This is a subject that’s been in much debate in the comments lately. Is Jerry at fault for the things he’s done?
Do you agree or disagree with Money Man?
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Personally, the only way I find Jerry not responsible for his actions is in the fact that he is no longer capable of being responsible for them. He is neither sane, nor competent.
But then again, neither was The Joker.
At least prior to the reboot, The Joker was never quite as insane as he let on and DEFINITELY competent. Just nerding out a little.
Innocence by reason of insanity? It’s an interesting theory–and there are definitely some strips and Origins pages I could point to to back it up. I’m reluctant to agree, but Jerry has had his way crazy moments, I’ll give you that.
You know, the recent strips about Gina got me thinking…
Gina kind of looks much more guilty about what she’s done, compared to earlier strips. Could it because of her father’s death, which was most likely done by Earth-Avalon’s Thrice Evil?
Gina’s full timeline and disposition has yet to be revealed, but you’re right to assume that SOMETHING happened to turn her against Thrice Evil.
I think I could agree with Money Man because Jerry wasted the time on lofty goals when he could’ve rised above his tradegies and became a better hero. Truly a sad case when you think about it all. š
From what we’ve seen this is absolutely true. Jerry faced some tough decisions in his life, but they were his to make. He had a compromised view of heroism, but we are not just the sum of the input we receive from others.
Can’t blame Jerry on this one. Even if he manipulated the whole destiny to get spy gal, you can’t attach to him the failure of the other heroes. When the fight on las Vegas started, it was cap who refuse to fight. The madness of star maiden and the lack of responsibility of swity can’t be attached to Jerry neither. Every heroe (and villain) was able to chose their path way before to get to Valhalla, when we could actually blame Jerry. The lack of principal of right on this world doesn’t make it wrong, it just make it different to earth Avalon
He did have the giant robot made and activated it, which started the whole Las Vegas incident. He brought Star Maiden to Valhalla as part of his plan, which is what put her in the position to revert to her old self. I agree that Cap’s apathy was his own fault. I don’t see why you are saying Swifty acted irresponsible.
Star was already crazy when Jerry brought her to Valhalla, she was like that since her trip to the home world. Swifty has never been proactive. Jerry may have exploited the flaws of everyone, but that is all.
“That’s it?” That’s everything. Jerry used people for his own ends, deceiving them twice in confidence as a comrade and as their doctor, and using his partial knowledge of the future on his unsuspecting friends, for him, not for them. Star Maiden may have been crazy, but as her doctor, did Jerry try to help her get better? Or did he simply use her as a tool to cause havoc between Spy Gal and the Captain (which he admitted doing) and ignored the need to heal the deep pain she obviously was hiding? And went Swifty was thrown back in time to the death of the Money Man, he sent Mega Matt to save him rather than do it himself, because he needed to warn his younger self about….Jerry, and what he really was, after Jerry tried to kill him, after Jerry had traded the world to keep Spy Gal.
And the Captain? Jerry first betrayed him in the 1970s by revealing his identity and destroying his personal life, and he’s been quietly betraying him ever since, not preventing the Captain from being crippled as he saved himself, pretending to kill his son in front of him, letting Tangerine kill Herman, not telling the Captain that his best friend and enemy was still alive, preying on his weakness for gambling to create the opportunity to steal Spy Gal….
For years, Jerry was the Captain’s true nemesis, destroying him day by day, swamping every small victory Wilbur had with a coming defeat.
That was Jerry’s choice. Yeah, others share the blame for the state of the world because everybody has choices, but at least they were stumbling around trying to do the right thing. Jerry…he had a choice to do what his older self told him he should do to get what he wanted. And after he saw the Captain crippled, he made the conscious decision to do it. The master manipulator, the one who plays to his unfair advantage over others, earns the largest responsibility. Hence, the blame for “much of the current state of the world”.
This is pretty spot on, and speaks to the scope of what Money Man is saying. It’s not just one thing–there are many things Jerry has done, choices he’s made time and again that were selfishly motivated and led to bad ends.
This really comes down to choice and how you define it. Could Jerry have ever gone another way? Could he have made different choices, or was someone or some thing forcing his hand? If the former, then Jerry is at fault. If the latter, then Jerry is absolved, totally.
Except it was Jerry who manipulated the other heroes to get what he wanted. Both as a sidekick with knowledge of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and as Dr. Klein, putting people in the right places at the wrong time and giving blindside pushes to everyone’s buttons when necessary.
