Eh, only if you deliberately invoke diabolus ex machina. Otherwise, one hero having a bad day gets balanced by other heroes helping keep them stable and/or stopping them cold.
- is not a fan of Irredeemable. . . and considers the Plutonian's attitude towards heroism unhealthy from the getgo*
Diabolus ex machina has nothing to do with it. When you have the ability to crush a tank, you don't get to have bad days the way everybody else has them. As Superman has so kindly reminded us time and time again. A superhero having a bad day can lead to hundreds, thousands, or even millions dead, so it's not so easy as to say "oh well, we'll just fix it". That's not Diabolus Ex Machina—that's just the consequence of dealing with THAT MUCH power.
Then you run into two MORE problems:
1. A Minority Report-like society where people are arrested for things they haven't done yet.
2. Now the people you rely on for your safety fart gigatons instead of megatons.
See, this is why they write plot devices like Kryptonite into super hero stories.
This is also why superheroes should have therapists in their super hero fortresses. I imagine a psychic or some such could make a fairly good career out of doing something like that.
Anyway, even with Superman, nice guy that he is, I wouldn't blame the government for stockpiling Kryptonite just in case. So long as they themselves didn't fall prey to the fear. Seems like most stories featuring governmental caution is just really them jumpstarting the problem they're trying to prevent.
- cough* You don't have to have the Minority Report situation, because you *don't* arrest the people for stuff they haven't done yet. You instead plan and prepare and get in position to stop them when they *do* do something.
I agree with you, but that still hinges on your ability to stop said happening and whether or not said happening was premeditated. In other words, being psychic doesn't mean you have the ability to stop the crime (You Can't Fight Fate is common in precog stories) and it also doesn't solve the problem if the crime is repeatable or premeditated (if Aquaman had been planning to sink Los Angeles for months, and I stop him once, what's stopping him from doing it again?).
Well, nominally, you arrest him and lock him up in Super Jail. Or, depending on the crime and setting, execute him for capital crimes.
Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.comSo,the only option left is mass suicide. Our race can no longer exist without humans and supers tearing each other apart. We should pass away,and wait for another civilization to one day find our once great civilization.
Wait! Maybe we could Take a Third Option! We can mass exile superbeings to another nice planet where they can be happy,which leaves us Earth and we no longer have to worry about the house next door blowing up.
edited 9th Mar '11 3:55:21 PM by TheProffesor
As I said, the absolute best-case, short-term scenario for normals would be to have a way to take away any super's powers at any time. But then, in the long-term, you run into the problem of supers being effectively impotent against most of the threats we need them against. For example, imagine if, in Secret Invasion, the Skrulls had the ability to shut off ALL of Earth's powers at once. Yeah . . .
However, the best-case long-term scenario is to make everyone extranormal gradually. Like I mentioned in another thread, one solution would be to use the resources that superpowers/superscience creates in order to improve the quality of everyday life. For example, make buildings more resistant so that random superhuman battles don't wipe out an entire building. Use some of the same resources you used to teleport Spider-man to Genosha to teleport normals out of danger at the first sign of a crisis. Use the multiverse as an infinite supply of minerals, or use the Shiar/Kree technology to help colonize new worlds. Use whatever Phlebotinum that brought Thor back to life for the thousandth time to bring back innocent civilians who died in the latest Crisis Crossover.
Really, that would be the way to go about it. Instead of forcing normal people to live confined on one single planet, living with the same crappy conditions we do in modern day, use it to improve the overall quality of life so that we become "super" over time, thus narrowing the gap between supers and everyone else.
edited 9th Mar '11 4:18:54 PM by KingZeal
Yes, but it's practically no different than what we do in real life. If modern advancement continues the way it currently is, humans will be able to do some pretty extraordinary things in the future with the help of either genetics, technology or chemistry. However, in comics, these advances are simply more significant and we have a hard time keeping up.
