I’ve always wondered. Well, maybe the question formed better when I heard this Superman joke, where he becomes such a nasty trickster when he drinks that he causes a person’s death. “If this happened,” I thought, “he should go to jail.” And since he was a man a conscience, he would probably go to the police station as soon as he was sober and ask the officers to lock him up with the rest of the murderers. And then the next day an asteroid would hit the earth and end the human civilization because Superman was busy doing penal labor.
This is doomed to remain a grey area. Convention has it that a lot of superheroes live among us, but they seem not to follow the rules that their fellow mortals must observe. I understand that their breaking the law is acceptable because these people act with the greater good in mind. But what about when they’re off-duty? Should their behavior be overlooked if they disturbed their neighbors, occupied someone else’s parking spot, or failed to pay their bills?
And then they would negotiate with the president: “Would you like to risk being invaded by Inferno Troopers from Dimension 11.66 just because I caused an alcoholic’s death when I was tipsy?”
Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners trilogy has a similar theme (super-powered people behaving badly) but starts with the world in shambles, having been over-run with supes all at once. The titular group is a small but persistent resistance force who work against the most powerful supes, the ones who have managed to establish some form of society that they preside over.
Go onto Amazon’s books section and look for the section Books/Science Fiction and Fantasy/Fantasy/Superhero; there’s a ton of fiction about superhero worlds where these questions are discussed. One of the better ones, at least early on, is the “Wearing the Cape” series, where the US has numerous sanctioned teams to fight supervillains and assist during natural disasters, various government agencies have assets with super-powers, and there are various legal structures in place (for example, to be a superhero you have to reveal your identity to the government, but you can’t be compelled to reveal your identity in court when testifying).
Of course they shouldn’t be tolerated. A private citizen with an arsenal of WMDs using them at his whim is utterly ridiculous, and would be utterly terrifying if it happened in real life. A living WMD is a more complex issue to deal with, but no, Superman doesn’t get a pass on murder because he’s a global savior.
Superheroes are unrealistic in more ways than just their physics. If you try looking too closely at any aspect of comic book super heroes, the whole thing falls apart.
Which is why, by the way, I thought Marvel’s “Civil War” story-line was possibly the biggest meta-story mistake in comic book history. Once you start trying to “realistically” deal with the legal aspects of traditional depictions of comic book superheroes, you just pretty much ruin the bit.
Maybe people don’t like him anymore, but how would anyone punish or coerce or restrain him? And even if you could punish Superman, how do you deal with him once he’s served his time?
They’ve done this a bunch of times in various continuities. Captain Marvel/Shazam can go toe to toe with him. Use kryptonite. Or magic.
If the government genuinely can’t contain him, like Homelander in The Boys, then the whole question is moot, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether anyone wants to tolerate his illegal or antisocial activities - they won’t have a choice.
This could actually make an interesting story line, A super hero who’s secret identity is a convicted criminal, how does he go about escaping prison each time he needs to go to the rescue without the guards or fellow prisoners finding out, how do his powers come in to play in his everyday life inside etc
I agree. Pangs of conscience (possibly nightmares), the pressure of prison life where she has to refrain herself from wiping out bullying scums, and countless stratagems to fulfill her missions without exposing herself (or himself). Sure, I could write that.
Why even have secret identities anyway? Why bother? (answer: so early comic book readers could identify and imagine themselves as secretly super heroes)
Like Hancock. That movie address the basic question of this thread. And the answer is, you can’t change him unless he wants to change.