This is absolutely true. Jerry, more than anyone, always knew exactly what he was doing.
I think that even Jerry agrees that he is mostly responsible.
Where has he been this whole time? Running around the world, deactivating Zurida’s devices (and picking flowers). The Jerry of a year ago would have still been following Spy Gal around trying to impress her; current Jerry is trying to do the right thing instead. I think he realizes his part in all of this and is trying to change.
Is it too late? I’d like to think not.
Of course, a cynic might argue that this is Jerry’s way of impressing Spy Gal – I mean, if he saves the world for her….
Whether or not it’s too late is a great question, and dealing with that question is built into the endgame for SuperFogeys. I know when a lot of this stuff was happening a lot of people felt the stuff Jerry was doing made him irredeemable. That view seems to have softened over time.
To be frank, the way Jerry was given ‘choice’ is the same way that you can jump into the shark filled ocean, or I can skewer you, THEN push you into the shark filled ocean. See? CHOICE! Everything around Jerry was literally engineered to assure he made these choices. First murder of his parents by his own AU daughter. That’s a kicker. THEN the artists were paid to lie to him, to purposely insult him and keep him thinking his power is useless. Imagine using it only at the most critical moment to survive. It’d just be an instinctual reflex to avoid death and pain, not a power. It’s no longer something he can learn to develop to help heroes. His fellow heroes don’t know about it, may in fact agree to mock or downplay it, so why ever bring it up? We saw how he was treated as The Third Man. He was downright reminded fully, to never show the power, or that it has no value.
Why would he think it has the power to open the world?
He didn’t kill their Money Man, That was manipulation from his AU Daughter and Thrice Evil. Hell, the worst you can say is he was indirect. Collusion with Doc Rocket, yes, that you can blame. We can blame him for making a self fufilling prophecy on himself with time travel. But not all the blame lies on Jerry. When you get:
Childhood Trauma + Abuse from Authority Figures + Abuse from his Idol (Captain Spectacular) + His own future coming to say “They were all wrong, listen to me” in a gentle, trusting way + His own idol sending him away when he became the minorest of threats + When FINALLY revealing his power to his idol, he was mocked terribly + The fall of his own idol + Spy Gal refusing him and not even explaining why + puppy love she let fester and not address + Resentment = A really screwed up person, who may not see other options.
This is a classic example of nature v nuture. In this case, nurture definitely won. Jerry was abused in so many ways it’s left him nowhere near Earth Avalon’s Jerry. That man had no abuse piled on him, no suffering. He found happiness, started a family. In the end that family hurt him, yeah. But so far we see nothing like that was there for Earth Abbadon’s Jerry. All that was there, was his hero, an alcoholic. The woman he loved, uncaring and ethereal. The other heroes he’s worked with? Hate him openly, or perhaps avoid him. His own adopted family hated him in secret, finding out only under the guise of Dr. Kleiner. If you go back, how often do yo see Jerry interact with other heroes? It’s Swifty, Spy Gal, Captain Spectacular, Dr. Rocket, or the staff. Two out of the five hate him, one pities him, his own idol wobbles between like, don’t care, and muted dislike, and the staff don’t care.
Imagine yourself as Jerry. What would seem like the best option to you, in that mindset? Can we blame Jerry for, after decades of trying, outright falling? He sold the world for a hope at love. He learned it could never love him. He tried and tried. And then she openly hated him. Now he just wanders the world, alone, trying to fix it, because he’s found himself in over his head. The rest of the group would most likely openly despise him, if not avoid him entirely if he was physically nearby. We see more than once it’s entirely possible Spy Gal doesn’t even love him.
The entire world was designed to destroy hope. It destroyed it thrice in Jerry Kleiner.
It’s easy to blame Jerry for everything, really. Would you really want to admit at some point, you helped bring make Jerry what he is? Spy Gal proved she lost every ounce of caring for Jerry, and it was replaced happily with contempt. (521-544), and in One Year Later, she seems to change her disposition. But we don’t get to see what happened in that year. We don’t know if their relationship changed, or if she forgave him. She touched on his worst feeligns in 543. That he was the ignored little boy. It ate at him for decades, and she touched on literally his greatest misery. If she wasn’t a hero, I’d assume her a sadist.
