Oh c’mon. Everyone knows Batman is a Republican. Sure, he’s got a little Zoophilia thing going on, and he hangs around with young boys way too often, but you can’t tell me he doesn’t go in for the Law and Order bit all the way. 
Batman doesn’t like guns.
Oh, yeah, and a lot of Liberals are actually wealthy because of capitalism, and who subconsciously perpetuate social problems they say they’re trying to solve in order to satisfy a pathological need to keep “fighting the good fight”?
Wait…
Rebuttal and hilarity : Dave's Long Box: ELECTION DAY 2006 - WHOSE SIDE IS YOUR FAVORITE SUPERHERO ON?
Thus the braver story imho. I see your point but the chip-on-the-shoulder hero is too easy and has been overdone.
This is excellent business advice for writing unaging corporate-owned characters that have been in business almost 70 years and need to have broad appeal to continue to be merchandised and written about for another 70. This is not necessarily good storytelling advice. Certainly it’s a an ongoing missed opportunity for ELSEWORLDS and Marvel’s WHAT IF…?
Characters who are always right are infallible, and infallible characters are in possession of all the facts, have nothing new to learn, apparently have nothing new to reconsider, encounter nothing that confounds their expectations, and are incapable of surprise or of surprising readers with unpredictable behavior. Some fans prefer that. I think that level of predictability is kind of boring.
Your problem, in your own words: you’re reading comic book treastises on political philosophy written by unimaginative and untalented schmucks who don’t create original characters to do so.
Batman is an elitist fascist who’s most likely politically indifferent on most social and civil rights issues unless they lead to violent or unsavory urban crime. It would be a stretch to call him politically liberal. He draws the line at the death penalty because of personal trauma. His having a pathological need to “do good” and subscionciously perpetuating social problems is a… damned interesting theory, actually. I don’t know how that’s “liberal” but it’s certainly a failing of America’s penal system.
The problem here is that the superhero genre has a huge bit of wish fulfillment built in to it. I see myself in Clark Kent, Peter Parker, and Billy Batson, mild-mannered people, geeks really, who are secretly awesome. Cap himself was a scrawny kid who answered the call of his country and was made awesome.
Batman is just awesome.
The point, really, is that a big chunk of the appeal of these guys is that I can imagine myself in their roles. If I found out that Superman voted for Bush… It would hurt my ability to do so.
When characters are broadly appealing, they necessarily have shallow characterization. So of course politics, religion, low-to-working class lifestyles and overt sexuality are out.
But wouldn’t it more interesting to find out that Peter Parker did indeed vote for Bush because the thought he would get to the bottom of the World Trade Center attack and felt betrayed or unnerved by the outcomes in the 2000 and the 2004 elections and the debacle that is the Iraq war? Or that he voted for Al Gore in 2000 and thought the system broke down? Or that he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and was frustrated by the lack of health care initiatives that were pushed through and or was embarrassed by Clinton’s peccadilios and betrayal of his wife after 1996?
I think of Batman as mix of Daniel Craig, Bill Gates and Rudy Guiliani.
Sure, Peter Parker can vote for Bush, or Gore. Peter Parker’s character is such that he can screw up, make mistakes, get his girlfriend killed, have sex with the Black Cat, find out he’s a clone, get his best friend hooked on smack, let Osama Bin Ladin escape because he had to get Aunt May’s medicine, forget to set his alarm and accidentally allow Galactus to consume the Earth, and so forth. Spiderman isn’t automatically right.
But Superman? If Superman votes for Bush, then you know voting for Bush is right and voting for Kerry is like voting for Lex Luthor. Even when Superman appears to act like a dick, he always has a good reason/excuse to act that way. “You see, Jimmy, I only voted for Bush to gain his trust, so he would tell me where the plans were hidden. And now that I’ve destroyed his killer robot he’s going to be spending a long time behind bars.”
I’m just going to say it’s probably a Life Model Decoy of Cap that got shot. They were designed to be assassin bait, anyhow.
No. It would be more interesting to see him punch Doc Ock in the face. (Although as Lemur points out, Spidey’s a bad example) Seriously, there’s a place for insightful discussion of politics and deep caricaturization, and there’s a place to see grown men in garishly colored skintight outfits solve their problems with violence, and it’s difficult to have one without compromising the other.
I get what you’re saying. I like deeper, more realistic characters myself, even in the superhero genre. But I also like the really iconic paragons like Superman and Captain America. They both have a place in comics.
I would like to point out that… I was about to say ‘there’s nothing unrealistic about Superman.’
Then I realized he could fly. That said, there’s nothing unrealistic about Superman’s character. People have spent years making him a deep complex character who cares… mostly starting with Elliot S! Maggin, I’d say. He’s a great and good man as represented, of course. And if you disagree with him, you are wrong, but only because he works so hard to be right, and not because ‘he’s Superman.’ For a nice look at Superman’s character, you could examine the recently released Emperor Joker trade paperback, where he wakes up in a world where everything is wrong. The Joker has Mixy’s powers, and he’s redefined the world. So how does Superman, who doesn’t know who he is, save the world, if he doesn’t know what the world should be? (First step - save the cheerleader. This was from the Jeph Loeb era of Superman. Jeph Loeb is now heavily involved in Heroes)
Of course, hack writers take shortcuts now and again.
Eh, it’s “liberal” in the sense of a theory on the relationship of social psychology to industrial society that I was referencing (rather morbidly, I daresay. >;) ).
I do stand by the “he doesn’t want to win—that would mean he couldn’t keep fighting evil” idea, though. In the context of the series, it sure does seem to answer a whooole lot of nagging questions…