Comics and Corporate Responsibility: The Team Book Edition
I really love reading comics about teams. Individual titles are interesting. They let you get a sense for what a character thinks of him or herself, and they show you what that person’s thoughts and actions are like when they’re interacting with a few other heroes, but for the most part, they’re about solo crime-fighting activities or what the character does with their family or friends. Take the current run of Hawkeye, for instance: it alternates between Clint and Kate (and occasionally Pizza Dog) taking on their own enemies, but it also has Clint dealing with relationship issues and his brother showing up, and Kate leaving home and moving across the country. The book focuses on who they are as people, as it rightly should – it’s a book about them, after all. Team books are different. Where individual titles give you a sense of who the characters are as people, a team book gives you a sense of who they are as heroes. Batman on his own is different than he is while he’s part of the Justice League. Iron Man’s behavior in his solo title is different from how he behaves in a group dynamic. Team stories show what I feel are more honest interactions – ones where the heroes aren’t hiding their skills behind civilian identities or lying about who they are. Even in the case of heroes whose civilian identities aren’t known to their teammates, the hero in question – let’s just call him Batman, for sake of discussion – is still more able to be honest with his colleagues as Batman than he is in his day-to-day life as Bruce Wayne, head of Wayne Enterprises.