An unloved orphan, disliked sidekick, poor choices he thought were the only solution, and now, pointed to reason the world is broken. Were his options truly that great? Or were they shark infested waters, and a knife?
Money Man, didn’t your mom teach you pointing is rude?
I have to agree with Caped Debater. Jerry was given “fail or fail worse” options. And the heroes he grew up with were awful role models. I believe Jerry does feel awful for what he’s done, it was bad. But if they want to make sure another Jerry Abbadon doesn’t happen again they need to recognize their complicity in his upbringing too. He grew up to have such a twisted black and white view of the world, nothing good comes of that.
I see Money Man believes in radical freedom, the “you always have a choice, for instance, instead of doing anything, you could always choose to die” argument. I kind of view Jerry as a sort of serial killer type. The kind that got thrown in a basement by a parent as a kid and got beaten up severily and then, some thirty years later, snaps and starts killing innocents that somehow remind them of said parent. Should he be stopped? Most definitely. Can you forgive him for his actions? Most likely not. Are his actions solely to blame on him? That’s tricky, but I would say no. Admittedly it’s a grey area (whereas Money Man makes it out in pretty black and white colours, which is probably my greatest problem with his argument) but I do believe that some people are just without chances, and cannot be expected to make the right choices. Jerry is one of them, and should just not be trusted with any sort of authority, because he is unable to handle it, just like a child. Maybe he should even have a ward.
If he is trying to become a better person, well, all the better for him (and anyone else), but if he is capable of said change (and that’s a big “if”), it’s going to be (or has been) a slow progress, just like any kind of rehabilitation. A complete restructuring of his world view is necessary.
*maybe he should BE a ward, and have a warden.. got it mixed up for a second there
I’ve never heard the term “radical freedom” before, but what you call radical I simply accept as what freedom actually is.
I could not personally disagree with this statement more: “…some people are just without chances, and cannot be expected to make the right choices.”
I think we’ve seen too many times when people have been able to raise themselves up from dire circumstances for me to believe as you do. Doing the right thing or not is not a choice that’s ever taken away from us. We can face difficult circumstances and choices, but the right thing always exists in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in. I truly believe that.
Wow. First of all, hats off to that dissection and metaphor.
The nature vs. nurture debate is a debate worth having and this story and the two versions of Jerry make it a relevant debate.
I don’t think nature vs. nurture is an either/or thing. Both contribute to the makeup of the person, but I also think there’s a third influencer, the one you’re basically dismissing:
Choice.
I believe our agency to choose lies outside of who we are as a person and what others would sculpt us into. Otherwise, there is no change and we are all just playing the parts given to us, as through we’re along for the ride only. But I have seen people change, even their very natures, so I can’t believe that.
At the moment of choice, we always have all options available to us. No one has ever forced me to make the choices I make. There’s never anything to compel me to go a certain way. I make my decisions and they are mine, and that’s true for all of us. We all may feel at times that the choices we’re making are inevitable or that they’re not really choices at all, but that’s just not true.
In Jerry’s case, he had a number of other options available to him. He may have had compromised role models, but he still knew right from wrong. He made choices that went against that knowledge.
Ultimately, that’s the question: could Jerry have done something other than what did?
Yes.
Was he forced to do what he did?
No.
It is about choice. Which, I suppose, means I agree with Money Man.
Not that it matters. The story exists outside of my views. You can be sure there are characters who share your view and they will get their chance to voice it.
It has been quite nicely said here how Jerry’s environment and history has made him to be what he is, but I do think that self-reflecting human being could make his own decisions and overcome those things. However Jerry has obsession with Spy Gal and he may very well have severe obsessive-compulsive disorder or something similar which makes difficult to be self-reflecting on certain things for our poor Jerry. So that disorder, whatever may it be, seems to be caused by his environment. Lovely ain’t it?
You can make a case for a disorder and that would seem to absolve Jerry somewhat, but when you get into an area like that it’s why I’m grateful only God can truly judge. A doctor can diagnose, but even then they don’t truly know the heart and mind of the person.
I guess Jerry is responsible for his actions, as everyone gets shaped by their surroundings, but still make their own decisions that determine who they are. A tragic villain. But I like to think it’s never too late to change your mind!
And that capacity for change is what I’m arguing for. Jerry can make other decisions. He could have done something than what he did. You can convince me that it was difficult for him, but I can’t accept an argument that says choices were taken away from him. Truly, truly tragic however you look at it.
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