Page - 68 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

68 | Toufic El-Khoury www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 59–74 aspects of the problem of evil, also discussed by Christian theology: moral evil (the inability of humans to free themselves from sin, a constituent part of their nature) and metaphysical evil (is evil a part of God’s creation?). those two as- pects, frequently illustrated in American comics, are tightly linked in many ani- mated adaptations of the DC Universe, whose generic syntax they refine. Concerning moral evil, the first aspect, we find a general feeling of fatalism evident in comics and their adaptations, and notably in the DC Comics–adapted story arcs. This feeling links the modern superhero to anti-heroic figures popu- lar in classical genres such as film noir of the 1940s: anti-heroes are aware of the inevitable failure of their actions, but are also unable to act in any other way. robert Pippin, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, raises the issue of agency in a series of classic films noirs, asking, “What could action and agency at all look like where there is almost no credible sense of any ‘space of possibility’ left; when the suspicion is that the very idea of someone running the show, leading his or her life, begins to look naïve or self-deceived?”21 in the contemporary superhero genre, this question is picked up in the pro- tagonists’ seeing their area of action and influence gradually reduced, which is tragic considering that their archetype is defined by altruistic intentions. With a character like Owlman, the monstrous double of a superhero with an already dominant shadow side, this discovery only leads to a radical re-evaluation of free will, and by extension of humanity. Concerning metaphysical evil, the second aspect, DC Comics’ Multiverse re- minds us of the central argument of Gottfried Leibniz’s Theodicy, and the as- sertion that our world is “the best of all potential worlds”. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician, participated in a theological debate related to the co-existence of evil and God in a world created by the latter. Like many theologians of his time, Leibnitz was eager to resolve the question of the existence of moral evil (sins, injustices) and physical evil (sufferings) in a world created by an omnipotent God, but he faced a problematic contradiction in the New testament’s having elevated the attributes of good and love in God to absolutes.22 to the question of why God allows evil in a world God had the power to create perfect, Leibniz maintained that the existence of evil is necessary, evil being the criteria by which good acts are evaluated. functioning like the weight on a scale, it allows the positive of humanity to be gauged. God must have assessed the different possible combi- 21 Pippin 2012, 10–11. 22 Even if theodicy as the “justification of God” already existed in Greek and Latin philosophy, it was with the rise of monotheistic religions, and the defence of an all-powerful and omnibenevolent God that this question became more and more pressing for dogmatic thought.