Real Life Politics in Comics

ETA: Nothing to see here, folks...

edited 8th Jul '17 4:37:17 PM by Rubber_Lotus

Alan Moore ripping off himself?

Aww, shit, never mind. I meant to post that in the Batman discussion thread.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here...

Regarding morality-flipped elseworlds, I've mused before how comics are rather enamored with the idea of privileged heroes fighting downtrodden villains. There's this nigh-feudal framework where high-born nobles square off against villainous upstarts, which is not so much out of place in modern society, but is rather unrealistic in its own right. In real life, it's typically the self-made tech tycoons that donate billions to charity and fund various scientific and social projects, all while the old-money pseudo-nobles are more concerned with maintaining their own wealth and status. In fiction, it's more likely for this to be presented as visionary villains fighting the heroic supporters of the good old ways, if only because maintaining the status quo is usually a franchise staple.

So I was thinking, rather than directly flip the morals of established heroes and villains, what would the landscape be if the very concepts they are built on are revised instead. Meaning, say, Bruce Wayne is a ghetto-born teen genius well on his way to fortune and glory, but a fateful night his parents are killed by the psychotic yet legally-immune son of a high city official. Exiling himself from society, Bruce builds his fortune abroad while training himself in all physical and mental disciplines, preparing to return to Gotham as the Batman, taking on not the city's underbelly, but the corrupt ivory towers that created it.

Now, this may be better placed in the reinvention ideas thread, but I find it serves a better purpose to illustrate how the traditional archetypes themselves can have a ton of political implications, and that averting them can still create the familiar superhero experience while sending a far more relatable message... especially as "wait and hope for a good rich guy to make things right'' is kinda running out of steam these days.

Which villains are downtrodden? If you're just talking about Batman, I can see you're point, but I don't think that's the case at all with most other heroes. Except maybe Wonder Woman (I'm an emissary from an isolated, separationist culture here to show you Patriarchal idiots what's what).

The permutation of Batman you describe sounds a lot like the character Hardware from Milestone Comics.

edited 10th Jul '17 9:00:47 AM by Robbery

Let's just say it's easier to list the villains that don't come from backgrounds of poverty and abuse, than those who do. A personal favorite parallel is between Xavier and Magneto, where one is a wealthy heir and even his mutant ability can be used in plain sight with none the wiser, and the other is a Holocaust survivor persecuted even after the war. Now, this is probably meant to illustrate how one should not give in to extremism and vengeance, even after suffering great abuse... However, it just doesn't work all that well if the respective counter-example never encountered any comparable problems to begin with. But if you flip them - if you pit the persecuted idealist who still clings to some hope, against the privileged megalomaniac convinced that his highborn status should grant him immunity for any atrocity of his whim... then you have something I'd say a lot more relatable to modern audiences, and society in general.

I can see your point in regards to Magneto and Xavier, but for Magneto to function as he's intended to function these days (not a straight-up villain, but a Well-Intentioned Extremist) I'd say it'd be better to make them both survivors of tragedy. Magneto has to be somewhat sympathetic or else he can't function the way he's supposed to. If he's not a persecuted concentration camp survivor, he's just an empowered ass. The idea is to portray both Magneto and Xavier as having valid points of view. As for the X-Men themselves, most of them certainly aren't from privileged backgrounds.

There's Lex Luthor. Last time I checked, he came from a poor home with abusive parents, but managed to rise above that to become a successful entrepreneur. Veronica Cale is by design the same, but with an added feminist angle. Doctor Doom's parents were the exact opposite of abusive, but they were both poor and Romani; this means that when he first appeared, he would have been a holocaust survivor, and even today his people are spat upon. Even Doctor Octopus, while perhaps not rich, came from a poor, violent family background, though at least in his case his enemy is also poor.

It comes from wanting to give the villains some depth, and a freudian excuse does help, but at some point it strays into social Darwinism when every poor person except Uncle Ben is portrayed as cyclically abusive.

