“Somehow I’m not sure the people who worked for him would agree with you,” she mused. “There’s a difference between small, whiney, everyday evil and the sort of huge overarching thing that,” she swallowed hard, “Thanos is.” She contemplated the floor for a moment. “And it sounds really simple to say that he’s worse, I guess on a direct one-to-one comparison, he is.“But he’s really obvious, you know? It’s easy to point to that, to what he did, and say ‘that’s evil’ and get everyone to fight it. It’s so much harder to get people to even see the kind of evil that simply … doesn’t care, and grinds people down every day, day by day. The little sort of evil that … well, that Stane was. He was only interested in the money, and didn’t care who got hurt in the process.”
“United Way. The Task Force for Global Health. Nature Conservancy. Direct Relief. People notice the ‘small’ things all the time. And I’m not even sure Hammer and Stane qualify as little evil. Stane sold me to terrorists, and engaged in armed combat in a suit of armor in the street, and it took blowing up a building to stop him. Hammer broke Vanko out of prison to prove a point, and gave him all the resources he needed for his romp around the expo.” He glanced around, as if only just noticing that they were still sitting on the floor, but shrugged it off. “I mean, I’m assuming you were there for at least part of that, since you usually handle crowd control and things like that.”
“I remember,” Summer said softly. “Well, the expo, anyway. I wasn’t involved at all before that. Not with you.” She paused, mouth working. “I’m not explaining myself clearly. I don’t know how to say this better. Different. Argh.”