Gunn had teased as much in a recent interview with GQ, calling Earth-X “complicated.” He continued, “I think people think now it’s cut and dried and Auggie’s a Nazi and this and that, and I mean you’re going to get the next episode—it’s not cut and dried. People are complex, people are people.”
In fact, talking about Peacemaker‘s second season with Den of Geek, Gunn said such an approach applied not just to Chris Smith and an alternate universe run by Nazis, but to the entire DCU. “In the DCU in general, we’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality,” he told us. “That’s even with Superman, who’s as good as you can get, or the Justice Gang, who are heroes, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.”
But shouldn’t it be black and white, at least when Nazis are involved? To be sure, Gunn has given us the Nazi-killing goodness we desire, in the wonderful G.I. Robot focused episode of Creature Commandos. However, he’s doing something more complicated and, frankly, more satisfying than just giving us a simple bad guy to punch.
As much as Auggie wants to believe that he’s a good man in a bad place, nothing outside of the speech backs up his claims. Sure, he kills the cops who try to arrest Chris and Harcourt, but he also stabs Economos in the hand. Sure, he talks about trying to raise his boys right, but Keith didn’t hesitate to shout “One got out! A Black!” when he saw Adebayo walking around. Sure, Auggie describes his Earth-One counterpart, a virulent white supremacist, in disparaging terms, but he also describes Earth-One as “a darker world.” Most damning of all, Auggie is a hero, beloved by those in a Nazi world, by those who–as Harcourt observes–have copies of Mein Kampf readily available.
In short, Auggie isn’t nearly the good man he thinks he is. Then again, no one in Gunn’s DCU is, not even Superman. And that’s to Gunn’s credit.
Superhero stories so often give us simple morality, which fits their origin as children’s entertainment or distractions for GIs in World War II. While Gunn’s approach to superhero stories has sometimes veered away from their kid focus in troubling ways, he does shades of moral grey the right way. By showing that Earth-X Auggie isn’t a virtuous hero, Peacemaker reminds us that the work of resisting fascism is ongoing, that it’s not enough to simply intellectually disagree while enjoying all the benefits of an unequal society. By showing us a Superman who isn’t a one-note paragon of good, we gain grace for ourselves and others, reminding us to forgive ourselves and one another when we slip up.
