Angel of Death
In comic books, radiation can give you superpowers. In real life, the only power it will give you is the ability to bleed out of every orifice, and then only for a short time. Likewise, in The Specialists, eugenics is a program of genetic manipulation intended to create super-powered Nazis. But the real Nazi eugenics program was a system of selective breeding intended to create an Aryan race that was taller, blonder, smarter, and more genetically “pure”. They used artificial selection to ensure that their Germanic genes were propagated while inhibiting the “lesser” races through extermination and sterilization. In the meantime, the Nazis put those undesirables to good use through forced labor and medical experiments.
Those who are familiar with WWII history will no doubt have noticed that Doktor Metzger has a lot in common with the real Josef Mengele. That’s no coincidence. In fact, we had initially intended to use Mengele as our mad scientist character. Mengele was not the only scientist conducing medical experiments in the concentration camps, though he has become the most famous. These experiments were often concerned with determining how the human body withstood trauma, when they served any discernible purpose at all. This is ironic, considering that the Nazis didn’t feel that their test subjects were truly human. Here’s a short but grisly list of some of their areas of experimentation:
- Burning subjects with phosphor to test the effects of bomb blasts
- Transplantation of bone, muscle, and nerve tissue from one subject to another
- Beating a subject’s head with a hammer to study head injuries
- Forcing subjects to sit in ice-water for hours to test the effects of hypothermia
- Exposing subjects to mustard gas or poisons
- Giving subjects only salt water to drink, as part of a study into how to make salt water drinkable
- Infecting subjects with malaria and other diseases
And a host of others. Surgeries were generally performed without anesthesia and those subjects that survived injuries or afflictions were usually executed and dissected. I’d say that the test subjects were treated like animals, except that even animals are usually spared such wanton cruelty.
Mengele performed many experiments on identical twins. Their identical genetics made them valuable in tests that were (at least ostensibly) related to heredity. Mengele studied 1,500 pairs of twins while at Auschwitz. Of these, only 100 individuals survived. These twin experiments were some of the most bizarre and of the most dubious scientific value. For instance, chemicals were injected into some subjects’ eyes to see if it would change the eye color. In another case, a pair of twins were surgically conjoined.
Mengele escaped the Allies after the war, and fled to South America under an assumed name. He evaded capture for 34 years, until his death in 1979. He was never punished for his crimes, and apparently never felt remorse.
It made sense, historically, to use Mengele as our mad scientist. But in the end, we felt that turning the real person into a caricature would trivialize the truly horrible things that he did. Real people suffered and died thanks to his experiments, and we didn’t want to to be insensitive to what they went through. (It is for this reason that you will also not see any real concentration camps in the comic.)
Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. In this case, it is also more monstrous.
what happened to “we will show what we have to for the story we want to tell”
That policy still holds. We just decided that we did not want to tell a story that fictionalized certain real people and places.
The statement that you are quoting was in regard to general concepts like violence or coarse language. I have no problem including violence, anti-Semitism, sexism, racism, or foul language in the comic, because all of those things are inherent in the setting. Anyone reading a comic that is set in WWII (or in the 1940s in general) should expect to find these elements.
The difference here is that we’re talking about a specific person. Although Mengele’s existence was also a reality of the war, we just didn’t feel it was right to represent him as a stereotypical “mad scientist”. As I said in my post, it would minimize the real horrors for which he was responsible.
When it comes down to it, we realize that we are telling a superhero story. We do try to give it a grounding in real history, but in the end, it’s still about men and women in silly costumes duking it out. To put real-world evil in our cartoon world would just be disrespectful to those who suffered and died. We didn’t make this decision because we were afraid that people would be offended, but because we found the idea offensive ourselves.
Now, one might argue that based on what I’ve just said, it is also inappropriate to tell stories about Nazis or the Holocaust at all, and that’s a fair point. But Nazis have been co-opted as villains for years now. They are practically a cultural shorthand for the concept of evil, and so again, I consider “Nazis” as a general concept rather than a specific one. And when the story touches on the Holocaust, we hope to treat it with the gravity that it deserves.
Having said all that, I want to make it clear that I am not condemning any stories that may have included fictional versions of real Nazis or concentration camps. I’m simply explaining our own decisions about which lines we are willing to cross. Also, I’m sure that at some point, there will be a character or an event whose inclusion in the comic will contradict what I’ve said here. All I can say to that is, very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.
Actually, there has been some research lately that shows some amounts of radiation may be beneficial. They don’t know where the cutoff is for harmful levels is, but elevated radiation, above the background count on a sunny day, seems to actually be helpful in some regards.
Basically, the researchers noticed that people living about 4-7 miles from ground zero in Hiroshima had really drastically lowered rates for cancer. People 15+ miles away have normal rates, people closer than 4 miles have elevated rates. But in the 4-7 mile range, there’s less than a fifth of the cancer cases you’d expect.
This is all very tentative so far, but it’s fascinating stuff.
Well, okay. But I still say that it will definitely not give you superpowers!
The other thing I’ve always found fascinatingly sad about the Nazis, in terms of irony, is that they never seemed aware that their leaders were mostly men who did not at all resemble the Aryan ideal physical attributes that they espoused. Hitler was a short, dark-haired little man, Goering was fat and bald, Goebels was a balding scarecrow… it is a testament of the ability of human beings to see what they want to see. People who had fallen to a low state in the world from a blistering war *wanted* to believe they were naturally superior and deserved better…wanted to believe the Jews or anyone else was at fault for their situation. They followed the promise of a better life, of hope and pride and restoration, without asking whether it would be achieved in a way that was right and true. It is the easiest path to monstrosity, to begin to believe that the ends justify the means, and that good intentions justify wrongdoing. But it always destroys you in the end, leaving you without truly achieving the dream, and trapped in a nightmare of your own creation from which only the Truth can set you free.
We remember also, however, that there were always the Boenhoffers and Schindlers in Germany…the men and women without the power to halt the spread of evil, who nevertheless saw it for what it was and stood against it, some in secret, some in public, at the risk of their lives. Some were good men from the start, others began believing the lies but their eyes were opened at some point to the truth, and they began to try to do good.