We had a great discussion going last week with regards to Tangerine’s initial telling of the story that inspired this turn towards pacifism. I was mostly silent for that discussion because I knew the story was not fully told until today. Now that it is, what do you think? Tangerine knows himself. He knows what evil he’s capable of and he’s clearly trying to avoid a repeat of the mistakes of the past. Is he doing the right thing?
Did you see it? Last week, SuperFogeys Babies concluded with a (sort of) ending that topped things off nicely, I think. Haven’t had a chance to read the tale yet? Now you can read it in its entirety, starting here!
So poo widdow Tangerine doesn’t want to feel the tewwwibul pain, even if it means enslavement and death for the whole planet? Awwwwww ….
Sure. Sure, I get that. What profiteth a man if the entire world loses its soul, but he keeps his own? Nice lonely little Heaven awaits.
Wow I didn’t thought I see the day Tangerine goes against fighting.
And at a worse time too. Maybe it’s both a miracle and the end of the world at the same time. š
uh oh cap knows something is up now!!!
And we edge ever closer…
Even if I might not worth it the same way, I’m somewhat in JE camp on this one.
I’m sorry, but I’ve always felt giving my life saving others (and I do mean saving others, not the warped version promoted by every nation’s military of “serving your country” or whatever) was the best possible death imaginable. As a super-hero, this applies even more so to him. By his willing inaction, he casts his own choice on the rest of Mankind, and could thus be considered among the lowest for doing so.
(I’ll specify that I am against revenge. Would I come home to a madman killing my wife or kid, I’d try to stop him at best I can and I’m not sure I could refrain myself from killing him on the moment, but if he was arrested, I’d want to be one of the last person to have to decide if and how to re-adapt him because I know I’d be way too biased.)
Agreed that giving your life to save others is the best possible death imaginable. But, taking a life unjustly is the worst possible sin. That’s the two poles Tangerine sits between. That’s his history, as he sees it. Not wanting to repeat that–no matter how much you disagree with his solution to that problem–has got to be an admirable thing.
I don’t have the time to go back and read all of Tangerine’s stories, but I don’t recall him doing a lot of heroing that didn’t end in killing. Perhaps he doesn’t know how to be a restrained hero. Which means he *would* end up killing.
And he doesn’t want to do that.
Much more succinctly put, WGC.
It seems to me that Tangerine’s objection to going out and fighting is that he’ll pop some heads. But hes some kind of enhanced cyborg! Surely there are other things he can do. And he doesn’t have to kill, he could just temporarily incapacitate.
Too true, he could take employ a different tactic and not return to his old ways… but there’s an element to Tangerine’s story that I think is getting overlooked: the temptation of the sinner. A sinner is how Tangerine sees himself now. One could successfully argue that Tangerine ENJOYED killing. His fear, then, would be that his former bloodlust would return if given half the chance. He’s like an alcoholic. You don’t let a recovering alcoholic run a bar.
Unless, that is, you want to name that bar Cheers.
True. That never occurred to me.
Tangerine v Soviet Sam
All though he was a villain, Sam still had a code of honor which basically said you only kill other people if they have super powers. After he killed Money Man he had twenty to thirty years to live with the guilt until Space Pig told him to stop wallowing in self pity and try to make up for it by doing good (paraphrasing there).
Tangerine killed Herman and showed no regret for it until he read a book. Sometimes that’s all it takes to change, but it doesn’t seem like enough of a foundation to say that Tangerine is out of the hero business for the rest of his life. It’s a comic strip based on comic books and there’s always a plot twist just around the corner that can undo the last plot twist.
Either way, it’s Brock’s strip and he can do with it as he wants. Tangerine is a relatively minor character and whether he becomes a lifelong Mormon or not isn’t going to affect my opinion of the strip. Screw with Swifty’s personality and you’ve got trouble though.
Swifty is Swifty. If you’ll notice, he’s the only Fogey who is exactly the same as he was when the strip started!
You can’t change a man’s heart once it has been made, and you have to respect Tangerine for that. I really feel the last panel shows some foreshadowing though. Never say Never Tangerine, there will come a time where you will be tested and when it comes down to it I feel you’ll make a choice and even though that means living with regret you can ask Soviet Sam, sometimes you have to stand up for what’s right and find your inner strength again.
Nice job almost outing Jerry though, does him good to get scared from time to time. Now put that Glove on and let’s have one more run at this before we bury those weapons for good.
Foreshadowing? I would NEVER.
I’ve never killed a man before so there’s a disconnect between me and Tangerine. (I can’t imagine what that’d do to you mentally) but that was that and this is now. Earth is under attack and you’re a hero. That’s your job. Protect those who can’t protect themselves. Few things are more noble.
