"... it would be wise to consider just which rights they would enforce. Second amendment rights, perhaps? Freedom of religion, as interpreted by certain wedding cake bakeries? States rights even? "
Actually, it's funny you should say that, because there is a Golden Age Superman story where Superman actually goes after, get this, reckless drivers. Clark Kent does a story about how many people in Metropolis are killed in traffic accidents by reckless drivers, so he decides to take action, initially by bullying the Chief of Police into stepping up enforcement of traffic laws and ordinances. The story ends with Clark Kent getting a ticket for being illegally parked. It's a weird little story, and one has to wonder if Jerry Siegel had been in an auto accident or something immediately before writing it.
It's important to note as well that, in real life, there are plenty of disasters and disastrous situations that, while the government is equipped and capable of response, the government, for whatever reason, does not respond. Like Hurricane Katrina, for instance (a quagmire of jurisdictional confusion, with the state thinking the feds would respond, and the feds not responding because they thought the state would).
edited 2nd Jun '17 11:23:40 AM by Robbery
Nobody's claiming governments are infallible either; though the American government is at least somewhat self-aware about this, having an actual Constitutional Amendment providing the right of people to not only protect themselves in the absence of competent civil authority, but also from said authority should it turn malicious.
What's more interesting, however, is that superheroes tend to be hostile to both governments and public efforts, especially wannabe competitors. This is where they go full on have-cake-and-eat-it-too. On the one hand, they don't want to be constrained by such paltry limitations as laws and constitutional rights like privacy and freedom from torture. However, they also get indignant when ordinary people voice their displeasure with getting their cars and homes smashed any time a couple of spandex fetishists have a minor disagreement. The resulting attitude has virtually nothing in common with any civil rights stance, as opposed to simple self-aggrandizing. When both authorities and people have to be thoroughly denigrated for the ostensible heroes to shine... one might consider reevaluating the heroes themselves.
—"What's more interesting, however, is that superheroes tend to be hostile to both governments and public efforts, especially wannabe competitors. This is where they go full on have-cake-and-eat-it-too. On the one hand, they don't want to be constrained by such paltry limitations as laws and constitutional rights like privacy and freedom from torture. However, they also get indignant when ordinary people voice their displeasure with getting their cars and homes smashed any time a couple of spandex fetishists have a minor disagreement."—
While I know stuff like this has happened in a few super hero stories, is it really that pervasive in the genre? Most of the things you cite, I can generally think of one or two (pretty bad) stories, usually from Image or Marvel in the 90's, that bear them out, but they're not really situations I'd say are genuinely representational. It's like indicting all of Science Fiction television based on Lexx or Tripping the Rift.
edited 2nd Jun '17 2:39:07 PM by Robbery
It probably depends on how much you think the Crisis Crossover is emblematic of the superhero genre as a whole, because those, as a rule, feature plenty of wanton property damage.
As a quick-fix against this, perhaps some future writer could have a mystic hero like Zatanna specialize in fixing up property with little-to-no-effort (I understand one '90s story had Zatanna rebuild all of Metropolis after Luthor leveled it, but I've never read that story myself). It might play hell with the economy in other unforeseen ways, but nothing ventured...
Another Golden Age Superman story had Superman trying to figure out what to do about the slums, so he demolished everything there because the government would have to rebuild it.
The Protomen enhanced my life.And in an episode of JLU, he smashed up a high-class housing complex because he got paranoid Luthor was up to something nefarious... while said violent outburst was what Luthor was ultimately up to. This is another aspect superheroes are loathe to approach - being manipulated themselves, not by any magical means, but simply through exploiting their own faults. The very reason social systems and mechanisms exist is to limit the damage any one individual may cause, no matter their power - and as even the strongest superheroes are occasionally proven mortal, it's safe to say physical power also falls under that framework. No one is above the system.
