"You Can't Go Home Again"
written by Matt Fraction
art by Michael Allred
colors by Laura Allred
And this is the fallout. Having just retrieved Bentley-23 from the Negative Zone and saved Medusa from the Wizard's mind control, the New Four are left to piece their duties back together. Medusa's prickly and the manners and cultural practices of the Inhumans are, as their name aptly suggests, difficult for others to understand. Their instinctive deference to royalty is particularly problematic for She-Hulk. Her intentions are well-meaning—placing children back in the care of a woman who just helped kidnap one is difficult to justify—but they're also rigidly uncompromising. Can Medusa be rightly criticized for succumbing to the Wizard's mind control? Would She-Hulk have fared any differently had she been targeted? Her displeasure at the lack of consistent public forum for the Inhumans is ideologically understandable from our Western, democratic perspective, but her personal mistrust of Medusa seems more petty than helpful. Principle, it seems, can be as great a danger as a strength.
And so, re-enter Alex Powers. Having fallen out with Scott Lang over the diplomatic (or lack thereof) policy toward an invasion of Doom's territory, Powers informed Doom of Lang's plans so that he might prepare for it, or even more humorously, inform the U.N. But announcing his intentions to return home, he gets a first-hand glimpse at Doom's particular brand of violently oppressive dictatorship. Alternative forms of government may very often be entirely humane and viable—the Inhumans, arguably, for one—but not all are born equal, and not all should be tolerated. The diving line, however, isn't easy to see.
[August 2013]
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