Superhero Breakdown

Plants are essentially blank slates as far as most humans are concerned. They don't communicate in a way that humans can easily notice and mostly just sit there. They don't even have faces for us to project emotions on to (something that I'm sure any pet owner will be familiar with.) As such, when plants are anthropomorphized the results tend to be much more direct in their inspiration whenever they're more than just a man in a plant suit. A freshly emerged swamp thing in The Saga of the Swamp Thing (1982) #21 tries to be more than just a man in a suit. Alan Moore was part of a team that revolutionized The Swamp Thing with DC. They aimed to transform them from just some guy that got turned into plants instead into something different. Part of this revamp involved the introduction of a communal plant hive-mind of sorts known as "the green" which spans the globe. It can be argued that this was an attempt to distance the plants from traditional human intelligence...

Mr. Sinister in Powers of X uses genetic experiments in a way that is sometimes silly and sometimes cruel, but a look at his decision making can be used to shine a light on a larger issue in the ethics of genetic manipulation in people: Who gets to call the shots? A Mr. Sinister clone not calling the shots in Powers of X #4 Proponents of human genetic manipulation often tout benefits such as the curing of genetic diseases, but the question that stems from this is what counts as a disease that needs to be cured? At first this may seem silly, "well obviously cancer or HIV risk" some might fairly say, however others may go further. Schizophrenia has some genetic component , autism has some as well, even sexuality and gender are sometimes deemed to have a genetic component. Which of these are diseases? Which should be cured if any? Look at the states across the world trying to ban LGBT people from public life, clearly some would view it in such a way. This simple thought expe...