For a worthwhile exploration of that, Kingsman: The Secret Service does a good job of showing that there are good and bad people at all social classes, but it's much easier for upper-class villains to do long-reaching damage.

edited 10th Jul '17 11:53:14 AM by VampireBuddha

Kingsman is a good example. As satisfying as it likely would be for some, there's no real benefit to portraying all your heroes as being from one class, and all your villains as being from another.

Whether Luthor is from a poor background or not depends on which version you're talking about. Marvel, I think, has a more visible array of working class heroes (Captain America, Spider-Man, and Reed Richards all came from humble circumstances). At DC it frequently gets forgotten that Hal Jordan is from a large, working class family (something the much-maligned film actually got right about him), and no one ever seems to make much out of the Kent's economic status (if they're private farmers, then they're fortunate if they're able to make a living). From what I understand, part of the director's plan for the upcoming Nightwing film is to make a point of the difference between Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne's social standing, contrasting Dick as an itinerant circus performer against Bruce's old money.

edited 10th Jul '17 12:43:35 PM by Robbery

I don't think Kingsman's villain was particularly upper class. He was a tech tycoon, likely self-made given his otherwise behavior - that is, SLJ at his SLJ-siest. Meanwhile, Eggsy was the embodiment of the bog-standard changeling fantasy, where he's really only important because of his parentage, though at least he had some athletic ability of his own. And yes, the film wasn't too kind on the stuffy upper-class twits either, this being part and parcel for British public school stories long before Harry Potter broke out the leather pants. This time around, it simply has James Bond martini flavor instead.

The conclusion can be drawn that just as abusive childhood is used as a lazy way to explain villainy, so is a pseudo-privileged background tacked onto most heroes, where their parents did most of the heavy lifting, and there's the nice bonus of identity issues to be milked for further drama. However, I find that at some point this writing crutch becomes toxic, in that it brings about the aforementioned unfortunate implications that characters are thoroughly defined by their parentage and, essentially, what other people did for and to them, rather than their own personal accomplishments. What I want to find out if it can be avoided altogether without losing the actual story staples of the genre.

For that matter, James Bond himself now has two films in a row focusing on his family issues and how he's (are you friggin' kidding me!) his arch-nemesis's adopted brother. Because, y'know, being a sexy superspy saving the world isn't interesting enough nowadays, and what people really want to see is soapy drama literally ripped-off from the parody of the franchise, only played seriously. And to think Craig started out as supposedly grounded and realistic... how the mighty have (Sky)fallen.

Bond's pretty much been scrambling for relevance since the Berlin Wall fell, so we can hardly fault him for trying to hitch his wagon to whatever action cinema deems the "in" thing now. Heck, didn't Casino Royale only get rave reviews because people saw it as Bourne 2.5?

On that note - it's probably a pipe dream as long as the character remains out of the Public Domain, but I'd really like Bond to be relegated to a Period Piece character like Sherlock Holmes typically is. His shtick really worked best against the backdrop of the Cold War, where Western intelligencers could treat exotic locales as their personal playgrounds without the slightest Unfortunate Implications.

Well, if it's any consolation, the world seems to be working really hard on Cold War 2.5 anyway, so Bond may yet become relevant again.

That tends to be something that plagues superheroes as well, only on both ends of the equation. In more peaceful periods, people don't really need that kind of escapist power fantasy to begin with; and in times of high crime rate like the late eighties and early nineties, they tend to go for the more violent vigilantes rather than the clear cut capes.

As a result, traditional superheroes have to fight both irrelevance and obsolescence, only the way they go about it - with ham-fisted aesops about how only their kind of heroes are good and proper, and nobody else should encroach on their territory, and governments best not meddle in their affairs either, etc. etc. - often makes the situation even worse.

