It’s a bit of a side point, but the video points to one reason why I tend to be disinterested in science fiction stories that take place in the present day. (E.g. “invaders from outer space” tales, or Twilight Zone-type stories.) They’re predicated on some kind of consensus reality, which is then disrupted by the flying saucers or what have you, and all the conflict that follows is about restoring the norm.
Whereas “real” science fiction, for me at least, is predicated on changes in that norm having already occurred.
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Basically this, and the fact that many superhero stories and conflicts were allegories about fighting fascism and communism. In such stories the villain is trying to overturn the current order of truth, justice, and mom’s apple pie, so the hero is fighting to maintain the status quo instead of allowing it to be turned into something worse.
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Here’s the thing - when all this superhero stuff was introduced, they were all lone-wolves… there was nary a league or society to be found. Superman stops the bad guys, Spiderman does the same thing… all good bubblegum and lollipop fodder for a 10c comic.
Then things moved into a “shouldn’t they be part of a group, or somewhat organized in their efforts” and so they start to meet amongst themselves, splinter off into this group of mutants or that group of enhanced humans. Now you have organization… that means structure… paperwork, processes.
Insurance and liability, costs, legality… who pays damages when an entire city is lifted into the air ? If you don’t have Stark’s deep pockets, good luck getting coverage. Even plucking a cat out of a tree could go wrong and open you up to a whole world of legal hurt.
In the end, kitty doesn’t get rescued… either a van of orphans or nazis, neither is getting saved when it goes off the bridge because Geico won’t cover hand-grip damage to the vehicle.
Simply put - you want to think your superheroes can operate in a realistic manner, then they also have to be put on hold forever when they try to call the bank… deal with a wobbly shopping cart wheel at Safeway… try and get through metal detectors at the NHL game (with their nuclear-powered Belt Of Infinity under their street clothes).
At some point that superhero would say the heck these rules getting in the way of flexing their superhero’ing ways. now they act above the law and may become detached from those they initially set out to protect. … not give a fuck for the common man. … and thus “TwitterMan” was born.
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In his very earliest appearances Superman, whose powers were much weaker than his later near-godly abilities, worked to protect the “little guy” from corrupt officials and the like. The Black Condor (whose secret identity was a US senator!) did some of that, too. This sort of thing was soon shelved in favor of fighting supervillains and Nazis.
In Philip Wylie’s Gladiator, the novel that was a major inspiration for Superman, Hugo Danner tried fighting gangsters and doing other public-spirited things without success. Basically all he was good for was smashing stuff. He eventually gave up.
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One of the key things here is that superhero stories are fiction. Saying that fiction, particularly pulp/cinematic fiction, and even more particularly fiction built to be very unrealistic, should be more realistic just shows that you don’t understand fiction.
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Whenever there is an icebreaker of “what superpower would you choose?” mine would be teleportation.
I hate having to work my day around having to be at __ at __:00 AM/PM. I like travel, I hate traveling.
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I’d like to see a superhero acknowledge playing a part in perpetuating unhealthy and unrealistic aesthetic standards and boldly proclaim that spandex was always profoundly uncomfortable anyway.
By the way, did anyone else here read Wildbow’s “Worm”? Some fine superheroics-with-consequences there. (Finally finished the sequel, “Ward”, not so long ago; I suggest saving yourself some time and looking up a summary if you’re curious. It’s not awful, but there are better things to do with that much time.)
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Speaking for myself, I can’t think of any instances in my day-to-day life where I witnessed some kind of unfolding disaster or felony-in-progress where I could have stepped in and saved the day if only I had some kind of superpowers at my disposal. It makes me think about how most (good) cops spend their entire careers without firing a shot, and even a substantial portion of soldiers often make it through a war without ever firing on the enemy. Fighting bad guys just isn’t something that most people spend much time doing, and you would have to spend serious effort seeking out such encounters if that’s your main gig.
