Martha Thomases Stands for Hope

Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases brought more comics to the attention of more people than anyone else in the industry. Her work promoting The Death of Superman made an entire nation share in the tragedy of one of our most iconic American heroes. As a freelance journalist, she has been published in the Village Voice, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, Metropolitan Home, and more. For Marvel comics she created the series Dakota North. Martha worked as a researcher and assistant for the author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner's Song, On Women and Their Elegance, Ancient Evenings, and Harlot's Ghost.

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12 Responses

  1. George Haberberger says:

    I liked Amy Adams also but my favorite Lois Lane is still Phyllis Coates. She didn’t take crap from anyone. She even got slapped around for her trouble occasionally and slapped back in turn.

    The most intriguing aspect of the religious overtones was the fight with Faora-Ul when she says: “The fact that you possess a sense of morality, and we do not, gives us an evolutionary advantage. And if history has proven anything, it is that evolution always wins.”

    The idea is that morality is not something that can be the product of evolution because the concepts of morality, altruism, self-sacrifice and self-denial run contrary to the idea of the survival of the fittest. Thinking of others first could not be a trait that is passed down in the gene pool because those individuals would not be likely to proliferate since they would not survive to reproduce. This is not to say that evolution is wrong but just that our morality comes from someplace other than a purely scientific origin.

  2. mike weber says:

    The idea is that morality is not something that can be the product of evolution because the concepts of morality, altruism, self-sacrifice and self-denial run contrary to the idea of the survival of the fittest. Thinking of others first could not be a trait that is passed down in the gene pool because those individuals would not be likely to proliferate since they would not survive to reproduce. This is not to say that evolution is wrong but just that our morality comes from someplace other than a purely scientific origin.

    Except that that’s not true – in many cases, evolution favours traits that can be interpreted as altruistic.

    Acting to preserve the species as a whole is common; it’s the basis of tribalism and most of civilisation.

    When he spoke at the 1976 WorldCon in Kansas City, Robert A Heinlein was booed by some in the audience when he said “Men fight to protect women and children” – but that’s a pretty good statement of the evolutionary imperative in many species.

    Those who have no offspring of their own will still fight and work to preserve the lives of others, and not just in humans.

  3. George Haberberger says:

    ”Robert A Heinlein was booed by some in the audience when he said ‘Men fight to protect women and children’”

    Why would he be booed for saying that? Because it is not politically correct?

    ”Those who have no offspring of their own will still fight and work to preserve the lives of others, and not just in humans.

    True, but if that is because of evolution, why are so many people unevolved? The truth is that people, in their nature, have a propensity for violence, hatred and evil. It is that nature that has resulted from the survival of the fittest.

    I’m sure you’ve heard of the psychological experiment by Stanley Milgram in which subjects were encouraged to shock people they could not see for answering questions incorrectly. (Alan Moore referenced it in V for Vendetta.) Subjects were willing to administer severe electric shocks to other subjects because they were told the experiment required it and they wanted the experiment to succeed.

    The Nazi regime killed 6 million Jews prior to and during the second World War. Stalin killed 20 million Soviet citizens between 1929 and 1939. Mao Tse-tung killed 34 to 62 million Chinese during the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Marxist regime in Cambodia in the 1970’s killed over 1.7 million of his own people.

    If people who would never consider committing such atrocities have their attitude because of evolution, why were Hitler, and those who carried out his orders, Stalin, and those who carried out his orders, and the others not subject to those same evolutionary imperatives? People are willing to kill for money, sex, material goods, or for no reason at all. We who are not willing, are not because we have been instilled with a higher regard for others from our parents, philosophy, religion or ideology, not because we feel it would most benefit us. Empathy is an anathema to evolution.

    Finally, it was Faora-Ul in the movie who touted her evolutionary advantages and her lack of morality was foremost. Superman, was raised by the Kents who instilled in him values that they possessed, even though his genetics had more in common with Faora-Ul than the Kents because, even though he has been conceived the old fashioned way, presumably Jor-El and Lara had not been.

    • Mindy Newell says:

      @ George: The Nazis killed a total of 11 million people in the concentration camps. 6 million were Jews. 5 million were political dissidents, homosexuals, Catholic priests and nuns, people with disabilities, members of the underground (Poles, French, Italians, etc.), and anyone else who did not goose step to their mad dreams.

      This is from the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

      P.S.: Only the Jews as a group were targeted for genocidal extermination, although I do believe that if the Nazis had won the war and succeeded, other groups would then have been targeted.

      • George Habergerger says:

        Mindy,
        A great book that illustrates the slowly growing horror that was the National Socialist German Workers Party is the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who became involved in a plot to kill Hitler. This was an enormous step for a religious man, but his personal experiences within Germany left him no moral alternative.

      • George Haberberger says:

        Mindy,
        Have you read the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas? It is an amazing look into the slowly growing horror that was the Nazi Party. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who became involved in a plot to kill Hitler. This was an enormous step for a religious man but his experiences in Germany left him with no other moral choice.

  4. mike weber says:

    Yeah, that’s why Heinlein was booed. One of the biggest twits i’ve ever known bragged about doing it, and then, a few years alter, when taxed with it, denied doing it and ever having admitted it.

    I never said that “people who would never consider committing such atrocities have their attitude because of evolution”.

    I said that evolution often selects for altruism; “survival of the fittest” does not mean “survival of the most selfish” (though the Randroids and other Social Darwinists would like to have it so) – it means “survival of those who carry a particular trait” – and it applies in the very long run.

    You’re missing the point, and, based on past experience at PAD’s blog, will probably continue to do so.

    The Nazis did not kill 6 million Jews. They killed 6 million Jews, Poles, homosexuals, blacks and other “undesirables”. Yes, the Jews were the majority, but just being someone they disapproved of could get you on the list.

  5. George Haberberger says:

    I said that evolution often selects for altruism; “survival of the fittest” does not mean “survival of the most selfish” (though the Randroids and other Social Darwinists would like to have it so) – it means “survival of those who carry a particular trait” – and it applies in the very long run.

    In your first post you said, “in many cases, evolution favours traits that can be interpreted as altruistic.” (Emphasis mine)

    Have you read “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins? This seems very similar to his work.
    From his book: ““Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

    Dawkins claimed that he was not saying that genes are driven by any motives or will but can be described as if they were. From Wikipedia: “This view explains altruism at the individual level in nature, especially in kinship relationships: when an individual sacrifices its own life to protect the lives of kin, it is acting in the interest of its own genes.”

    It seems to me that Dawkins was desperately attempting to explain how morality could have a scientific origin.

    And still, evolution ≠ morality, were words given to a “villain” in the movie.

  6. George Haberberger says:

    Sorry for the two similar posts above. When I made the first one, it had,”This post is awaiting moderation” which I didn’t understand since it had no links in it. Later when I looked again, nothing was there at all. I posted again, changing “National Socialist German Workers Party” to Nazi Party and it went up right away.
    If that was the reason for the delay, then of course this post will also be delayed.

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