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I think one of my issues with Civil War... and registration, was it was ALREADY illegal to be a vigilante in Marvel. Many of the cops and officials may have looked the other way for the greater good... but how many times did the cops try to arrest Spiderman or Batman?
Point of order: Batman is a DC character - MARVEL's Civil War had no effect upon him.
I think one of my issues with Civil War... and registration, was it was ALREADY illegal to be a vigilante in Marvel. Many of the cops and officials may have looked the other way for the greater good... but how many times did the cops try to arrest Spiderman or Batman?Point of order: Batman is a DC character - MARVEL's Civil War had no effect upon him.
Naturally.
But superheroes are superheroes. And they have always had issues with the cops. In the best case scenario, vigilantes make the cops look incompetent, Worse case scenario... their interference muddles up the chain of evidence and ruins cases.
Regardless of the universe they are in, a superhero registration wasn't necessary when they are already breaking the law.
Regardless of the universe they are in, a superhero registration wasn't necessary when they are already breaking the law.
The problems for Law Enforcement are two fold.
Registration of some kind would be the Government's best compromise.
Possibly a slight exaggeration, but really how many times a year do heroes wind up stopping alien invasions or world conquerors or genocidal robots or something that would, at a minimum, disrupt existing civilization beyond repair. Not all of them from home-grown metas who would fall under registration admittedly.
Full-scale alien invasions aren't all that common. Maybe once every eight to ten years? Five at best?
Maybe we don't read the same comics. How often do you see the heroes actually lose? Not, "Stop the villain, but he escapes". Not "have a few setbacks on the way to beating the villain". Not even "tragically lose a hero while beating the villain". But "The villain's scheme succeeds and the storyline ends with him successful".
About as often as they end in "Hero(es) saves the world and it stays saved forever and ever." But that's neither here nor there. My point is that realistically, neither Good nor Evil only need to win once. There are a lot of situational tropes about superhero comics that aren't realistic. If you're gonna deny one, deny them all.
Being able to slaughter people with the ingredients of the average supermarket is an acquired skill that takes planning and a good deal of work. There are plenty of supers who could do it on a whim and a moment's notice. Some of them are moody teenagers. Some of them will do it if they lose control of their abilities for a few moments.
And do you think any of that would matter to the dead? Their families? Have you seen any news report about such actions, and have a victim go "At least he wasn't shooting lighting from his hands!"
Once there's rubble to be cleared, survivors to save, and bodies to bury, the How takes a backseat.
Many of them have lost that control from time to time because it makes for an exciting story where the heroes have to stop their friends.
Not that many. And no, not enough to even suggest that every mutant is a ticking time bomb.
People with a few guns might be able to kill a few dozen people. There are plenty of supers who laugh at guns and could do far more damage far more quickly. You vastly underestimate the lethality of a superhero universe. Innocent bystanders get killed in gun fights on occasion. Buildings get destroyed in superhero fights regularly. They joke about it. "You can usually tell where we've been".
No, not regularly. Not every Mutant is an X-Man, not every meta is Superman, and very few fights are all-out slugfests in the middle of downtown with Magneto or General Zod. The vast majority of Mutants are the boy with black eyes that let him see infrared, or the girl with scales and gills. Just like Batman and the Punisher are outliers for the normal human population, the heroes we read about are only a small fraction of the empowered in their respective universes.
...And locate and monitor the supers you can't recruit.
No. No. NonononononononononoNO!
You do NOT put civilian metas under surveillance. One of the ugliest ways to turn a person into a criminal is to treat them like one beforehand. That stuff bleeds over into regular life.
Hell, and that's assuming you could even do it on an individual basis (you can't.) There are way too many Mutants to watch them all separately(counts given are usually in the tens to hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions). You're have to Concentrate them in one location somewhere. a Camp of some kind where you could put them all under Internment...
See where that is going?
But that's my point. That's always been my point. It's not a realistic reaction to a superhero world. Because there is no realistic reaction. The superhero world isn't realistic to start with.
The superhero world is not realistic, but as I pointed out the concerns with dealing with empowered populations can easily be dealt with in reaity.