Staying on the sidelines, you’re killing by inaction.
But I will give you this Tangerine. That was a nice little zing at Jerry’s expense.
I said a little about this above, but the other idea I think worth considering is that sometimes what is right for the individual is not right for all. What I mean is, if we all had Tangerine’s attitude then that would be wrong. We would not be defending ourselves against evil and that itself is evil. But we’re not all Tangerine. We don’t all have a history of murder and bloodlust. So, is it possible that Tangerine’s decision, while wrong for most of us, is actually a right–but only for him?
The story Tangerine is quoting is one I’ve heard since I was a kid. I asked a lot of the same questions you guys are asking now. How is it right, ever, to lay down and not defend yourself and your family and your country? The second part to the story involves the children of the people who buried their weapons growing up and coming to the defense of their parents because they did not make the same oath. The ideal of pacifism was not passed on to the next generation–it was very much seen as a change necessary only for those who had a need for repentance and turning their backs on murderous ways. It wasn’t a selfish thing–they very much wanted to take up arms again, but their kids talked them out of it. They didn’t want their parents to risk their eternal souls for mortal life.
I think there’s a huge lesson there. Yeah, you could see it as selfish, but I think it’s more about knowing yourself–knowing what you’re capable of and what what tempts you. If, by trying to do a right you seriously risk doing a wrong–is it wrong to put off that right? Can that be the right thing?
Tangerine was never a hero.
Tangerine was a vigilante. There’s an unsubtle difference. A hero defends something. A vigilante attacks something.
Tangerine didn’t defend anything. He didn’t protect, he sought out people he considered were “bad” and killed them by squeezing their heads like fruit until they popped. He acted like judge, jury, and executioner, whether he had the right to do so or not. He was not a nice man. He was not acting within the boundaries of law or justice. He simply took it on himself to go out and kill people he thought were bad, and if you didn’t like it, then he might take a sniff of you to see if YOU were bad, narrow his eyes, and flex his fingers at you…
That’s not a hero, that’s a walking hairpile of corruption and violence. That’s someone who’s stepped over the line and NEEDS to take a long, hard look at himself and ask himself what the hell he’s doing.
Now, a hero…a hero only uses as much force as is needed, gauges that against law and custom, is cognizant of the rights of the other, even if he is willing to abrogate them if necessary to stop them, and knows when to stop HIMSELF when he has reached the limits of what is right and just. He also knows when to take the ultimate step, and use deadly force. It’s the most dire of choices, but a hero knows that as a last resort, it sometimes must be done.
This is MY belief: no true hero can say they will NEVER kill. That simply gives their enemies a way to manipulate them, a way to control their actions. All the enemy must do then is put them in a situation where they MUST kill to win, and they are stymied…either destroy their own honor, or lose to the enemy.
The only way, then, to win against such a foe is to never let your enemy judge you, to only judge yourself, to be the sole arbiter of your honor, and never to fall prey to the controlling hand of reputation. Only then can you suffer the luxury of such limits.
Incredibly insightful, Gwen. I always appreciate your in-depth examinations of the psychology of the characters.
Ya know, he could just beat the aliens unconscious and tie them up. Kneecap them. Killing doesn’t *have* to happen.
OTOH, I don’t think we’re in a position to judge Tangerine. We can call his act selfish because he’s refusing to save the lives of others, but what could I be doing to save lives right now that I’m not? What sacrifices could I be making right now that I’m not? When I start thinking about the answers to those questions, my criticisms of Tangerine start to fall apart.
Greg, that’s a great point. We’re holding Tangerine to a standard most of us have probably never had to meet–and that he probably never has.
Word. There’s always another way.
I think that with all this philosophizing we’ve got going on here, we’re overlooking something important.
That arm is off Tangerine and is just sitting there–waiting for someone else to pick it up. It’s not even behind bars with Tangerine. Anyone could just grab it and become a killing machine.
After all, Tangerine didn’t seem to be much of anything before that arm was attached to him. (Was it Tangerine’s lust for revenge that turned him into a killer, or was it his new arm? And what would the arm do if it were attached to someone else? Can it be attached to someone else?)
I guess if it’s Tangerine specific, it’s not that big of a deal. After all, it has been sitting there awhile.
But still.
Tangerine’s bionic arm is pretty much specific to him, but it is just sitting there. The possibility it could be reattached is there…
My road-dog Benjamin Franklin said: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with this statement. As such, I disagree with Tangerine’s pacifistic and near apathetic positioning. Yet, not entirely.
