Super Heroes and Public Policy - Government in a World With Superheroes

[britt_woods]

Hey all! My name is Brittany and I'm fairly new to the comic book community (a year or so). Since falling in love with both DC and Marvel comics, films, shows, etc, I've decided to write my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree (50+ pages) about superheroes and public policy. The concept is centered around a theoretical world where governments (mostly U.S. centric, but international as well) would have to create public policies to address the unique issues presented by the presence of superheroes. My extremely simple outline, with just the concepts for chapters and questions to pursue, is as follows:

Rights. Superman is from Krypton, not earth. As a non-human entity, what rights does he have, if any? What about sentient artificial life forms?

Administration. Who actually funds SHIELD? What is its jurisdiction?

Liability. When the Hulk destroys a town, is Bruce Banner civilly liable? What about Superman in Man of Steel? Couldn’t Metropolis citizens file a massive class-action suit?

Defense. With capabilities greater than those of the average human, are superheroes obligated to defend cities, countries, or even Earth? What kind of oversight could the world possibly demand?


I am already using the World War Hulk and Damage Control comics for the liability section, and the Mutant Registration Acts for Rights, but does anyone have any other suggestions for comics that directly address any of these issues? There's just so many comics to go through, and it's a little overwhelming to try and find specific ones that really get at what I'm trying to talk about!

Thanks in advance for any advice. I'd love to open a conversation about what policy formulation would look like in a world with superheroes, if anybody is interested

[Spike-X]

Astro City (currently being published by DC's Vertigo imprint) and Powers (through Marvel's Icon imprint) are the first titles that come to mind here.

They're also fantastic comics in their own right.

[t hedge coke]

You might want to look at two books from Marvel: Dan Slott's She-Hulk run, which is, natch, about an attorney and her office in such a world, and Conspiracy by Abnett, Lanning, and Kordey, which largely concerns itself with how a military-industrial complex might function in an America like the Marvel's, and specifically how threats can be fostered, directed, or erased to benefit those who build tanks and those who decide where to deploy them.

I'm always fascinated by stuff like this, more from the standpoint of how they get deployed and then bent to service making stories more exciting/perpetuating a status quo, than are they functional or not, but as systems, alone, they can be interesting.

I think, something I would suggest you be wary of is how much they will get bent or ignored to facilitate the kinds of stories the authors want to tell, though. No matter how much, say, a superhero registration and responsibility act may be pushed in a Marvel story, even if something becomes law or a set of laws, it's not going to be enforced the way it "should be." Because, Marvel needs superheroes and it needs them to be free enough to do classic superhero things. Or, Julie Kenner's Aphrodite's Kiss and its sequels (or, for that matter, WildStorm's The Authority), which seem to have a secret, higher, or at least very separate superhero world government, but when you get down to it, they don't, they have some vague gestures of charters and some handwave terminology to facilitate the stories.

To get something really functional, the ability to continue having stories in a classic or status quo mode probably has to go out the window.

In any case, good luck! And, please, do share some of what you come up with.

[Sharkerbob]

The thing to keep in mind is that the reaction and capability of the government is really going to vary wildly depending on the universe your talking about. I assume you're wanting to stick to the Marvel and DC Universes? The thing is, realistically, there is no possible way that human society, after decades of constant contact with aliens, other dimensions, Hell, Heaven, cosmic forces, the rise of mutants, the rise of advanced Artificial Intelligence, the rise of numerous non-human or part-human sapient species, the confirmed appearance of gods and ancient monsters, ghosts and spirits and magical realms, there's just no way human society would resemble our own world anymore, not without massive narrative conceit. As such, I don't think our current government is in anyway equipped to deal with the vast number of powers Marvel and DC throws on the plate.

Especially as you talk about things getting more and more powerful, I think one of the sillier aspects of superheroes, the idea that costumed vigilantes can just gallivant around saving the day and then leaving clean up to the cops and nobody really being that upset about it, becomes more realistic. Not only are people unlikely to be able to realistically deal with Superman or Thor going rogue, they are also aware that guys like them are the reason humanity hasn't gone extinct or been enslaved to alien despots a hundred times over the last ten years or so. They've proven they're looking out for humanity's best interest and are willing to stay within the law as much as they are able (or knowledgeable), and attempting to chain them down risks making a powerful new enemy. Better to make nice and give Superman a lot of legal leeway on certain things, because we need his help to fight Darkseid. In this way, I think with exceptionally powerful heroes, you'd end up with a whole lot of compromising and deal-making going on to keep everyone happy.


That said, DC and Marvel have touched on the topic before. I'm not sure about specific issues that go in depth, but Marvel's first Civil War event (the comics from about 10 years ago) was over the Superhero Registration Act. Somewhat similar the Mutant Registration Act, it was intended to hold all active heroes accountable by registering them with SHIELD. In exchange, a registered hero would be given opportunities (or be required, I'm not sure) to undergo training to better themselves at the job. This would likewise hold a hero accountable for incidents done in their name, such as with an impostor, but this might also help them deal with the impostor, as they'd have an organization to go to for help in the matter. In the aftermath of Civil War, the was the 50 State Avengers Initiative, in which most of the active Marvel Heroes registered, and were subsequently signed up to work in government-sponsored hero teams covering each of the 50 United States. Not sure what the status quo on that is now, though.



