Happy New Year!
So, the conundrum is do we accept that time unfolds as it should, and move forward, or, given the requisite technology, do we decide that time can, and should, be re-written?
One of the things that comics, and Marvel comics particularly, do quite well is to dwell on the question of how much responsibility should come with great power. And by power, one might well mean Hulk-like strength, or simply a genius intellect. Does one have a responsibility to use these gifts in the service of humanity? Does one have a responsibility to make decisions based on factors that these gifts make apparent? That second one is where I've found Marvel comics of late have dwelt. Hickman's entire run on New Avengers was this question wrapped up in spandex. This issue of Age of Ultron also asks this question, couched in the question I opened the post with - while Nick Fury takes the heroes into the future to confront Ultron, Wolverine asks the question of whether or not it might make more sense to just re-write time, given that they have the tools to do so.
The trouble with asking this question is that it leads to the larger moral questions that might crop up in such a situation in the real world: if we can do this, shouldn't we go and kill Hitler and save millions of lives? Of course, then come the ramifications - what would the world look like without the Second World War having happened? Are we willing to give up what we have now, risk our very existences, to stop a madman from attempting genocide just shy of a century ago?
It's an impossible question. Which is why we have superhero comics, to ask these very things.
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