TIME.com — Andrew Arnold: Heavy

Andrew Arnold is clearly a person with his own personal hobby horse. He’s reviewing “Concrete” but he’s already got his mind made up about the worth of superhero comics and anything that is owned by a corporation. He feels they would never address something like abortion in comics, because it would get in the way of selling “product.” Of course, Wonder Woman’s been speaking at the U.N. about “women’s reproductive rights” for years, though never so explicitly that a portion of her readers could be driven away.

Simply put, if a stand on an issue is going to sink a character’s viability, why have that character take a stand on the issue? If Paul Chadwick creates Concrete as a vehicle for social commentary, then he’s pursuing the chunk of the market he wants. Why should DC take Superman and use him to talk about abortion and honk off so many potential customers?

DC would never have Superman talk about abortion anyway. Superman’s always struck me as a Democrat, but when it comes to abortion…well, he’s Superman. He won’t kill the worst of the worst bad guys (and he’ll stop you if you try to kill them, too), but you think he’ll sanction terminating a fetus because the mother doesn’t like what gender it’s going to be? I’m not even talking about morals and ethics here; just consider the facts. He’s got X-ray microscopic vision and superhearing, plus Mark Waid introduced this thing where Superman sees lifeforce auras around living creatures (which is why Superman won’t even eat meat these days). Many women can’t go through with an abortion if they see their unborn babies in one of these new-fangled 3-D ultrasounds; how much more tuned-in to the unborn would Superman be? Since Superman would logically have to take a position contrary to the leanings of just about everyone at DC that they’d never have Superman address the issue.

Then again, what do I know? Superheroes never act the way reasonable deductions would dictate or Ralph would have swung that mace at Dr. Light’s head a few more times and ended “Identity Crisis” with issue #2.

ADDITIONAL: I should mention that Superman’s books have, since 1986, been openly critical of one life issue: cloning. Krypton was ripped apart by clone wars (real clone wars, as in “wars over the issue of cloning”) and Superman has always been rather sensitive to the issue of cloning and bio-ethics. And that was years before cloning became an actual issue in the real world!