The Political Technology of Super-Hero Individuals: Mark Millar’s The Ultimates Throughout much of their history, super-hero comic books have been about good versus evil. Simple binaries were set up between the hero and the villain-Batman and The Joker, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin-which allowed for simple tales about right and wrong, crime and punishment. Over the years, writers have developed heroes with dynamic personalities and tragic villains. There have often been conflicts between mainstream law and the heroes who vow to uphold it. In the X-Men universe, much of the population wants to see the imprisonment and eradication of mutants and the police chiefs in New York and Gotham don’t like the way Spider-Man and Batman undermine their authority. As a result, these characters are forced to wear masks, concealing their true identity and in doing so are separated from the United States legal system and government. Mark Millar’s The Ultimates places super-heroes in a different perspective, recontextualizing the super-hero universe to reflect current events in global politics. The Ultimates poses the question Michel Foucault raises in “The Political Technology of Individuals” - “what are we today?”1 The Ultimates, which consists of Captain America, the Hulk, Iron-Man, Giant Man, and the Wasp, are a government sponsored team of super-heroes whose purpose it is to protect American interests at home and abroad-a weapon of sorts to combat “posthuman terrorism.”2 Millar’s series raises serious questions about the consequences of a state’s global dominance and Foucault’s observations on the role of the individual within that system. While traditionally the military has been impersonal in relation to the population at large, The Ultimates as national figures change the dynamics of the super-heroes as private individuals and show what happens when individuals are assimilated by the state to meet the government’s needs.
The first member of The Ultimates team was Captain America.3 Captain America’s comic book history is quite complicated, reconciling not only numerous people taking on the Captain America role, but whether the pro-American Captain America had a pro-government slant or was antagonistic. Commentators have noted that “writers have used the character to reflect the conflict between politics and ideology by placing him at odds with the United States government and angry and troubled about the state of the country. He considers himself dedicated to defending America’s ideals rather than its political leadership, a conviction summed up when Captain America confronted an army general who tried to manipulate him by appealing to his loyalty. Rogers [Captain America] responded, ‘I’m loyal to nothing, General… except the [American] Dream.’ (Daredevil #233, August 1986)”4 In brief, Captain America was created when the U.S. government was conducting experiments using augmentation serum on regular people to create a super soldier that could fight the Nazis in World War II. In The Ultimates, Captain America’s body, which was lost in the North Atlantic after delivering a final blow to the Nazis, is discovered by Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.) agents. Perfectly preserved in suspended animation, S.H.I.E.L.D., under the direction of Nick Fury, revives Captain America to head the new superhuman military team called The Ultimates. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury have long been affiliated with the government in the history of Marvel comics, so they are appropriate vehicles by which Millar can discuss Foucault’s question of individuals and their complicated relationship with the state as they exist currently.
The Ultimates is actually set during the current George W. Bush presidency and raises similar critiques to those being made today about the government’s involvement in the Middle East. Ultimates artist Bryan Hitch draws an exact image of President Bush in a few issues while Millar refers to him by name in his writing.5 The character most critical of The Ultimates position as a tool of the government is Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Thor refuses to join the Ultimates as long as Bush is in power. Appearing on the Howard Stern show in volume 1 issue 6, Thor comments, “No, helping The Ultimates does not mean I’m suddenly one of Bush’s little Super-Commandos.” Appearing on Larry King Live, Tony Stark (Iron Man) responds to questions about the United States’ use of Captain America to resolve a hostage crisis in Northern Iraq.6 Larry King calls Captain America a “Person of Mass Destruction,” resonating with the popular term “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” often used by the Bush administration. King also quotes Thor, who said the hostage crisis resolution was just “one big scam to get public opinion on [The Ultimates] side before launching preemptive strikes” against “any kind of rogue state acting contrary to American interests.”7
