Originally published at: What are superheroes good for, anyway? | Boing Boing
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They’re apparently quite good for making money.
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The short version is that superheroes cannot facilitate lasting societal change in their respective comic book universes without making those universes less and less relatable to “real world” audiences. That’s why Wayne Industries or Reed Richards can find a cure for some exotic alien mind virus (thus returning the world to the status quo) but not for HIV or even Covid-19 (which would change the status quo).
ETA: The only exception is when superheroes are retroactively inserted into major events of the past, like “did you know that such-and-such Biblical plague was actually Apocalypse from the X-Men?” or “isn’t it great how Wonder Woman ended World War I?”
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Is Cap a woman in this scenario?
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And great for lazy screenplays.
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It’s been explored with Superman many many times about what would happen if he used his powers to help…and one of the big questions is where does that “help” end? Just eliminate weapons? What about crime? Self-harm? Free thought?
Some of these are interesting to read, others not, but basically as was said - they have to keep it close to the real world or the suspension of belief ends up taking them out of enjoying the superhero story.
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Making billions for multinational companies worth trillions, obviously.
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Good point. If the world was changed to a utopia via superheroes/mutants, then where would the conflict arise for the heroes to overcome?
I will have to watch later, but the point of superheroes keeping the status quo is a fair one for some of the story lines and eras of history.
Though there have been notable story lines of super heroes challenging the Status Quo and confronting superheroes lack of awareness and actions to many societal ills “on the ground”.
Notably, the Green Lantern/Green Arrow run by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. In it Green Arrow accuses Green Lantern of living in an Ivory Tower and being more worried about problems in the stars, when right here on Earth there are tons of problems being ignored. It covered racism, Native rights, drug abuse, corporate pollution, exploitation of capitalism, workers rights, questioning of authority, and other themes.
It was 1970s and each issue is a self contained story, so its a bit clunky, and done by a white writer and artist, but it certainly was pushing against societal norms at the time, and it wouldn’t look too out of place today.
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I like John Hodgman’s poll on the powers of flight vs. invisibility
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The story line that immediately comes to mind is of course:
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That’s what I liked about Invincible. It started out as generic “guy gets super powers and becomes a hero” but very rapidly started doing things with real world impact. I’m hoping the animated series does the same thing.
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Unfortunately one of those times was Superman IV.: The Quest for Peace. The film best is described as “probably produced by a sentient bag of cocaine”.
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Someone like Garth Ennis would contend that Superheroes keeping the Status Quo is probably the best outcome one could hope for. He isn’t alone in the pessimistic/realistic outlook that if people had super human powers, most of them would be pretty selfish and self serving about it.
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Phantom Zone guns for everyone!
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I have long said that if I had superpowers, it would be much more fun to be a supervillain, especially if there were no superheroes. The single most important thing would be to hide my identity, lest I end up on a dissecting table or living in some institute like in Akira or Stranger Things. But before that happened, I would be flying around taking amazing nature photographs, breaking shit and probably stealing things. Helping where I feel like it, mostly laying low.
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Sorry, superheroes are just a modern version of mythology and can’t save us. It is up to all of us, sometimes super, but non-powered people to fix everything.
The best superhero series on the subject was Mark Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme (1985). The Squadron Supreme was Marvel’s comics pastiche of the DC superheros (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc). In this series, they decide to use their abilities to fix all the problems on earth. Of course, forcing society to change just leads to authoritarianism. Good series.
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