Elizabeth,

I have seen Iron Man, and it's certainly worth the ticket price. While no philosophical tour-de-force, As Barbara Nicolosi said, Iron Man is "a fun diversion and harmlessly nonsubstantial for those who like that sort of thing."

As a comic book fan, what I have never detected in Iron Man, or Spiderman, or the Fantastic Four, is a specifically Catholic sensibility. I don't think Stan Lee - who is Jewish - brought that to the table with his creations.

And yet, what he did bring to his characters was depth. Conflict. Inner turmoil. The notion that "Great power brings great responsibility" and that a hero, acting selfishly, could not only be his own worst enemy, but through his neglect, could negatively impact a world that fate had given him the ability to protect.

In a word, the stories of Marvel characters had very much to do with redemption.

Fallen man redeemed is what all good Catholic fiction - in the broadest sense of the word - should have at its core. No matter how dark the protagonist, regardless of whether there is a happy ending, the search for redemption (or the consequences of attempting to run from it, a flip-side of the same coin) is pivotal in creating believable, likable characters.

We are inundated in this post-modern age with stories of anti-heroes. From L.A. Confidential to Sin City, Fight Club to Kill Bill, our popular culture bombards us with action heroes who are very hard to like, much less care about. They are "heroes" without consequences, for whom great power and great responsibility are not intrinsically linked or even cared about. Self-gratification is the ultimate goal, and revenge, double-crossing, and using people are all means to that end, if not the end itself.

This is where the Marvel heroes are different. They are a Greek pantheon of flawed characters torn between vice and virtue, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Iron Man is quite a lot like Batman, only more altruistic. Bruce Wayne is driven to fight crime by the memory of his parents' senseless murder; Tony Stark is motivated by the realization that he needs to, as a friend of mine likes to put it, finally "use his super powers for good." The fact that his super powers are his brains, wealth, and military-industrial empire doesn't diminish the fact that he's outside the norm. He is a man apart, haunted by the realization that his weapons were being visited on the world without accountability, leading to countless unnecessary deaths.

This is a theme seen elsewhere in popular fiction, not only in America. In Japan, a well-liked anime series known as Ruroni Kenshin follows the exploits of a Ronin, a wandering samurai, who seeks to atone for the brutal assasinations that were his charge as a young Hitokiri - a manslayer - during the Bakumatsu revolt that ushered in Japan's Meiji period. With a special sword forged with a reverse-blade, Kenshin protects the weak from the predatory using non-lethal force, every battle leaving the sharp-edge of his katana closer to himself than to his adversary. In a sense, his self-focused weapon keeps at bay the beast within while he defends those without. (Is Iron Man's armor any different?) 

While none of these stories are Catholic in the strictest sense, they are nonetheless compatible with a Catholic outlook on the world, on sin, and on violence. The struggle for men to overcome their sins and do good with the gifts they have been given is a quintessential part of who we are, and atonement always comes at a price.

It also makes for good storytelling.