Whom do we trust?

Originally published February 25, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1058

It was easy when I was a kid. You didn’t trust anyone over the age of 30… the sole exception being Walter Cronkite (or, as his name was pronounced, Wal-ter Cron-kite).

Now, of course, as an avid comic reader, I had to be able to trust my superheroes. They were, after all, the heroes. You trusted the heroes. You didn’t trust the villains. It was no more complicated than that, which might go a ways to explain why Superman was 29. This was his official age, as per the form letter I got from DC Comics when, as a kid, I wrote to them about something-or-other. The form letter was filled with all sorts of information that corresponded to the most-asked questions DC apparently received. The only two pieces of trivia that I still recall are Kal-El’s age and the pronunciation of Mxyzptlk. By keeping Superman formally 29, it meant that he was eternally one of “our” guys, rather than passing into the adult cut-off of the big 3-0 (which, by the way, has now been updated by my generation to the big 4-0).

So you trusted Superman. You trusted Batman, because he and Superman were pals, and although bats were kind of creepy, if he was good enough for Superman then he was good enough for us.

You trusted Green Lantern (here was a guy with a ring that could do anything, and he used it to make giant squeegees, marshmallows and so on. You can’t get worried about a guy going berserk when he wields an ultimate weapon in such a whimsical manner.) You trusted Spider-Man because he was a well-intentioned nerd, the Fantastic Four because they were more of a bickering family than anything else. And so on.

So now we flash forward a few decades to the modern plethora of heroes. They’re still fighting crimes (allegedly), they’re still beating up the bad guys (more gruesomely than ever before.)

But whom do you trust?

Well, Superman is looking pretty good about now. He’s got a 1960s hair-do now, so he’s got that windblown look. And Batman, he’s…

Well, hmm. He’s some stranger in batwinged armor, whose grip on decency, moderation and sanity seems about as firm as butter on teflon.

But don’t worry… there’s always Green Lantern, who is, uh…

Well, hmm.

But of course, there’s Spider-Man… except lately we’ve seen pictures of Spidey with a half-shredded mask, and we’re being promised he’s going to kind of go berserk.

Meantime, in The Fantastic Four…

Well, hmm.

Whom do you trust?

Captain America or Daredevil? Maybe, maybe not… we have to see where the shake-downs with them end up.

Lobo? The Punisher? Aw, come on.

Is it so bizarre that we have trouble developing heroes in whom we can have faith?

No. Not really.

It’s a far more cynical world we live in.

The deterioration may have had its seeds sown in the assassination of JFK, in which the entire country learned just how vulnerable to random violence our most important citizen was. Oh, sure, presidents had been assassinated before. But the images of the murder had never been so thoroughly plastered over the American consciousness before. JFK’s murder struck so closely to the core of our belief system, that Americans have spent three decades hashing over endless, tired conspiracy theories, to the point where it seems like the only person who wasn’t in on the assassination was JFK himself.

Then again, a president shrouded in ignorance… well, that’s not so impossible to believe. Richard Nixon swore that he was unaware of the Watergate deeds and cover-up. Reagan and Bush both swore they were oblivious to the guns-for-arms dealings. “Trust me… I was uninformed,” they all swore. If ignorance is bliss, then they must have been positively euphoric.

(It used to be easier for presidents. Believe it or not, the general public was unaware that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in a wheelchair. Nor were they hip to whatever shenanigans it now seems were going on in the JFK White House. Could you imagine such a thing happening now? If Clinton gets hemorrhoids, it’ll be on the evening news.)

No one knows who to trust anymore. Used to be that you could automatically trust your family. Now, though, when families are discussed, it’s invariably in the forum of how family values are falling apart (whatever that’s supposed to mean, since the values of a New York family may be different from a Gary, Indiana, family; a rich family different from a poor family, etc.) and how so many families are dysfunctional (whatever that’s supposed to mean. It’s a weird word. Reminds me of “inane.” I’ve heard people described as “inane,” but I’ve never heard of someone who was “ane.” Likewise, I’ve never met a family that’s self-avowedly “functional.” Makes them sound like automatons.)

Distrust really started to blossom in the 1970s (this should not be confused with paranoia, which has always been around, although it got a big push in the 1950s with McCarthyism). It became popularized with the advent of the suffix “Gate.”

Now, of course, it made sense when one was discussing the Watergate hotel because, well… that was the name of the place.

Since then, however, the word “gate” has become synonymous with distrust. Cover-ups. Double-talking, double-dealing, lies and backbiting. Iran-Contra, for example, became Iran-Contragate. A failed business venture in which Bill Clinton was engaged–something so byzantine that Garry Trudeau took an entire week of Doonsebury to explain it and it still wasn’t interesting–is termed Whitewatergate.

As trust in government has deteriorated into skepticism, cynicism and sarcasm, the distrust has extended into all walks of life. The deterioration of the comic book hero is merely one of the more noticeable, because the hero started from such a higher level that the plunge was much greater. “Supergate,” I think we’ll call it.