More importantly though, the very implication that they essentially fight for their own status and benefit, rather than actually consider the needs of other people - in-universe as well as editorially - is what ultimately gets audience interest waning with little hope for recovery. Even Bond's got nothing on that sort of problem.

edited 10th Jul '17 10:12:24 PM by indiana404

DC's Superheroines Are Becoming a Badass Anti-Fascist Biker Gang in the New Gotham City Garage Series

http://io9.gizmodo.com/dcs-superheroines-are-becoming-a-badass-antifa-biker-ga-1796989362

You know writers, if you're going to do anti-fascist stories it would help if you actually knew the whole "fascist dictatorships are harsh on freedom and dissidents, but they do make trains run on time" thing is propaganda. Fascist dictatorships are absolutely terrible for infrastructures. If you live in a fascist dictatorship, even if you keep your head down, chances are you are starving.

edited 17th Jul '17 3:33:50 PM by windleopard

I'm cautiously optimistic. Perhaps this could start off showing a Pinochet-style regime where it all looks good for those who keep their heads down, but slowly the cracks appear as you get more familiar with it.

I really don't want them to based them on Antifa, because they are getting a reputation for becoming very violent.

Plus it sounds like a rip-off of Motorcity, so it's not like they're aiming for originality.

Regarding Fascism, I notice occidental fiction has the tendency to present it as this cold and emotionless but orderly regime, whereas in reality it more or less runs on hot blooded polemics and loud patriotic fervor to cover up the total chaos within. For that matter, writers in general tend to interpret words like "logical", "rational", and "efficient", respectively as "ruthless", "heartless", and in lieu of more imaginative descriptors, "evil". I understand why people of the artistique persuasion might like the idea of highly emotional free spirits challenging the oppressive system ran by cold and emotionless stoics... Thing is, real life history has amply demonstrated that the most oppressive regimes tend to be precisely those ran by self-styled emotional free spirits.

And from a personal perspective, whenever I see a story about brave rebels fighting the oppressive government, I can't help but ask what their endgame is should they actually succeed. I suppose enduring a less than joyful transition from dictatorship to democracy would do that, to the point where if I don't see some actual leadership skills in the main cast, I'm more likely to root for the villain.

edited 18th Jul '17 12:52:15 AM by indiana404

The part that caught my attention was that Batman was going to be Luthor's chief enforcer. I'm rather curious to see if DC will actually allow Batman to be a villainous stooge, or if he's going to (inevitably, and yet again) end up to be the secret ultra-badass running the rebellion from the shadows.

Why is this even set in Gotham if Luthor is the main villain and they're not just limiting themselves to Bat characters?

Because, as the writer of Gotham Academy (I think it was) once said: all roads lead to Batman.

Well, it would be a pretty short series if Superman were involved. Most of the time, he restrains himself from acting explicitly against the law. In a state of abject tyranny, however, he'd likely be more proactive. If anything, that might be the setup - Luthor has found a way to disable Superman, and now focuses more on Gotham.

It still sounds kinda dumb, though. Everyone and their grandma has done the brave rebels against the tyrannic government in the past five years, Trying to catch up to the trend right now is making DC look even more desperate for relevance than usual.

I think they should have made this like Old Man Logan where several villains have taken over as opposed to one. Or hell, if you have to use just one villain have it be someone like Darkseid who's basically the personification of tyranny.

Although it is possible in this continuity that none of them have super powers.

in fairness it's not like heroes fighting oppressive governments was a trend that started just five years ago. Or will really end. I just hope this one at least is able to pull it off.

edited 20th Jul '17 1:32:28 AM by windleopard

Quite. The reason I find it less than believable for the big-hitter superheroes is that half of them can either easily topple or just buy any government they disagree with. Makes sense to focus on the lower end of the power scale.

A train of thought in another thread led me to an interesting question better discussed here. Namely, for all the discussions over whether superhero activities should be legalized or supervised and whatnot, is it really that necessary for them to be officially considered legal in the first place? Most of their activities are done with no assistance from civil authorities, a lot of them have secret identities in place precisely so they may lead civilian lives when there's no emergency to act on, and the more aggressive ones have no problem being regarded as outlaws anyway.

