Why does Superman get deconstructed?

But who decides what laws don't work? Are any laws that Superman personally disagrees with automatically considered such? And, if so, how is that any different from a Superman dictatorship?

At what point does a superhero have to take his moral principles and swallow them because the rest of the country says he's wrong?

edited 12th Nov '12 11:46:57 AM by TobiasDrake

It depends.

Laws which are likely to overlook or endanger the freedom, equal opportunities or well-being of a deserving citizen are those that should be ignored or fought against within any civil restraints available, and only employing force if necessary.

It's similar to military law; a soldier gets to make the call when an order or expectation interferes with their ability to serve and protect the public trust. Soldiers are discouraged (on paper) from blindly following orders without question, because Just Following Orders does not assuage liability from wrongdoing in military or civilian law.

The downside is that you are expected to take full responsibility for your actions. If you believe that your actions were justified, the court system will provide you a fair trial (again, on paper) to make your case. If the courts find that you were wrong, you pay your debt to society.

For a very, very good example of this done right, there's Captain America The First Avenger, where Steve blatantly disobeys orders from a superior officer (though not one he served under at the time) to rescue live POW, succeeds, and then immediately goes back to the Colonel and surrenders himself for disciplinary action.

THAT is how it's done.

edited 12th Nov '12 12:34:18 PM by KingZeal

During John Byrne's Legends series, circa 1986, superheroes had been outlawed through the machinations of Darkseid and Glorious Godfrey, and, while some honored the measure, others (notably Batman, natch) ignored it; Superman appeared before Congress to try to talk them out of it.

I would love to see a story of Superman engaging in civil disobedience. Imagine the authorities jailing him, and him periodically breaking out to avert some disaster, then coming back and surrendering himself again.

Even in a civil society, you can break the law in a responsible manner, so long as you're willing to answer for it. As the saying goes, "In life, take what you like, but be ready to pay for it."

"Endangering freedom" can be a sticky subject, though. In the United States at least, every law restricts freedom in a way that is meant to be beneficial to the community as a whole, as determined by those members of that community who have been elected to represent them. It's actually not possible to have a law that doesn't restrict freedom in some way, shape, or form.

The other problem is that it's rare to see superheroes accept responsibility for their actions. If they were willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of superheroing, they wouldn't have secret identities to begin with.

Would Superman really protest a law he disagreed with from the interior of a prison cell? Or would he rationalize that it's better for the world if he's in it, and thus use his powers to ensure that nobody could lock him up?

If he did surrender, would he be willing to remain in that cell while a plane crashes and kills hundreds of people? Or would he break out so he could go rescue them, thus rendering his imprisonment a token gesture and invalidating the entire point of surrendering to the law to begin with? And would he be wrong to do so?

edited 12th Nov '12 1:24:04 PM by TobiasDrake

Again, it depends. The key thing is that the protesting party would need to do everything in their power to work within the system until circumstances force them to do otherwise. Yes, laws by nature restrict some freedoms for the public good, but that doesn't mean that civil liberties, equal opportunities or well-being gets trampled for it.

Not exactly. Superman (whom this topic is about) usually doesn't have a secret identity to escape responsibility. He has one for personal reasons; really, Superman's identity is more of a double life. Superman, who engages the public trust and employs the cooperation of the law, is an accountable individual. Superman has professional connections, allies within authority, and public concessions made to help make his job easier.

Spider-man is someone where I'd agree with you. He has none of that. No official ties, no public concessions, and most authority figures who would vouch for his character don't actually have any authority to revoke or invest in him. And it's one of the reasons I feel the character is grossly outdated. However, there's a reasonable argument to be made for someone who is above the system, as Marvel has a clear problem with shadow conspiracies and powerful criminals who can get to anyone to make a point.

Again, it depends. If there's a volcano exploding in California and thousands of at lives are at stake, I think anyone who argued for keeping the guy who is willing to stop it free of charge locked in his cell just until the crisis was averted would look like the biggest idiot humanity has ever known.

That would invalidate nothing. Superman would be locked in his cell to demonstrate that he's willing to keep his personal movements grounded barring a more urgent crisis. If Superman ducked out to stop a meteor from crashing into the Earth and then never came back, then yeah, MAYBE people should call bullshit. But then again, if he hadn't, they wouldn't be alive to do so.

edited 12th Nov '12 1:52:26 PM by KingZeal

That is a fair point. Superman is a public figure, moreso than most superheroes.

But that's just it: In both of those examples, Superman is placing himself above the law. It comes down to a conflict between obeying the law and doing good. If Superman is breaking out of jail to do good, then he places himself above the law; the law holds no power over Superman.

As an example: let's say that someone invents a prison that can actually hold Superman. Once he's placed himself inside it, he can never leave it until the government releases him. He can't break out to stop a meteor or a volcano explosion; like any other prisoner, he will remain in his cell until his release, regardless of what happens to the world around him.

