Weekly Comic Book Discussion 2/21/2008

Cafe Society
21

Thing is, I accept that these are the “rules” of superhero comics, and will still enjoy and read them, all the while gnashing my teeth at their inefficent penal system. You gotta keep the “good” characters alive, which must sacrifice believability (He’s a skinny, unpowered nutjob. You have powers and you’re a supercriminal. Kill him!) for fan attention.

Maybe it’s the concept of death without repercussions. In an issue of Infinite Crisis, a superteam named the Freedom Fighters were brutally killed by a group of villains. No one has mentioned it since, and no one has been punished, and it really irked me, enough that I’ve actually started a fanfiction story where one of their number who wasn’t there named Iron Munro decides to take revenge. Same thing holds true of the Joker- the unknown victims. Why hasn’t some good citizen of Gotham just shot him?

Ok, ok. I’ll stop if no one else wants to continue this discussion. I’m not a fanatic :). Oh and thanks for the suggestion, but Ennis just has issues with superheroes he’s working out. Too much too much for me.

22

Again, remember what we’re discussing.

We’re NOT talking about an isolated, max security prison.

We’re NOT talking about New Jersey putting the death penalty on the books so that the Joker gets the chair.

We are talking about a covert organization sending any criminal with metapowers or a costume, no matter what their crime, no matter what their power level - no matter if they’ve gone straight! - to an isolated alien world, without even the vaguest lip service to due process. An alien world with no services in place. An alien world with no guards.

No guards, meaning the ‘consequences’ for killing are being given a whole bunch of new victims to play with and nobody being around to stop it.

No guards, meaning that with the alien and human supertech found on the world, and sent with the prisoners, the inherent powers of at least one of the metacrooks sent there, and the sheer brainpower of several of the transportees, the only thing slowing down the mass escape is the inevitable clash of egos and figuring out just where they are after they’ve organized.

If you want to make Salvation a defensible reaction to metacrime, almost every aspect of what Waller and her crew has been doing needs to be changed.

1: Build an ACTUAL prison there.
2: Fill the prison with guards and support staff - preferably metahuman.
3: Make transportation to Salvation a sentence that can be invoked for particularly heinous metacriminals - but only after a legitimate arrest and conviction. Life sentences will only be available for the same crimes they are for non-metacriminals. The possibility of parole will exist or not just the same as it would for any other criminal.
4: Take away all of their gear and neutralize all powers when they’re sent.
5: Treat them like prisoners in an equivalent prison on Earth - do everything possible to prevent them preying on each other. Supervise them so they can’t use materials from the work shop to build a device to escape.
6: This is actually the one part they’re doing right - access can be activated only from Earth - although a way of communicating with Earth in emergencies has to be in place. All opening of the portal will be heavily guarded on both ends, whether it be prisoner transport, guard change, or a supply run.

23

[QUOTE=Tengu]
Again, remember what we’re discussing.

We’re NOT talking about an isolated, max security prison.

We’re NOT talking about New Jersey putting the death penalty on the books so that the Joker gets the chair.

We are talking about a covert organization sending any criminal with metapowers or a costume, no matter what their crime, no matter what their power level - no matter if they’ve gone straight! - to an isolated alien world, without even the vaguest lip service to due process. An alien world with no services in place. An alien world with no guards.

No guards, meaning the ‘consequences’ for killing are being given a whole bunch of new victims to play with and nobody being around to stop it.

No guards, meaning that with the alien and human supertech found on the world, and sent with the prisoners, the inherent powers of at least one of the metacrooks sent there, and the sheer brainpower of several of the transportees, the only thing slowing down the mass escape is the inevitable clash of egos and figuring out just where they are after they’ve organized.

If you want to make Salvation a defensible reaction to metacrime, almost every aspect of what Waller and her crew has been doing needs to be changed.

1: Build an ACTUAL prison there.
2: Fill the prison with guards and support staff - preferably metahuman.
3: Make transportation to Salvation a sentence that can be invoked for particularly heinous metacriminals - but only after a legitimate arrest and conviction. Life sentences will only be available for the same crimes they are for non-metacriminals. The possibility of parole will exist or not just the same as it would for any other criminal.
4: Take away all of their gear and neutralize all powers when they’re sent.
5: Treat them like prisoners in an equivalent prison on Earth - do everything possible to prevent them preying on each other. Supervise them so they can’t use materials from the work shop to build a device to escape.
6: This is actually the one part they’re doing right - access can be activated only from Earth - although a way of communicating with Earth in emergencies has to be in place. All opening of the portal will be heavily guarded on both ends, whether it be prisoner transport, guard change, or a supply run.
[/QUOTE]

So, put them in a prison? Like the ones they regularly escape from with little difficulty? Fill it with hostages and victims? Take away, what? Luthor’s fought Superman just by being scary-smart. Joker has none, and Grodd’s a big monkey, just to name three. Joker would never get convicted, he’s insane. And they fake it till parole, get out, and more craziness ensues. These are NOT normal prisoners.