In many cases the most useful thing that superpowered individuals could do to help society is to provide cheap, plentiful energy. Think of how much coal wouldn’t need to be burned if X-men’s Cyclops just stared at a boiler all day (maybe listening to podcasts or something) and generated phenomenal amounts of green energy.
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It’s quite frankly amazing at just how bad Superman 4 was. I mean not just bad, but so horribly, horribly bad on every possible measurement and yet, amazingly, it was greenlit and acted.
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I believe Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) explicitly chose a more modest costume in both the comics and the TV show because she wasn’t comfortable with the body-hugging spandex look favored by so many superheroes (especially women superheroes).
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Between 3 and 4 it jumped production studios to Cannon. Makers of famous but usually watchable drek, usually on low budgets. By the time 4 was made, the studio was in fiscal chaos. The budget was cut in half as it was already in production. It was doomed to be bad from the outset.
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It really shouldn’t be a surprise that the two main billionaire-heroes (Batman and Iron Man) are pretty much sociopaths who are themselves the origin story of most or all of the villains that they fight.
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always wanted the super ability to live underwater.
not so much Aquaman, but more Mr. Limpet.
that would be cool!
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The Justice Society of America began in 1940 - barely into Superman or Batman’s character incepttion - Jimmy Olsen, Robin and Lois Lane too!
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Superheros cannot create lasting change because they are creatures of repeated, regular fiction, and because their setting is almost never allowed to deviate too far from “the real world, except with some superpowered lunatics running around”.
Sure, one story or another may attempt to show this happening, but once that creative team leaves and the Corporation hires someone else to take over, 90% of everything that went before gets thrown out and things are reset. Year-long cataclysmic crossover that destroyed six hundred and sixty two universes? Awesome! It sure was cool when Mister Fister punched the space-time continuum, wasn’t it? But now the new guys want to do a low-power comedy version, so Mister Fister’s back to being a lowly waiter at a Vegas casino who beats up criminals on the side, just like he was back in 1934 when “Pony” Stephens drew his first year of eight-page stories for one of the companies the Corporation now owns.
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Reminds me of this little bit I ran across: https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/
Specifically this spoiler, as described by TVTropes:
Feral eventually uses her Wolverine-level Healing Factor to provide donated organs that work better than donations from family members. She can donate her heart 8-10 times a day, her lungs 15-20, her liver and kidneys 30, and liters of blood, all with no risk of transferring disease or her mutation. She probably saved more lives in the first day than she did in her entire career as a superhero.
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That’s grossly reductive and not even close to an accurate characterization of fiction. While fiction is under no obligation to effect change, it can steer the conversation about what change might look like.
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Is this not just the point of black adam, where the hero’s dont want the hero for arahbs to change the fact that its run by evil people, but the west’s sort of evil people and that none of the “american” heros have a problem with that!
And instead of coming to help, they turn up to keep the status quo. I would even go so far as to say thats why it did not do well in the USA.
It’s a bit frustrating that McIntosh even brings up Alan Moore and his take on superhero movies, but doesn’t mention either of his explorations of the superhuman who wants to change the world in a way they see as better. Watchmen is the more famous one, of course where Ozymandias does the well-intentioned extremist route like the villains explored so much in the video, and the twist ending of Watchmen is that it all might come crumbling down. But in Marvelman/Miracleman, the titular character literally tears down the structures of the world as it exists in the 80s and builds up a new utopia in its place. Gaiman’s run, which is finally concluding now explores the positive and negative aspects of this and statements he’s made suggest it won’t end well, but that seems to be more because of conflict rather than a failing on how Miracleman created the new world order.
More recently, you’ve got comics like The Authority, where Mark Millar’s run on the title was all about them starting to use their massive levels of power against dictatorships, providing aid and relief to people who needed it, and changing the status quo of the world. The final arc of his story had the US deploy a superhuman to defeat and capture the team and replace them with more pliable and controllable ersatz versions who wouldn’t upset applecarts. A later story has them literally take over America after an ill-advised military project leads to the destruction of Florida, and the subsequent comics deal with the fallout of that action.
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