If Superman were protesting the law and accepting the consequences of acting outside of it, would he be willing to surrender himself to such a prison, and put the fate of world in the world's hands, that they may decide if Superman should be released to stop the abovementioned volcano? Or would he decide that he knows better; that his sense of justice is more valid than the rest of the world's, and that he should be free to do good wherever he pleases, regardless of what the law says on the matter?

edited 12th Nov '12 2:21:35 PM by TobiasDrake

Well, see, the thing is that there are dozens of superheroes capable of doing that stuff. I suspect he'd put his faith in Supergirl and Superboy and Power Girl to take care of it for him.

edited 12th Nov '12 2:30:48 PM by Wackd

Well, that's sort of side stepping the question. More accurately, I think that Superman would Be perfectly justified in breaking himself out of prison.v As I said, the objective is to work with in the law as much as possible but if the law is insubstantial, You have to go with your gut.

The same is true of ordinary civilians in everyday life. And especially military officers. They are given power to work outside of the law when necessary and to take the law with in their own hands. How ever there have to be some kind of repercussions for their actions even if it just means going to court. In the end, if you are looking for some sort of absolute morality, then that is not the world we live in.

edited 12th Nov '12 2:49:02 PM by KingZeal

That's more or less the point I was trying to make: that there isn't an easy answer. Whether superheroes should be within the law or above it is difficult to answer, and pushing too hard in either direction can end disastrously.

EDIT: Personally, I think the answer is to put a badge on Superman's chest, but my experience has noticed that there aren't a lot of people who would want to read about super-cops.

edited 12th Nov '12 2:57:40 PM by TobiasDrake

No, there is no perfect answer. However, There are some courses of action which are clearly better than others. In particular, I personally think that the answer is somewhere between the two problems. I think Superman and other heroes like him would work best as quangos. Those aregovernment empowered private individuals who serve a public good. They are given substantial amount of power in exchange for accountability. It is similar to feudalism. The only problem, is that the person abusing their power but you still need them, then you are fucked.

edited 12th Nov '12 3:20:17 PM by KingZeal

I could definitely get behind that. Especially with how many of them there are in both the Marvel and DC Universe; in either case, the character is not operating out of a vacuum.

If Superman gets out of control, there's an army of other superheroes who could take him down. The Shared Universes have always worked that way; it's just that they do so under their own authority that creates the government conflict.

I don't expect that will ever actually be resolved, though; removing the government conflict would take away a very popular avenue of conflict for storytelling.

Golden Age Superman was perfectly willing to violate the law if he thought the law was sheltering immorality. Action Comics 1 has him juggling an arms manufacturer on telephone lines in order to get a confession out of him.

Morrison even lampshaded this in his AC 1 where Supes does the same thing and afterwards cops tell Glennmorgen not to worry because there's no way such intimidation is admissible in court.

I think the law-abiding Superman started with Byrne. I remember in Generations Superman volunteers to be exiled to the Phantom Zone because it's possibly he unconscious committed murder rather than mere self-defense. He argues that higher standards have to be applied to him because of his powers. I assume that kind of characterization is consistent through his work?

edited 12th Nov '12 5:39:24 PM by Distortion00

Actually, the law-abiding Superman started decades before Byrne. The outlaw Superman vanished around the time the US entered WWII. By the early 50's, you started to hear about his oath never to take a life. In Generations, I think Byrne was using Superman's Silver-Age characterization.

In fact, until Byrne, Superman DID have a semi-official status as something of the "hero-at-large" for Earth; the UN had granted him universal citizenship and he worked in co-operation with law enforcement around the globe. Byrne's Man of Steel had Superman being deputized by the Mayor of Metropolis to arrest Lex Luthor.

As a bit of a side note, remember that people are brought to trial when there's a question of whether or not they've broken the law and, if they have, to provide them with the opportunity to defend their actions. One of the reasons why our judicial system is structured the way it is is because it's understood (or should be) that one may have an excellent reason for breaking the law, and if it's an excellent enough reason the state may decide one was right to (or at least should be forgiven for) doing so.

Well, of *course* if Superman goes political, it'll be moderately leftish. That's the views of most comics writers.

Just pointing out that without that assumption, a lot of people calling for him to go political wouldn't like it.

I'd love a right-wing Superman, he'd be hilarious.

Superman's politics actually look a bit more like this:

I can agree with this. Trying to put a right-wing political message into comics in general would probably go about as well with the writers as...well, as Civil War did. Superheroes as a genre tend to favor the left-wing more than the right-wing, particularly as it pertains to civil liberties versus government power.

If writers favored the right-wing, I think we'd probably be seeing a lot more government-sponsored heroes and super-police than vigilante superheroes.

Either that or the government would suddenly become Strawman Politicals in the leftist camp, overrun with blue-collar crime and media that is strictly Bread and Circuses, and superheroes would be the The Chosen Many leading the hopeless masses back on track.

Frank Miller tends to write stuff that has this vibe to me.

edited 4th Dec '12 12:14:07 PM by KingZeal

If we're going to discuss Super-politics then terms need to be defined.

Right wingers and left wingers don't disagree on principle. Both groups believe in reasonable self defense, breaking up corporations with unfair advantages, and standing up for the little guy.

The difference is that they interpret those points very differently. A lot of the political tone tends to be how things are cashed out.

I'm skeptical to say that they both agree on even those things.

The only thing they both agree on is that the other side "sounds good until you think a little".