For example, when the automobile was invented, the police actually wanted to ban it because they thought it would make criminals impossible to catch. That sounds ridiculous to us nowadays, but it was a real fear at the time. Likewise with gradual improvement to the quality of life in a superpowered universe. Eventually, living next door to the Avengers will seem less scary when you know that the automatic defenses will teleport you to "Paradise Dimension X343" until the danger has passed or that the government can use some Asgardian elixir to raise your family from the dead.
Zeal, a question. Are you really that sure that having superpowers would inherently make living conditions better for everyone? Superpowers would have an unpredictable effect on the economy, and there's some that are inherently more useful than others. How do you know that the situation wouldn't just change to where those with "useless" abilities or lesser power level just ended up in crappy living conditions. (Whatever the given value of "crappy" is for that setting.)
Mind you, I largely agree with what you said. {{AC:text(I really think that in the DCU they could have colonized Mars and the moon a long time ago. In fact, such would have been a good way to go with the Manhunter's current desire to make the planet livable again, but it's unlikely to go that way.) }}
I think you're missing the point. It's not about entering everyone into the Superpower Lottery. A more accurate statement would be that it's about society itself gaining "superpowers". Unless there was a shift that basically did the opposite of House Of M, with Homo superior becoming the dominant species, a mass empowerment would be more like the Skrulls, with everyone getting a predefined powerset. In this case we're not even talking about that, though. It's more like Reed Richards stops being useless (and also a dick).
As for how the economy would be affected... er... okay? The economy is pretty unpredictable, yes, but that's not really a reason to stop making progress. Quite the opposite, in the modern economic climate (and I mean "modern" in the broader sense) stagnation is death. One of the worst things you could do is be able to build a better mousetrap and then fail to file a patent.
edited 9th Mar '11 6:46:42 PM by Ezekiel
Exactly what Ezekiel said. I'm not talking about giving everyone the Superpower Lottery (at least, not right away). Like I said, the main problem with superhero universes is that society is thrust upon advancement before it's really ready. She-Hulk, for example, was forced to make up legal precedent as she went along because the existence of supranormal and paranormal abilities greatly changed the way law could be practiced. It's why you see so many stories about why the government is powerless to stop X criminal even though, by now, they must have seen this sort of thing 40 or 50 times.
Everyone gaining superpowers would be chaos, because even then you'd have to figure out what base power set they should have. However, by allowing society itself to advance, you can streamline what supranormal abilties you can use to protect the whole of society. If, for example, you figure out how to duplicate Superboy's ability telekinetically shield anything he touches, you can temporarily put an invisible forcefield around an entire city whenever Mongol decides to try and do an encore of Coast City. Again, this would make the entire situation less scary for normals and not require that superheroes pull their punches to keep property and ecological damage down.
edited 9th Mar '11 8:49:31 PM by KingZeal
No matter how you slice it,you're basically talking mass empowering. We have enough issues with the supers we have,making more would bring more villains into the picture,making the battle even bigger,and thus making the universe even more likely to collapse.
The universe just can't handle the power of the supers. The power they hold is too much for a fallible being.
However,I do not believe it to be right to eliminate them.
We must Take a Third Option.
It's not... mass... empowerment. Is driving a superpower? No. How about knowing the time via use of a clock? That's not a superpower, that's something everyone can fucking do. The ability to operate a gun? Potentially dangerous in the wrong hands, yes. Superhuman, no, unless you have Improbable Aiming Skills.
That's what you're saying, though. Right now. You are saying the natural progression of technology is equivalent to giving people superpowers. Which by extension implies that driving, telling time, and using a gun are all superpowers.
But, frankly, a mass empowerment would be the best way to stop supercrime, by narrowing the gap. If everyone is on even footing, supervillains become less of a problem because they don't inherently have the upper hand over their would-be victims.
edited 11th Mar '11 10:11:22 PM by Ezekiel

Some of that is arguable bad writing more than anything else. Thing is, even with stuff like that, its *still* irrational to fixate on controlling superheroes. Put bluntly, civic minded superheroes are the only reason the entire 616 universe still *exists*. Nevermind if this is hypothetically bad for the idea of rule of law; a wide and sundry array of superheroes are basically irreplaceable for continued existence.
Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com