Which I guess is what ultimately the modern political situation is about. Superheroes work well enough outside the system, dealing with relatively minor internal faults or unforeseen external threats; emergencies to urgent for regular mechanisms to be applied effectively. But the moment they (as extension of their writers) get big-headed and start thinking that the ability to punch through a brick wall somehow offers the absolute providence as to where such strength should be applied, things turn real sour real fast.
One thing I think Alan Moore pointed out very well in Watchmen about politics in comics is that the values our heroes were fighting for weren't always great. Despite the fact that it can lead to great things like Captain America standing up for a gay man in hostile Reagan era America, it could also lead to The Comedian shooting Vietnam war protestors.
Superheroes seem to be neither right wing or left wing, but more like the ultimate individualist fantasy, and one of the biggest individualist nations, (in theory) is America. But with so many going through this America with superheroes some would no doubt feel the need to enforce currently popular American law, for good and for ill.
Well, the traditional job description is more or less "fighting crime", so some deference to the law is expected; moreover, most supervillains fit the bill for people just about everyone would want to fight against, even if their motivations aren't always believable. But yeah, beyond such crises, superheroes are prone to becoming wannabe activists for the respective writers' pet social issues. What's worse is that nowadays there's the urge to somehow justify the various unrealisms of the genre, from playing the traditional supervillain immortality as a sort of moral badge for the respective hero, to pulling every harebrained excuse straight out of a conspiracy theorist's checklist as to why all civil authorities (sans the courts, natch) are evil and so superheroes should have nothing to do with them. Toss in the usual violence among superheroes themselves, and it starts looking very much like they're not really interested in fighting crime, as they are interested in fighting, full-stop.
Trying to find Watsonian explanations for elements that exist for purely Doylist reasons—the Joker's immortality for instance, is one of the banes of the super-hero genre, in my opinion. It's possibly the end result of what you get when you get fanboy writers who perhaps haven't had a lot of professionalism drilled into them start writing their favorite characters. They remember all the geek grousing they used to do, all the little jokes made to seem clever, and for some reason feel the need to incorporate them into the stories. And their editors don't stop them. If you keep pointing out the things that are ridiculous about super heroes (some of which are necessary to any kind of continuous serial storytelling) then don't be surprised if your audience starts finding them ridiculous.
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I on the other hand think it's sometimes good that real world politics enter comics. After all, we probably wouldn't have the new Captain Marvel without her being a response to the rampant racism and Muslim hate in America, plus it did lead to Captain America giving a well deserved "Fuck You!" to the Reagan America and it's rampant homophobia.
edited 5th Jun '17 10:38:49 AM by Wildcard
Hey, it's all fun and games until a writer gores one of your oxen.
Broadly speaking, though: stuff like the vigilante nature of superheroes can be, and has been, explored brilliantly (as in several examples mentioned here). However, there's been a lot more misses than hits. Ordinarily, issues like vigilantism and a weirdly complacent police department/local government are the Necessary Weasel that allows the superhero genre to function at all. And unless you're a genius having a particularly good day, deconstructing that kind of thing is a good way to corrode all the readers' other much-needed suspensions of disbelief, and ruin the fun in general.
To be fair, one objectively good reason not to have such deconstructions is that they almost never amount to any lasting changes; and that's if they don't swerve into inanity altogether. It just makes for a bad story in itself.
Similarly, invocations of the vaunted one rule are a pretty good guarantee that either a) the villain of the story will get away scot-free or mock any token sentence they get; or b) a less-than-pristine hero will put the villain out of everyone else's misery, only to get chewed out over it by the resident wannabe role model. Either way, not my idea of fun.
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Whoops, my mistake. I thought they called her Captain Marvel when they were talking about making her movie and didn't think of her being called Ms. Marvel still in comics.
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Some oxen deserve to be gored. Also Frank Miller released Holy Terror, I'm fine with him releasing whatever garbage he wants. Just like I'm fine with making fun of it for being terrible and racist. If other people want to make fun of comics with a good message feel free, still gonna make fun of them back though.