I identify with Tangerine a great deal, believe it or not. No, I didn’t have my arm chewed off by cannibals and replaced with a sweet cyberneic prosthetic…. If only! But I digress… I have an unrecorded history of anger issues and physical violence. It was getting pretty bad for a while and on it’s way to worse. One day I got a wake-up call that made me come to a screeching halt and turn around to look at where I’d been. And when I tallied everything up? I hated my life. I felt, and still feel, genuine sadness and remorse for my actions, and made a personal vow to change for the better. As such, I started studying religion, my own faith, zen philosophy, bhuddism, and even bushido (and that’s the short list), along with anger management and meditation techniques. All of this in an attempt to discipline myself and temper my emotions and the responses they would ellicit. I swore I would never raise my hands in violence and anger again. It has been EIGHT YEARS since I was last in a fight due to losing my temperand giving in to anger. But, then again, the self-discipline in and of itself is a fight against myself and my baser motives. Anger is my addiction, my sickness. I am always afraid of losing my temper and lashing out, even with as much control over myself as I have. I just never know if there’s going to be that one little thing that surprises even me, even now, and sets me off. So? I avoid those x-factors as often as possible. I know the things that make me angry and I’ve learned to handle them better. I cut peopl le out of my life that were toxic for my emotional state or even encouraged those bad reactions. I control me now. No one can MAKE me be angry and no one can MAKE me lose my head and no one can MAKE me fight. No one but me. I am responsible for my own self, my own decisions, my own actions, and most importantly bearing my own consequences. Only me. And I choose not to give in to it as often as possible. Tangerine is aware of himself in this way now and is asserting his right to his self-control and live out his days in penance in an attempt to find peace with himself.
However…..
There ARE other ways he can join the fight and not jeopardize or destroy the peae he seems to have come to and those terms. No one says he has to KILL anyone ever again. In the realm of what-if’s, there could be any number of lives he could end up saving just be being there to fight. Like Sam….. If Sam hadn’t been there? Those people would have quite likely been killed by Donut-tron. He didn’t even do that much actual fighting, just by being there and on-hand he made a pretty big difference in how that went down. Just by choosing to be part of the fight. There are lots of other ways he could and should contribute to the efforts going on around him right now. He’s technically got two able hands. And those able hands can work, help, and even heal…. Or just be there to hold for support. And that’s not to mention his lifetime of experience that he could lend towards tactics and strategy or just plain old advice. What with his sudden penchant and devotion to studying faith, religion, and theology he could even act as a broad spectrum chaplain-of-all-trades! Hands aren’t just weapons, they’re primarily the first tools we learn to use as developing people. And his cybernetic hand? Can be just another hand….. He doesn’t have to use it for violence ever again. Which brings us to an extremely important upcoming and necessary step in his self-imposed reform:
Now that the killer in him is gone, he needs to discover what’s left and what he’s capable of. He needs to really learn how to save life, not just people, rather than taking it. It’s another hard thing that I had to learn to do myself. Finding out who I was once I stopped being a violent angry douche was long and arduous and difficult. But it was and is necessary as part of recovery and moving forward. Tangerine needs to get off his butt, get out of that cell, and start helping his friends. There are other things he can do….. He just needs to learn what they are. It’s scary, I’ll admit. The scariest part is the fear that there really wasn’t anything more to me than outbursts of rage and breaking other peoples bones for what I felt was them making me angry. I was afraid I was just otherwise hollow and empty and useless as a human being. I was also afraid of failing at it. I think Tangerine is feeling the same thing as well. And I think that’s what’s really keeping him in that cell. And I think CS should offer him another option other than contributing to the actual fight and combat.
It is Tangerine’s duty to put that hand on and put it to work for the cause and the greater good, even if not for his planet and country. He needs to get off his butt and stand by his friends at the very least. The only thing really stopping him is himself.
And like everyone’s road-dog Space Pig said: “All you have to do is get over yourself.”
Hey Infamous Nefarious, sorry for not responding until now.
I really, really appreciate what you’ve said here–and you have a whole lot of my admiration. Making a change like that is not easy, but you did it. I appreciate the fact that just because you’ve made the change, doesn’t mean it’s not something you don’t deal with every day. Our demons never really do go away, but we can learn how to stop satisfying them. I’ve got my own demons, and I know that to be true.
I also like what you say about discovering who you are after you take away the thing that so defines you. That’s a big step on Tangerine’s journey he has yet to take, but it’s a step we absolutely have to see if he’s going to make this work properly. Good thoughts, man. Really excellent. Thank you.
It’s all good. Every day is another opportunity to be better. I have my kids to think of too. If I was still that guy? I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have them. And you can’t hold your kids with closed fists or bloody hands.
And in all fairness that WAS a lot to read. š