..or is it?

If they ever met each other,would they get along or would they argue about who was more righter about everything?

I picked Mr. A because his stories have gone further, but I love both characters. They would be fast friends if they met.

I went with the question, because the characters are so much alike, I had to go by who I thought had the cooler outfit.

The Question has compromised himself by hanging out with Denny O'Neil. If you try to straddle the middle ground by associating with moral relativists, you end up on the side of evil. I chose Mr. A.

IMO, Denny O'Neil's Question comics are probably the best work he's ever done. It sure ain't Ditko, though.

I've never read O'Neil's Question stories, but I find the concept of them incredibly disrespectful. Why reboot a character in a manner that is completely antithetical its original concept, and to the values and beliefs of its creator? Particularly when the values and beliefs of the creator were such an important part of the character as originally conceived? Why not create your own original character to tell those stories, rather than trashing someone else's? It strikes me as a big f**k you to Ditko. And I say this as someone who is probably much closer politically to O'Neil than to Ditko. I just find it disrespectful to use Ditko's own character to attack his philosophy.

You're offended on behalf of somebody else by something you've never read?

But hey, I'm still irritated by Blue Beetle's portrayal in JLI, so I probably should shut up.

More righter?

I've never read Mr A except for IMWAN posts.

Imagine the Question, with denser art, less characterization and a lot more lecturing. It's really essays, only barely disguised as super-hero comics.

Which makes it sound bad, but it's really quite incredible.

I don't need to have read that series to know that the ideas it features are completely contrary to Ditko's values and beliefs. If I told you I'd written a story in which Captain America rejects American imperialism and decides to join Al Quada, I bet you'd feel confident in saying that it runs counter to the values and beliefs which the character was created to espouse, even if you hadn't read it. I'm not passing judgment on the quality of the stories themselves, which obviously I can't do without reading them. Maybe I'd even like the stories in and of themselves. But I'm just saying the concept of those stories contradicts Ditko's philosophies.

And I'm not taking offense on his behalf. I have no idea if this sort of thing bothers him. I'm just saying that I personally find it offensive to use one of Ditko's characters to attack Ditko's value system, particularly when the character used was created primarily as a means to espouse that value system in the first place. Who knows whether Ditko would care about this, but I think it was a disrespectful thing to do.

I don't remember any specific attack in O'Neil's Question that attacked or even addressed Ditko's beliefs. IIRC, it was more an exploration of eastern (and other) philosophy. Smart book, at least to the 18 year old small town kid who was reading it at the time.

I prefer A.

dennyoneilpeacesign.jpg

Well, the primary message of Ditko's Question is that there is no such thing as moral ambiguity. Good is good, evil is evil. A person cannot be part good and part evil. There is no moral gray area, and there is an absolute Right and Wrong which can be determined objectively. If you associate with or work with evil people, you are corrupt by extension. A is A. And so on.

My understanding is that O'Neil presents the Question as initially being an arrogant jerk who holds those absolutist views, but then after getting the sh*t kicked out of him and almost getting killed, he rethinks life and embraces a more complex and nuanced (as well as more uncertain) view of morality. That certainly strikes me as a deliberate repudiation of Ditko's views. It's quite possible I would enjoy those stories, since my own views run closer to O'Neil's than Ditko's. But it's a viewpoint that's diametrically opposed to the philosophy Ditko created the character to express.

No, I think you nailed it pretty well all the way up until the comma in your last sentence, where you should have said "and it is".

Its kind of sad that almost all of Ditko 's creations have been rebooted in that fashion at one time or another.

Except for the ones he kept, like Static.

It's my East Coast Canadian accent. I write in dialect.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

I read some of the issues when they were first being published. Your assessment is on target. O'Neil basically tried to turn The Question into a platform for Zen philosophies, which was doubly odd, since he didn't seem to understand that school of thought either.