Consider too that the lower you go in power scale, the easier it is for the authorities to flex their muscle and hold the heroes and villains to their own societal standards.

Watchmen and The Incredibles both have a world where superheroes are banned. In the former, the world's only true superhuman works for the government, as does one of the original vigilantes, while the rest are kept a watch on, and live under the threat of immediate arrest if they show themselves in their hero personas publicly. In the latter, we don't get to see the darker details much, but superhero families are likewise watched by the government (placed in new homes and jobs if "incidents" happen), and any superhero activity must be done in secret.

The Worm web serial by Wildbow is a self-published work of web fiction that is incredibly long, but the relationship between the government and the superhero community is such that heroes are almost all registered with a single global organization (the Protectorate and the Wards), while villains are allowed certain leniencies on their operations provided that they do not cross certain lines. This is reinforced by the idea that villains and heroes join forces, no strings attached, in order to combat horrific monsters called the Endbringers. Now, bare in mind in this particular world, there is a whole lot of conspiracy and shadow-governing running things, but it's definitely one of the more interesting superhuman/government relationship set ups.

There is also an anime called Tiger & Bunny, which uses a more western take on superhero styles (as opposed to the traditional Power Rangers/Sentai style), wherein superheroes operate under Corporate Contract. Rather than be registered for the government, legal superheroes must find a corporate sponsor to vouch for them. The hero is sort of a walking billboard/mascot for the company, but in return, the corporation is liable for damages the hero may cause during crime fighting. There is even a major reality TV show that showcases the exploits of the sponsored heroes, and this provides great revenue for the companies, as well as the city government. It is later revealed that the government and corporate powers devised this system to help keep the superhuman population somewhat under control, and help ease the public into the idea of superhumans running around.

A similar premise can be found in the Luna Brothers comic Ultra, where superheroes operate as celebrities between missions, using their image and likeness to sell products and promote charities, as directed by a hero agency.

[britt_woods]

That's incredibly helpful! I will definitely have to address the disconnect between what would be necessary for any program/government to run efficiently, and the reality that would prevent that from happening. Thank you also for pointing out that a world with superheroes would very quickly become one very dissimilar to our own. That does provide a nice academic limitation to my paper - which is basically arguing that the issues faced by a world with superheroes (ie: civil rights for non-citizens/aliens, for example) are parallels of the real world (ie: civil rights issues for refugees, immigrants, and ostracized minorities). Thus, I would be comparing things like the Mutant Registration Act to things like the Nuremberg Laws, or Pres. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.

When doing my research within the comic worlds, I'm looking for themes and events that allegorically represent real world issues/events.

[Gray Lensman]

Also for anime, My Hero Academia is set in a world where 80% of people have some form of power. Not all of them are useful for heroics though. One person can levitate small objects, another sweats skin moisturizer. Then there are some really incredible actual powers the heroes and villains have.

The view of the society is from kids training to be the next generation of heroes.

[Dylan Davison]

This is really interesting. I'm not sure if you can, but once the paper is done, I would love to read it. If not I understand.

Edit: just saw this was a bump up from a few years ago, haha.

[DrNewGod]

Defense.

Captain America comics have dealt with this multiple times throughout the character's post-defrosting history. A key one to look to is Cap vol. 1, 327-350, with a particular emphasis on 332-337. These were written in the late 1980s, when Marvel had built up a good-sized Men-In-Black narrative (a lot of it spinning out of X-Men) about shadowy organizations attempting to co-opt superheroes as their agents, and Cap in particular. There's earlier stuff dealing with Nick Fury's attempt to draw Cap into SHIELD, but they're nowhere nearly as heavy-handed.

Darwin Cook's The New Frontier is a great DC look at this kind of thing, as is the more recent Superman Unchained. Both deal with government expectations that superpowers essentially belong to The US, especially if you're asking those in the shadowy National Security end of government.

It's more related to regulation than defense, but another one worth looking at is The Avengers, Vol. 1, 168-191 (the most important issues in that run for your purposes are probably 168, 181, 185, and 189-191). As far as I know, that's the first time in comics that the government stepped in and said (in a manner very similar to Ross in the Civil War film), you're going to do this our way, or you're simply not going to do it, and certainly not with access to our cooperation. It's also the introduction to Agent Gyrich, who becomes one of the figures at the center of that Men-In-Black stuff I was talking about earlier.

All the stuff that's I've suggested is available digitally.

This is really interesting. I'm not sure if you can, but once the paper is done, I would love to read it. If not I understand.

Edit: just saw this was a bump up from a few years ago, haha.

Well, crap. I fell for it too.

[mathew101281]

Superheroes would be terrifying if they existed in our modern hyper partisan world. One of the major concepts of Superhero comics is that most of the Superheroes have the same basic world view. When they do disagree it’s usually over how to execute that world view. That’s why Superhero groups tend to work better then super villain groups. We have no such unifying sense of right and wrong in the real world. I doubt a Trump supporter and a Democrat are going to have the same view of a “Superhero” who shares Trumps values for example. Superheros are just people with unique talents using those talents to impose their views of right or wrong on the world