24

Hello, fellow comix appreciating Dopers; I’m DLuxN8R-13; you may call me D-Lux, or 13.

This is my first time poking my communicative digits into the WCBDT; I dearly love comics/graphic novels/whatever we call them this week, though, and think I might be able to contribute to the discussion. Thing is, I have my own tastes in the medium and was wondering if the kind of funny books I enjoy are appreciated and discussed here.

So. Pre-Code horror and pre-code crime comix Wertham warned us against. 70s B&W magazine-format from Creepy to Eerie Publications like Terror Tales. Undergrounds from the Freak Bros to Skull and Paranoid and the other transgressive horror comix of the UG area. Horror and crime comics of the sort aimed at grownups who like fictional graphic violence. The current series I follow are 100 Bullets, Fables, Hellblazer, Powers, and Y The Last Man; I like those very much.My other very favorites include Mr. Gaiman’s exquisite Sandman, Transmetrpolitan, V For Vendetta, Watchmen…you know, the blood-spattered, possibly Deep ones. Funny funnybooks to me include the Freak Brothers, most stuff by Peter Bagge and all the offshoots, . And sometimes I really get into the modern, jaded takes on some of the old long-underwear superheroes, like the gritty mean direction Batman has been going in for the last decade or so. Oh, and good old Swords and Sorcery too – the bloody, sex-tainted kind, nothing with any damned elves in it. Barry Windsor Smith’s Conan was some of my first visual porno- near-naked, muscular men! Bleeding and fighting! Be still my teenage homolibido! :slight_smile:

In sum, I suppose I just want to ask this right off the bat: is this thread for discussing those kind of comics or mainly regular superhero mags?

25

[QUOTE=DLuxN8R-13]

In sum, I suppose I just want to ask this right off the bat: is this thread for discussing those kind of comics or mainly regular superhero mags?
[/QUOTE]

Oh, we discuss just about anything that comes out on a weekly basis - it’s just that superhero mags make up a large percentage of the output. But sure, we’re happy to chat Vertigo, or Image, or Indie..

26

[QUOTE=Love Rhombus]
Fill it with hostages and victims? Take away, what? Luthor’s fought Superman just by being scary-smart.

[/QUOTE]

Hostages and victims?

What do you think they have NOW. OK, no hostages, because nobody cares about the ‘scum’ who got sent to an alien world for the crime of holding up a bank with an active metagene.

At least in a proper prison setting the guards have the advantage of being armed and up against unarmed opponants - no such advantage is afforded the minor crooks and good guys with a shady past on Salvation now.

And, yes, exactly, Luthor stands up to Superman with just his brains.

Now explain how sticking him on a world with several other super-brains, scads of alien tech, a teleporter, and god knows how much human-made super-tech is going to keep him from coming back - angrier, more justified, and better armed - better than having him under lock and key where his activities and associations can be monitored and limited.

And, of course, you keep ignoring the fact that this is done covertly - no public knowledge, no public oversight, nothing to prevent the kind of abuses that have already happened. That it’s done without due process, the Suicide Squad acting as judge, jury, and executioner - and let’s not kid ourselves, the only transportees who aren’t getting back when Luthor and Sivana inevitably figure out how are the ones who die, either from the Hell World’s deathtraps, or at the hands of the Joker and his ilk. That, on its own, even if the rest wasn’t morally repulsive and utterly idiotic, would be enough to make it morally repugnant and legally untennable.

27

Let’s also not forget that during a normal prison break, the authorities and heroes have some kind of warning. “Oh shit! The Joker got out again! Shine the bat-signal and hope we can find him before he kills again!” May not be much, but It’s better than nothing.

The only contact the good guys have with Salvation is the Martian Manhunter in disguise. And he’s there as an agent of Batman, not the folks who actually set the place up. They had absolutely no way of knowing if Luthor built a rocket out of the local equivalent of bamboo and palm oil and had hooked up with the Sinestro Corps, Darkseid, Lady Styx and Lobo and they were on their way to Earth at the helm of Warworld and the Kryptonian dreadnought Doomsday.

28

[QUOTE=Tengu]
3: Make transportation to Salvation a sentence that can be invoked for particularly heinous metacriminals - but only after a legitimate arrest and conviction. Life sentences will only be available for the same crimes they are for non-metacriminals. The possibility of parole will exist or not just the same as it would for any other criminal.
[/quote]

At the risk of getting off-topic…when’s the last time a supercriminal actually made it to trial? And a lot (most?) of the DC villains seem to get sent to Arkham, to boot, at least suggesting that they’re considered mentally incompetant to stand trial (which seems iffy, frankly…they clearly know what they do is wrong, or at least illegal. They just don’t give a damn).

For the record, is this even technically possible, on a routine basis? They don’t seem to be mixing “Sleepers” into their chow in the slammer.