I reckon most of the current situation is grandfathered from the Silver Age, when superheroes were meant as lighthearted family-friendly entertainment. Never mind the Bat-signal, the atmosphere was casual enough for Batman to be on a direct line with the Gotham mayor. I imagine it was also good for toy-line deals, being easier to market them as all-ages-friendly morally pristine paragons.

Nowadays, however, with everyone trying to play these aspects seriously, the result is mostly hit and miss. The only actual function of superheroes having a quasi-legal status seems to be for the DC capes and Superman in particular to crash the UN assembly and hold grand speeches about what grinds their gears; all while Marvel is trying to rip-off Game of Thrones by turning everyone into a scheming asshole until the White Walkers Hulk would come along and smash them out of it.

In short, do superheroes actually need any political conveniences and adjustments in order to function as superheroes? I'm pretty sure the answer wouldn't be universal for all of them, but I wonder if the current situation isn't overly complicated for its own sake, and couldn't be simplified by just accepting they work better as outlaws or government agents, without always trying to play both fields.

By having the superhero legalized it erases or softens some of the more problematic implications that some characters might have or gives them at least some pretense of authority to do things like applying lethal force or whatever.

But I agree that for some characters it's fine to just accept they are outlaws. The Punisher for example works perfectly fine the way he is because it's always very upfront who he is and what he does.

edited 20th Jul '17 3:52:41 AM by Draghinazzo

Pretty much; the guy's one of the few straightforward vigilantes left, at least in comics, and he's not burdened with having to be a role model or a symbol or whatever.

I'd say it's not so much lethal force that's the problem in this case - certain Samaritan laws already cover the basics of, say, shooting a guy in the middle of a killing spree. But rather, a number of other things, particularly in the surveillance and personal armament department would look really creepy if they were to be legalized in full. The X-Men alone violate the Geneva Convention by operating military grade firepower out of a school; and then there's the slew of underage Robins etc. Social services would have a field day over any of this.

Instead, I reckon the main source of anxiety nowadays is the feeling of obsolescence in a world were standard-issue technology already matches a good deal of superhero abilities. Imagine, say, the Rhino rampaging through downtown, but as Spider-Man has barely arrived at the scene, some SWAT trooper puts a 50 cal. through the beast. Even with the assumption that he'll get back from the dead in a month or so, there's the considerable loss of status that superheroes endure now that the civilized world has experienced supervillain-level attacks and has started loading for bear in response. Ultimately, I'd say the fight for legalization is a fight for relevance.

And in turn, the Punisher is not affected in the slightest, as his own purpose has not changed - he's not shackled by a designated rogues gallery, nor a particular means of operation. If anything, a recent arc had him slaughter terrorists in Qurac or whatever, as easily as a fish takes to a luxury aquarium. The question to ask now is, in the most basic terms, just what do superheroes do, that is still relevant not only in the thematic sense, but in purely physical practice.

Considering superheroes and legality... a while back, I tracked down Batman's official recognition as a GCPD deputy to a specific issue - Batman #7, from December 1941. Y'all remember what was going on then, right?

That's probably the real genesis of superhero-as-public-authority - the concern that, as vigilantes, they would inspire children to flout centralized authority at a time when America needed it the most. After Hitler was gone, that nice Mr. McCarthy told us all we needed to be even more wary of dangerous subversives, and so Batman became just one step removed from a Sunday School teacher, in addition to being an official police officer.

Only after the Soviets hollered Uncle did Batman really return to his "creature of the night" roots - Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns got the ball rolling, I'll grant you, but they were both presented as anomalies to the "proper" order of things in Gotham. It was only after the Zero Hour Crisis Crossover in 1994 that Batman-the-"urban legend" became the status quo once more; that held out a few years beyond the Turn of the Millennium, but then came the War on Terror...

I don't say that any of this is justified or even sustainable, mind you - just offering my two cents on why it's likely to remain the status quo for years to come.