Comics

[seriousfic]

Why is it that the government in superhero comics always has time to create spy agencies, and superhero teams, and sweeping legislation to govern the superheroes (often in conjunction with other countries), and prisons in other dimensions to hold rogue superheroes, and armies to take down superheroes gone bad, and giant robots to hunt certain kinds of heroes... but they never bother to make a law like "If you keep murdering people and we have no way to assuredly hold you in prison, we'll just kill you. Yes, even if you're crazy." I mean, you'd think after the Joker's body count reaches the triple digits, they'd stop coming up with vast conspiracies to take out Superman (body count: 0) and attend to the guy who has actually almost managed to destroy the world on multiple occasions.

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

While it would make more sense in a lot of ways — yes, especially with the Joker, whose kill-count has been upped so much at this point that, even speaking as someone who has serious problems with the death penalty IRL, I think that anyone who would argue AGAINST killing him is EVIL at this point — you run into a couple of big problems with implementing this.

Problem number one is that what makes many of these folks so unstoppable, non-powered-but-still-writer-favored-to-the-point-of-invulnerability foes like the Joker aside, is precisely why you'd need a superhuman to kill them. Thus, the government — which is NEVER fond of sharing power — would basically be admitting defeat and putting un-appointed super-people in charge of being on-the-spot judge, jury and executioner. And if Superman worked for the government, they'd have no objections to doing this, for the same reason that the Tea Party didn't start speaking out against the Patriot Act until a black man with the middle name "Hussein" became president, but because there really aren't any alpha-level superheroes left who report to ANY chain of command, much less one with Uncle Sam ostensibly in charge, then yeah, the government would be explicitly abdicating the "punishment" part of "crime and punishment" to people they can't control.

Another problem? Maybe I'm just super-cynical, but the moment that assholes like the Joker can be sanctioned on the spot, then the authorities lose a HUGE boogeyman to scare the public with. Of COURSE the building contractors who are friends with our elected officials need to have more money thrown away to improve Arkham or Belle Reve or wherever the fuck, and of COURSE the state needs to hire more guards and psychologists and commission more costly studies on these batshit fuckers, because what happens if they get OUT? Yeah, if you were the Gotham mayor who saw the Joker executed during your term, you'd get a BIG boost at first, but THEN? George H.W. Bush's plummeting popularity happened AFTER our "victory" in Kuwait, and the death of Osama bin Laden has actually seen Obama's popularity go LOWER ever since, because when people aren't SCARED, they don't feel as much like that HAVE to re-elect you.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Of course, if I was going to be really REALLY super-cynical, I'd hypothesize that the government also sees supervillains in the same way that Ebeneezer Scrooge saw poverty — they decrease "the surplus population," which is why the only time anything gets DONE about it is when the government CAN'T ignore the consequences, and even then, as with Civil War they almost always INTENTIONALLY give the greatest political power to those whom they KNOW FOR A FACT to be the WORST evil, because the only thing that REALLY bothers them about guys like Norman Osborn is that they're FREE AGENTS otherwise. By contrast, ever notice how a whole LOT of folks in the shadier side of the government RESENT Captain America? It's because he's beholden to HIS OWN CONSCIENCE first and foremost.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

You do realize those are all Mark Millar plots you've quoted? You've gazed into the abyss, my friend.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

The difference being that, no matter how much you hate Obama or I hate Bush, I'm pretty sure that both of us would agree that neither of those guys are as bad as CONFESSED COP-KILLER AND SERIAL BLONDE-GIRL MURDERER Norman Osborn. Millar's worst assumptions about those in power could ALMOST work in-story if they actually acknowledged that even the American public at its worst is not going to fall in line behind Norman Osborn like he's White Jesus, to the point of rejecting Captain America, and not even because of the public's basic DECENCY, but because you can't even get more than 55 percent of the modern public to agree that CANCER needs to be cured, let alone that the guy with the weird Joseph Cotten cornrows should be taken seriously. If Millar wanted to retain his cynicism, and yet be a bit more realistic, Osborn would have beaten the heroes, but been defeated in turn when constant mockery from the Internet drove him crazy enough to reveal his true colors. What tipped the Plutonian OVER the edge would cause Osborn to LOSE his edge, because amusingly enough for a guy who dresses like it's Halloween, he can't stand to be laughed at.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

there's enough people who are opposed to the death penalty it couldn't happen.

[rdfox.livejournal.com]

Of course, with "Mistah Jay," there's plenty of cops who would be perfectly willing to "accidentally" discharge their weapon into the back of his head rather than bring him in, explaining it as a "lucky shot" when he was "resisting arrest," and honestly, given who it is, I don't think anyone would investigate it all that hard. Or even object very much.

That's the problem with having supervillains run up their kill counters so high--you get to the point where cops, or even average citizens, will simply shoot first and ask questions later, and they'll not only be dead, but it'll be a death that has limited storytelling potential unless you're willing to give the hero some major flaws. (For example, would Batman go apeshit on a cop who shot the Joker, even if it WAS an in-policy shooting rather than being handwaved as one by just about everyone, including the public? How about a citizen who owned a legal handgun and shot one of the Gotham rogues dead when they broke into her home late at night?)