“Now we are ‘encouraged’ to give up our democratic rights in order to preserve
democracy,” she mused. “Our ‘leaders’ panic and declare war on terrorism to
wipe evil off the face of the earth—it sounds like a bad stupor hero comic . . . ”35
Or, as Tom Hart’s surrogate antihero Hutch Owen grouched, “now we’ll roll over
more countries, drill in Alaska, deny every treaty left standing and re-elect those oil
baron bastards in four years.”36 For my money, the burned-out pessimism expressed
by Fly and Hart holds up better than, say, Joe Kubert’s pious liberalism: “The efforts
of people with conscience will result in a better and stronger nation, and a world that
must eventually live in peace. There is no alternative, after all.”