# The Government bans superheroes **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-books-manga\ **Created:** [July 14, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850 "2025-07-14T12:50:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/1 "2025-07-14T12:50:09Z")
How many times has this plot point been used? I know of Watchmen and the Incredibles. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/2 "2025-07-14T12:52:47Z")
It’s a major plot point leading up to Captain America: Civil War (control, not ban but close enough IMO) and is the central conflict throughout every X-Men property. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/3 "2025-07-14T12:59:17Z")
Governments banning people from breaking the law and acting as extralegal authorities while hiding their identities? You would think banning that activity would be already be in place and that allowing it at all would extraordinary. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/4 "2025-07-14T13:05:07Z")
Must fight the urge to get into the politics of ICE here in Cafe society. Excuse my sidetrack please. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/5 "2025-07-14T13:09:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Governments banning people from breaking the law and acting as extralegal authorities while hiding their identities? That works for “superheroes” who are just regular humans using advanced tech, like Batman or Ironman. You can ban the tech, confiscate their resources, and the like. But how do you ban someone like Superman, whose powers are innate to their very being? You can’t confiscate super strength or invulnerability, and you can’t even arrest them, let alone keep them in jail, unless they agree to it. You’d have to dedicate huge amounts of resources to researching the people, and their powers, to figure out how they work, and how they could be controlled, if that’s even possible. And if you lose that control for even a moment? You’re doomed! ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/6 "2025-07-14T13:13:28Z")
_The Incredibles_ does this. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/7 "2025-07-14T13:15:21Z")
I’m sure that the OP will add that to his list of two. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/8 "2025-07-14T13:15:35Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > But how do you ban someone like Superman, whose powers are innate to their very being? You can’t confiscate super strength or invulnerability, and you can’t even arrest them, let alone keep them in jail, unless they agree to it. You’d have to dedicate huge amounts of resources to researching the people, and their powers, to figure out how they work, and how they could be controlled, if that’s even possible. And if you lose that control for even a moment? You’re doomed! That’s the issue with superhero stories - they’re usually set in a world that’s basically our world. In a real world with super powered beings, they’d probably be more like god-kings. _They_ would be the government. Especially if they’d _always_ existed rather than showing up in the 1930s or whenever comics started. You see super powered ancients in some X-MEN movies and the like, and if those existed, I don’t see how something like free and egalitarian society would have arisen to begin with. Each superhero would be king of a city-state or something. Actually, that sounds like a really cool concept for a setting. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/9 "2025-07-14T13:20:21Z")
Here’s some plotlines about monitoring/regulating powers in Marvel. > **[Superhuman Laws and Legislation in the Marvel Universe](https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/superhuman-laws-and-legislation-in-the-marvel-universe)** > > From Mayor Fisk’s anti-vigilante taskforce to the Superhuman Registration Act in ‘Civil War,’ learn all about how superhuman activity has been regulated or outlawed in the Marvel Universe. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/10 "2025-07-14T13:32:43Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Governments banning people from breaking the law and acting as extralegal authorities while hiding their identities? You would think banning that activity would be already be in place and that allowing it at all would extraordinary. Isn’t that called ‘vigilantism’ and already illegal? Any ‘real’ superheroes would, by default, be operating outside of the law, unless they somehow got deputized or something. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/11 "2025-07-14T13:35:36Z")
Not to mention the basic laws of science that would be broken by these powers. How can you teach when the elemental rules are broken constantly? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/12 "2025-07-14T13:36:11Z")
It’s common in fantasy stories, where the leader of every realm is a powerful wizard, or the nobility is the set of people with the strongest magic, or whatever. But part of what makes superheroes superheroes is that they’re fantasy characters in what’s otherwise a mostly-familiar world. In other words, if you write a story where the superheroes are all god-kings, it won’t be a superhero story any more. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/13 "2025-07-14T13:37:13Z")
Does X-MEN count? They’re ‘mutants’ not ‘super heroes’, but enmity between them and the state is a major plot point in at least one of the movies ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/14 "2025-07-14T13:41:19Z")
I recall the Adam West _Batman_ series taking pains to point out that Batman and Robin were “fully deputized” agents of the police department. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/15 "2025-07-14T13:43:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’s common in fantasy stories, where the leader of every realm is a powerful wizard, or the nobility is the set of people with the strongest magic, or whatever. But part of what makes superheroes superheroes is that they’re fantasy characters in what’s otherwise a mostly-familiar world. Fair point, what makes a superhero a superhero rather than a wizard is in large part the aesthetics and context. Really, my post was inspired by a half remembered preview for an X Men movie I didn’t watch where there’s a supervillain type (I guess in XMen specifically they are “mutants”) having a pyramid built in his honor. But that’s a flashback in a movie mostly set in the modern day (I assume). I guess the inverse of that is Urban Fantasy, where the powers are magical and you have mythical creatures in a modern world. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/16 "2025-07-14T13:45:29Z")
Whereas his compatriot in the same universe, the Green Hornet, definitely wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/17 "2025-07-14T13:45:32Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > I recall the Adam West _Batman_ series taking pains to point out that Batman and Robin were “fully deputized” agents of the police department. Yes, and in more serious iterations of Batman he was often referred to as a vigilante. And then there’s Spiderman, who J. Jonah Jameson always thought was a menace to society, and I seem to recall Spidey often avoiding the police in the 70s era comic books. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Not to mention the basic laws of science that would be broken by these powers. How can you teach when the elemental rules are broken constantly? Look mister superhero, it’s bad enough that you’re violating the laws of Man, but I will not have you violating the laws of Physics! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/18 "2025-07-14T13:46:51Z")
There’s a superhero book I read a while back where the sidekick character is still in school, and has a textbook titled Physics: The Way the World Should Be. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/19 "2025-07-14T13:50:42Z")
Wasn’t there something shortly after Crisis in the DC-verse? During the Legends event. With Glorious Godfrey in play? ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850/20 "2025-07-14T13:55:33Z")
I think comic book Batman was deputized shortly after Batman jumped the shark with the introduction of the “kid sidekick”. I used to wonder how much regular cops resented Batman’s flouting procedural rules and spoiling crime scenes. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-government-bans-superheroes/1020850.md?page=2)