Where else is the rampant distrust of this country evident? Let’s see, there’s:

1) SKATEGATE. During one of the fiercer reigns of winter, Conan O’Brien commented, “Half the country is covered in ice, which is good in case Tonya Harding needs to make a quick getaway.”

As of this writing, Harding–who should be a symbol to everyone out there that it’s possible to overcome economic and health hardship–is instead fighting for her Olympic and professional life. Satisfied with trial-by-media, many are calling for her ouster from the Olympic team based solely on the accusations of a couple guys who any rational person wouldn’t trust to give the correct time of day.

Polls indicate that vast majorities of Americans feel she should not be allowed to compete. She hasn’t been tried. She hasn’t even been charged. Yet people support that the team which is supposed to epitomize the American ideal should take steps that would be totally contrary to one of the fundamental philosophies of this country. Innocent Until Proven Guilty is supposed to mean something.

I don’t know. Maybe she’s guilty as hëll. On the other hand, maybe a vindictive ex-husband, jealous of her ability, decided to bring her down. Hëll, you want to get really whacked out? Maybe Nancy Kerrigan arranged it herself to take out her nearest rival. A totally nutso theory, of course. But then again, wasn’t Kerrigan ever so lucky that the attack not only didn’t impede her skating ability, but gave her a free ticket to Lillehammer?

There’s all sorts of possibilities, but public opinion is all-too-ready to toss Harding away… because, insanely, they trust the word of two admitted felons more than they do a woman who has insisted that she was looking forward to the competition.

Perhaps by the time this sees print, she’ll have admitted to complicity. Whether she does or not isn’t the point, because not only is it just as likely that she’s innocent as guilty, but furthermore, according to the Constitution, we’re supposed to presume she’s innocent.

What she has admitted to is that she found out about it after the fact and didn’t immediately go public with it. True, this wasn’t the most brilliant move on her part. Two things come to mind though: First, she might have thought that by going public with her ex-husband’s involvement, people might figure that she was in on it and was just trying to cover her ášš (a not unreasonable concern). Second, here was a woman with a history of being involved in abusive relationships. Such women perpetually live in fear. Yet few people are willing to extend this mindset to Harding, even though they were willing to buy into it for…

2) MATEGATE. The most self-destructive couple since Bonnie and Clyde, the battling Bobbitts. The abused asthmatic skater elicits no sympathy… but these two nuts get moral support? Am I the only one who sees a kind of bizarre contradiction here?

First you got him, who said he didn’t rape his wife and wasn’t abusive… and was believed. Then you get his wife, who said he was so abusive that she absolutely, positively was seized with a completely irresistible impulse to cut her husband down to size. One can almost hear Flip Wilson’s Geraldine explaining, “The devil made me do it.” And she was believed. She admitted to the action and yet was absolved of all moral responsibility. Not only that, but the common chatter in public (admittedly seemingly divided along gender lines) is that women, at least, seem rather satisfied with the verdict. Yet how many women are supporting the notion that Harding might have been terrorized into covering up for her husband (“Keep your mouth shut or we’ll tell people you were in on it!”)

3) JAILBAITGATE. Michael Jackson buys his way out of alleged sexual interludes with 13 year old boys. No one knows what to make of this one.

It can be taken on the surface, of course: That everyone involved just wanted the whole thing to go away. But does that mean that the Jacksons are now going to have a spate (Spategate?) of latecomers (Lategate?) claiming that they, too, were abused by Jackson? I mean, copycat killers is bad enough. But copycat victims?

We really, truly want to believe Jackson’s protestations of innocence. But it’s sure not easy. Nor can we listen to songs like “Beat It” anymore without snickering.

Where do we turn, then?

Whom do we trust?

Parents accused of abuse, clergy accused of sexual scandals, leaders mired in peccadillos or improprieties. Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street being criticized for allegedly being gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or Barney the dinosaur accused of spreading Satanic messages (a recent article in Parents magazine criticized Barney because he gave his viewers too sunny a view of the world. Absolutely. Make sure that every two year old out there knows the world sucks. Why not just read them Mein Kampf while in utero?) Even superheroes being dragged down, down into the mire of deteriorating society… a deterioration so rampant that one person posted on a comic board (of all places) that we were seeing the end of civilization as we know it, and Jesus Christ was going to be showing up any day. (My speculation was that the release of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective might indeed represent one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.)

Where can we turn? Who can help us in our hour of need?

It’s up to us, comic fans, to make a hero for our times. A hero who people can believe in.

First… we get Walter Cronkite a really, really big gun…

(Peter David, writer of stuff, naturally doesn’t know what Tim Eldred saw or didn’t see, heard or didn’t hear, during the ComicFest debate. But I can’t help but observe that it’s a little late to accuse him of bias based on his association with Malibu, considering that virtually every pro who has defended Image in these pages either was working for Image at the time, or wound up working for Image. Where were the claims of bias then?)