I actually think it is better when they want to handle real world politics that they don't do it through metaphor. Because then stuff like The Legacy Virus, (Marvel's A.I.D.S metaphor) being products of an alien invasion and having to cure it with a sacrifice of an X-men member who got revived later anyway, or famine being caused by a demon stealing food happens.
Edit: Ninjaed, more up notes.
edited 5th Jun '17 10:37:36 AM by Wildcard
I'd say the main reason comics should stay well away from political issues, through metaphor or not, is that they next to never leave any room for subtlety, nuance and complexity. Marvel's mutant stories in particular tend to aggressively avoid any focus on the human side of the issue, namely that, with the problem of power incontinence on the table, people would probably like to know if their neighbors have the penchant for exploding into a fireball with no warning.
More generally, the matter of crime is virtually never taken as a complex situation where a good number of criminals, including supervillains, are forced into a lifestyle they otherwise wouldn't choose freely, or are radicalized by a lack of more civil options. Instead, supervillains are treated as all but inherently malicious from day one, frequently harassed even when appearing to have gone straight, and in essence, completely detached from any conditions that might have caused their Start of Darkness; perish the thought the world is more complex than just bad people needing to be punched out by good people. Though in that regard, at least anti-heroes like the Punisher show some consistency by actually exterminating the established public enemies. To contrast, the aggregate traditional mentality seems to be that inherently bad people exist and are the root cause of all the ills in the world, but the just as inherently good people shouldn't be burdened with actually disposing of them, because... reasons. Something, something, he who fights monsters and whatnot.
Well, if super-heroes took it upon themselves to "remove" (that is, kill) super villains, then they really would be vigilantes; those are the traditional actions of the vigilante, not apprehending criminals and suspected criminals, but either killing them without trial or killing them when, after trial, they receive a sentence that said vigilantes disagree with. If the villains don't stay incarcerated, or aren't executed by the state, that's more the fault of the legal system to which they are delivered. Or it could simply be hand waved as a necessity to having a popular villain in serial fiction, and not dwelt on to the point of insanity.
—" a good number of criminals, including supervillains, are forced into a lifestyle they otherwise wouldn't choose freely, or are radicalized by a lack of more civil options. Instead, supervillains are treated as all but inherently malicious from day one, frequently harassed even when appearing to have gone straight, and in essence, completely detached from any conditions that might have caused their start of darkness; perish the thought the world is more complex than just bad people needing to be punched out by good people."— Yeah, that's pretty much the circumstances most real life criminals find themselves living with. Why should it be different for super villians?
edited 7th Jun '17 4:45:12 PM by Robbery
I think that's probably my main criticism of DC and Marvel and the way they run things. The whole "perpetual soap" and "driven mostly by economics" thing causes a wide number of problems that only really get exacerbated when writers who think they're being edgy or clever by writing about these problems despite the fact that they're impotent to change the larger structures that create them, instead of them writing within the limitations that have been provided for them.
One topic I increasingly think superhero comics should stay away from entirely is rape. I can count the times I've seen it handled in any way other than utterly tactlessly on one hand. Mainstream comics' handling of rape is so utterly screwed up that even the attempts to make it less screwed up end up screwed up, such as the recent Mockingbird retcon that (I assume unintentionally) turned her from rape victim to lying, adulterous accessory to manslaughter.
That more or less goes without saying, at least for the big two. It takes a pretty skilled hand to do anything with that sort of issue that isn't going to end up feeling overly edgy or exploitative and whatever their merits might be, most writers working for the big two are either not qualified for that to begin with, or are simply working in an environment not conducive to treating the issue sensitively.
As for keeping popular villains... have you ever considered the possibility that they aren't that popular? That, for instance, when people say they want the Joker dead, they more likely mean they want him gone? Fauxlosophical villains like him are popular among writers, but ever since he started treating his contractual immortality like a superpower in his own right, he's become a pretentious bore, since, like the aforementioned political issues, there's nothing writers are willing to do to actually change that status quo in-universe.
