I remain extremely uneasy with the apparent message of Original Sin. It seems to do its utmost to rationalise and endorse torture, and indiscriminatory warmongering and genocide as a form of glorified murderous jingoism.
It all comes across as exactly the kind of propaganda, ideology, and mindset that all true fascists and terrorists tend to use, and it is all made worse by the context that several Marvel writers also routinely tend to thoroughly demonise and humiliate in real life comparatively very harmless mentally ill people (who are already subjected to 11x as much violent crime as average due to the social stigma indoctrinated by world media), and well-intended idealists who want a better world than the one that we live in.
So, given that New Avengers and the upcoming “Time Runs Out” have similar themes, is that what Marvel stands for these days? Hardcore jingoism and amorality, glorified torture, genocide, and warmongering, with a heavy dose of hatespeech, and fighting for an utterly dystopian status quo? How exactly does that make what you stand for any morally different from, for example, Leni Riefenstahl?
If that’s what you took away from ORIGINAL SIN, then that’s what you took away from it–but that assumes that the series took the position that Nick Fury was right in what he did–and I do not believe that to be the case. At the very least, much like the storyline in AVENGERS that you’re talking about, it asks these questions and leaves the answers to the reader, to the audience, to work out for themselves.
It would be nice if we could all live in a simple black-and-white world, but we don’t, and Marvel’s stories have always reflected the truths of the world that we do live in. As such, our characters and our creators are dealing with much murkier themes in 2014 than they may have in, I don’t know, 1987. But even in 1987, the question as to whether the Punisher, or Wolverine was truly heroic in their actions or not was a common theme. To me, this is no different.
And like our creators and like our readers, different Marvel characters are going to have different positions on any of these questions. They’re all going to try to do what’s right, but their interpretation as to what the right thing is to do may vary from person to person–just as it does in the real world.