Despite their best intentions, The Ultimates don’t have a choice in the matter because of structural constraints. The “true nature of the state in this [political-historical] perspective is not conceived any more as an equilibrium between several elements… but a set of forces and strengths that could be increased or weakened according to the politics followed by the governments.”8 Tt wasn’t enough for The Ultimates to save the day a year earlier when they stopped an alien race from exterminating the planet. Just as Thor predicted, in Volume 2 they were sent into the Middle East in which they and the Ultimate Reserve force “crippled a nation.”9 After disavowing Thor’s predictions in the Larry King interview in Volume 1, Tony Stark expresses the optimism that led him to build the Iron Man suit. His sentiment “so that I could give something back [to the community]” is similar to the French and German view of the police in Foucault’s writing-the police are government organizations to ensure that “people do better than just survive or live.”10 The Ultimates are meant to reflect the population at large in terms of well-being and usefulness. All of the publicity The Ultimates receive is intended to satiate the general population’s fear that posthumans are destructive and don’t have anybody’s interests at heart but their own. While Tony Stark might not want to become “some kind of Martini-swilling smart bomb,” this is exactly what the government has in mind for him.11 As long as he doesn’t believe he’s being used Tony Stark is happy-which, in Foucault’s logic is necessary for him to give back to the support of the state.12
Foucault’s thanatopolitics appears with the execution of Dr. Bruce Banner-a.k.a. the Hulk. In the Ultimate universe, Dr. Bruce Banner was experimenting with the super solider serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, but instead was turned into the Hulk. Unfortunately for Banner, he had no control over the Hulk’s raging emotions and deadly strength, which in one incident lead to the murder of over 800 people in New York City.13 Foucault wrote that “from the idea that the state has its own nature and its own finality to the idea of man as living individual or man as part of a population in relation to an environment, we can see the increasing intervention of the state in the life of individuals…”14 Once the secret was leaked from within The Ultimates that Dr. Bruce Banner was the Hulk that murdered all of those people the public demanded justice and the government was forced to respond by trying and then executing Banner, though a strong case was made in his favor as to whether Banner should be held accountable for something the Hulk did. What separates super-heroes as military personnel from regular soldiers is their sheer visibility. The state has to respond to biopolitical forces in order to stay in power and they adjust their tools and methods accordingly-or at least enough to satisfy without giving up anything of real importance.
As The Ultimates Volume 2 concludes (its final two issues due out in the next few months of 2006), Millar has turned the complicated dynamics of super-hero individual as a weapon of the government into a weakness that can be exposed by its enemies. Part of the reason Foucault’s observations apply is that state is a more powerful entity than the individual but this is complicated by the fact that The Ultimates cross over between both arenas. Tony Stark’s private life becomes a public crisis when it’s revealed that Ultimate team member Black Widow, the woman he’s engaged to, is actually a spy for another super-hero force from a different country that plans to destroy the U.S. Government. Bruce Banner’s identity, Captain America’s alleged murder of Hawkeye’s family, and Thor’s imprisonment were the results of holes in a system that lacked checks and balances, allowing The Liberators to hijack America.
The gap The Ultimates bridged between the private individual and the public state is a different way of looking at what Foucault describes as “the main characteristic of our political rationality… resulting from a constant correlation between an increasing individualization and the reinforcement of this [political] totality.”15 That is to say, The Ultimates warns against government’s assimilation of the individual as a means to an end, instead encouraging the individual’s influence over government. If the use of the population as a tool for maintaining state order can be exploited, then so can the use of its most powerful individuals. When The Ultimates save the day it is because of their own internal strengths as a group and their individual powers, not because they’re part of the government.
1 Foucault, Michel. “The Political Technologies of Individuals.” Technologies of the Self. University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. P 145
2 “Captain America,” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Captain_America
Note: “posthuman” refers to a hypothetical being based on a human but whose abilities exceed so greatly that they are not considered human current standards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman_(Human_evolution)
3 The Ultimates are the Marvel “Ultimate” universe’s version of the original team from The Avengers
4 “Captain America,” Wikipedia.
5 The Ultimates Volume 1, Chapter 3. Writer Mark Millar, Pencils Bryan Hitch. Marvel Comics, 2004. Hardcover.
6 The Ultimates 2, No. 1. “The Ultimates.” February 2005.
7 Ibid
8 Foucault 151
9 The Ultimates 2, No. 6. “The Defenders.” July 2005.
10 Foucault 157
11 The Ultimates Volume 2, No. 1
12 Foucault 158
13 The Ultimates Volume 1, Chapter 5
14 Foucault 161
15 Foucault 162
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