Putting this here, because why the hell not. Maybe we should repurpose this as a general Ellis thread.
Anyway. Black Summer's over, and the last issue puts it all into perspective.
The series takes the idea of superhero vigilante justice to a reductio ad absurdum: superheroes act outside the law to do what they can for the greater good when the law does not prevail. The series takes current events -- a criminal President who Congress refuses to hold accountable for his crimes -- and asks the question, is a hero then obligated to take the law into his own hands and kill the President himself?
The answer finally given in the final issue is simple, and comes like a splash of cold water: of course not.
In the final analysis, John Horus is simple-minded, childlike. He ascribes to a black-and-white, good-and-evil outlook that, while it may serve as a good backdrop for Superman, rarely works out in real life.
I linked an Ellis speech a few weeks back where he half-joked about his concern that he'd be put on a terror watch list for writing this story, that it had been mentioned on Fox News and he had gotten hate mail for it. Of course, if the angry Fox viewers had waited to read the damn thing, they probably would have agreed with its ultimate message. And of course the real irony is that the reason they had such a knee-jerk reaction is that they themselves are like John Horus -- people with a simplistic worldview who are incapable of understanding nuance.
The denouement recalls Dark Knight in its contrast between its two would-be heroes, one bright and one dark, one a vigilante and the other a government employee. Like Dark Knight, it asks the question, "What is a hero?"
The answer, in this case, is perhaps a bit disappointing -- it's not only obvious, it's downright cliche.
But in the end, it makes a great bit of superhero deconstruction. While I'll agree with Cannon that Ellis tends toward excess in his criticism of the genre, I'll admit that I love the way he analyzes it, the way he plays with it.
This is, at its core, a story that contrasts the simplistic morality of (traditional) superhero comics with real-life concerns. And it does it well.
