does it make what I did better if you would have willingly donated if I had been more convincing through non-violent means?

“So there are some absolutes for me personally – lines I won’t cross even in speculation. But by the same token my morals aren’t entirely composed of absolutes.”

I’m not even talking about absolutes. I’m talking about very similar situations, in fact. You might argue that there was no lasting physical damage done to Max. You could argue the same thing about a woman (or man) who’s raped. No lasting physical damage. But in both cases, there can be mental and emotional trauma that lasts their entire lives, and you have the person living in fear for the rest of their lives of it happening again.

“And while you have a point that this could be a slippery slope type of thing, inflexible moral absolutes are no less problematic in their own way. If you had to hack someone’s limb off in order to save them from being trapped in a burning vehicle, would you say “no, because maiming someone is always wrong”?”

That’s isn’t even analogous. Cutting off someone’s arm in order to save their own lives is NOT even remotely the same as forcing someone to do something to potentially save OTHER people’s lives.

Not to mention you’re incorrectly using the concept of moral absolutes in what I’ve been saying. The consistent thing that I’ve been saying is you can’t force someone against their will, under threat of death, to do something they do not want to do. Especially if there’s any risk to their own life and future.

“As for the idea that evil-doers should be punished, yes but … you make it sound so simple, when the reality is a lot messier.”

It sounds simple because it honestly is simple. You are not allowed to harm one innocent person who is not actively doing anyone any harm in order to help another innocent person.

“Yes society needs laws and to a greater or lesser extent those laws seek to punish people who have committed acts that the majority of people consider to be “evil” (at least in democratic countries).”

Evil acts means that an act must actually have been done. Max has not done any evil act at all. The omission of a good act is not doing an evil act unless he is preventing others from doing a good act. The fact that Max is the only one with his type of power does not mean he’s preventing others from finding other ways to save people’s lives. He is just under NO obligation to help. Again, the blood donation analogy.

“Of course it’s not quite that simple, opinions change and yesterday’s “evil” can be quite different to today’s “evil”. Homosexuality used to be illegal in the UK and punishable by medical castration.”

I’m having a lot of trouble understanding your analogy. What you’re describing isnt remotely similar to what Alison did to force Max. In fact it supports that Alison did something evil to Max. If you force a homosexual person to be medically castrated, because you feel that homosexuality is bad for society, then you’re doing an evil act. The homosexual person is NOT doing an evil act by not having sex with the opposite gender.

“It’s not a perfect system. Which probably explains why, having recently pulled that man from his burning vehicle, you’ve just learned he’s pressing charges against you for GBH ;-)”

Actually there are good samaritan laws about that to protect that scenario.
Good Samaritan laws offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or who they believe to be, injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated. None of that would cover what Alison did to Max. It does cover your hypothetical situation of amputating someone in order to save THEIR life, though, as long as you did so with REASONABLE assistance. Ie, if a person has their shirt sleeve caught on something, it’s not reasonable to cut their arm off to save them, but if they have their HAND caught and they’re going to die if you don’t do something, amputating the arm would apply under good samaritan laws. What good samaritan laws do NOT apply ever is for saving someone ELSE’S life, or helping someone ELSE other than the person suffering the harm.

“If Utilitarianism can have bad consequences when taken to it’s logical extreme, then Absolutism is no better.”

Utilitarianism has bad consequences every time it’s ever been used to justify tyrannical action. And pointing to one bad thing to excuse another bad thing is not a justifiable argument in any case.

“I don’t want to live in a world where someone arbitrarily decides what is “good” and what is “evil” any more than I want to live in an anarchy.”

But you’ve done that by arbitrarily deciding that what Alison did is not a victimizer, and what Max refused to do makes him not a victim.

“I prefer to leave here – where everyone, both individually and as a society, makes value judgments and tries to make the best out of them that they can, without sliding too far towards either extreme.”

And who decides? Someone winds up deciding. And in my opinion, the person who should decide what they must do is THAT person. Especially when it’s about forcing someone to DO something, rather than forcing someone to NOT do something.

Dunno. I don’t write the webcomic.