Might As Well Hash It Out

I mentioned yesterday that I occasionally feel odd rooting for the Secret Six, given their past histories. It's silly, in a certain sense. Yeah, the entire team has killed or maimed people at some point, but, you know so has Frank Castle*. For that matter, so did Clint Eastwood in any number of his movies. Well sure, you say, but those were bad guys, but at least some of the people the Six have disposed of were criminals, right?

As much as I pick on it, Bane's parental concern for Scandal isn't the issue. I think it's little things (and isn't it always little things with me?), how they react to random people they come across. I distinctly recall being put off by Deadshot pointing his gun at the hotel staff - who had offered him one of those lemon-scented, hand moistened towels - and demanding one of the aforementioned towels. While those towels do sounds quite pleasant, it wasn't as if the employee had disposed of the towel. he was standing there, still holding it, waiting for Floyd to stop his vomiting (and internal monologuing) long enough to respond in the affirmative or the negative about the towel. Even that feels like an odd reaction to me, because I wasn't really bothered by Floyd robbing the convenience store in #1**.

I think the difference in the two sequences is that one person just happens to be around Floyd, while the other is actually trying to be helpful to him, and Floyd still points his gun at him, when really, all he needed to do was take the towel. I find myself comparing it to the Punisher in the Man of Stone arc, when he learns a lot about Zakharov from that journalist, and then warns the journalist to go home, for his own safety. The journalist didn't listen, and Zakharov had him killed, but Frank at least tried to help him out.

It's that lack of compassion towards random people that makes my rooting for them, or feeling empathy for them, more difficult. Not impossible, and not frequently, but every so often they remind me they aren't nice people. Which is as it should be, since they aren't really nice people, even to each other (sometimes). If they were, the book probably wouldn't be as interesting, but it does produce a certain disconnect for me with the characters.

* I wouldn't be surprised if Frank's body count exceeds the Six' combined total.

** I was a little disturbed by his response to Catman's "lost child" hypothetical, where he seemed to equate not going out of his way to run the child over with "helping". For some reason, I thought that was cold, even for Deadshot.