It's entirely possible. There was a period of a few years, from '69 to about '73, where Batman (for instance) didn't encounter a single member of his traditional Rogues Gallery (they reintroduced Two-Face in a story called "Half an Evil" but at that time Two-Face hadn't appeared since the early 50's). This was the period that gave us Ra's Al Ghul, and is remembered as a high point in Batman's history; it's pretty good evidence that, with an imaginative team of writers, they definitely don't have to keep hauling the Arkham inmates out to tell good Batman stories. Of course, they did bring the usual gang of nuts back, at reader demand. It'd probably be good for DC, creatively anyhow, to have an editorial mandate of "for at least 5 years, we won't use any villain twice."
We should remember, though, that in '69 to '73, Batman wasn't close to the multimillion-dollar media empire he is today. Even the initial popularity of the Adam West show was more a flash-in-the-pan thing (it didn't really become memetic 'til it got syndicated about a decade later). In fact, I believe the '70s were the bleakest period for DC, economically speaking, hence so many writers deciding they had nothing to lose by experimenting.
Today, Batman is too rich a gravy train for any experimentation like that to happen again, at least in the "main" line. You keep the Joker out of the books for even a year, and WB's number-crunchers are gonna breathe down your neck going, "Where's that guy from The Dark Knight? He sells stuff. Put him in."
Considering the modern attitude of comic number-crunchers is that they're not selling enough stuff - hence DC's two reboots in six years, or Marvel's affirmative action line-ups - I'd say that argument isn't too valid in reality.
Still, I believe it's not the overuse of villains that's the problem, but rather the overuse of associated themes and story types. The comic medium and the superhero genre in particular offer a prime creative field for new and exciting locations, action-scene circumstances, and virtually unconstrained adventure possibilities; things that would tax the budget of any other visual medium... so of course stories have to focus on personal dramas and pseudo-philosophical or political commentary on genre staples; that's what all the cool kids are doing. It's not like people buy comics for entertainment rather than pretentious geek cred, right? (Really, I'd put the question in sarcasm mode, but I'm honestly not sure myself anymore.)
By the way, I was thinking about a third option to the perennial accountability issue. Namely, rather than focusing on the heroes themselves (the most certain sign of writer fanboyism if there ever was one), legislation could be made to extend existing Good Samaritan laws regarding supervillains instead. I'm pretty sure that pitching in during an alien invasion or zombie outbreak can be made legally justifiable, or at least have a nice Hulk-sized loophole regarding insurance liabilities. In consequence, the heroes still get to do what they do best, while most citizens still prefer to stay out of the fray entirely. The only thing definitively lost is the ability for superheroes to violate various constitutional rights or operate internationally with no invitation... but if that's an actual point of contention, I don't think they could be considered heroes for it.
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Such laws have actually been mentioned as being in place in various super-hero realities, the problem being that DC and Marvel are terrible at being consistent about it. Superman used to have universal citizenship granted to him by the UN, which meant he was essentially free to operate in any member nation with the cooperation of that nation's government. Remember back in the 80's, well before anyone thought of Civil War or the Registration Act, when all of the Avengers had Priority Identicards issued by the POTUS himself? Then, when a writer comes along who thinks some drama can be squeezed out of the prospect of governmental oversight, suddenly no one remembers that the Avengers have had government sanction and oversight for years. None of the things you're suggesting here are really new ideas, just ideas that have apparently fallen out of fashion among comics writers and editors. It's apparently fashionable now for all authority to be inherently corrupt, which would then make heroes tools of The Man if they were too cozy with them.
As to a return to plot driven stories over character driven stories, more of a balance would certainly be a good thing.
edited 9th Jun '17 7:50:54 AM by Robbery

Literally everything about a fictional story only occurs or is mentioned because that's what the writer wants to happen.