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So in summary: Civil War was a bad idea. Basically no new concept were brought forward by that story arc (had been explored for decades by the X-Men comics i.e. humans vs. mutants) and the pitting of heroes vs. heroes only serve to alienate the large majority of readers.
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Full-scale alien invasions aren't all that common. Maybe once every eight to ten years? Five at best?
In context your statement makes perfect sense- without context, that is hilarious. :)
Back on topic, I don't think anybody is saying that registration and superhero concentration camps are a good idea... Just an idea that *somebody* would be pushing if supers were real.
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Also don't forget that some "powers" don't start as offensive The Guardian/Vindicator battlesuit started as mining gear. Exlier's mutation was just healing, etc.
And how do you "register" powers like Forge's or Cypher's? What is the noticeable difference between Forge, Roger Bochs, and Tony Stark?
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And damn straight they're watching people like Stark. An inventive genius on that level? Far, far beyond anyone in the real world, btw. That's an asset or a threat. Of course they're watching him.
and he's watching them too... whenever he wants... while in flight over the Atlantic from his armor... accessing any database or any information available ever stored digitally by mankind it seems (and in space, he could also hack/interface with the majority of alien tech he found... maybe had trouble with that planet-sized robot suit and the creepy robot that told him he's adopted, but nothing seems to stop him completely, given enough time)
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Also don't forget that some "powers" don't start as offensive The Guardian/Vindicator battlesuit started as mining gear. Exlier's mutation was just healing, etc.
And how do you "register" powers like Forge's or Cypher's? What is the noticeable difference between Forge, Roger Bochs, and Tony Stark?
You turn your "mutant detector" on and see if he pings?
And damn straight they're watching people like Stark. An inventive genius on that level? Far, far beyond anyone in the real world, btw. That's an asset or a threat. Of course they're watching him.
Well mutant scanning aside...
My point was that being able to build the Guardian suit, Box armor*, or even iron Man/War Machine/Rescue armors isn't a "power" Forge just does it faster. The line starts to blur between Forge (mutant power is building things) Hank McCoy (mutant whose power is not tied to his intellect) and Tony Stark or Bill Gates.
IOW, if Tony didn't use the armor, and just maintained a suit for Rhodey, which one would register.
*Obviously, Madison Jeffrey's version does require powers...
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I can't believe no-one has come up with the most obvious solution here yet - insurance.
Treat having superpowers as equivalent to owning a car (with caveats). If you're running a car, you have to have insurance. If you own a car but are not actually driving it, then you declare that you are not (in the UK at least). If you don't own a car, you don't do anything. The level of insurance is based on the level of risk. That in turn is based on your ability to drive, along with other factors.
The same could work for superpowers. Once you know you have a superpower, you either buy insurance, state that you won't be using your powers (if that's possible) and all the law has to do is check you have valid insurance if something happens in your neighbourhood.
There will have to be some government subsidy for those who cannot afford insurance and cannot choose to not use their powers, but hopefully they're a minority.
The amount paid would be proportionate to the risk those powers present to the community, and again there will be subsidies based on the use of those powers for the greater good.
So it all turns into a commercial enterprise, with law enforcement/government being involved at the bleeding edge and when individuals need help (which would be the minority of cases).
You get 1 "I didn't know I had superpowers" excuse before insurance is required, and yes, there will be a database of everyone who has powers, but this can't be accessed unless there's a Good Reason.
Open to abuse? Certainly. But better than the overwatch described above.
Also, has anyone read Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis? I've heard that this is a lot more 'normal' treatment of superheroes but haven't picked up a collected edition yet.
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No one here seems to have any trouble with Stark or any of the other heroes wantonly breaking the law and invading people's privacy, not to mention some guy having the firepower of a small army at his sole discretion, but the idea that the government might keep an eye on such people is outrageous.
Government is run with your money/tax dollars. In the MCU, if they would put out a referendum asking people to choose A) Feed the poor; B) Build roads and bridges; C) Increase the defense budget; D) Monitor all superpowered citizens; or E) Keep your money - do not pay an additional $100 in taxes this year.
Which way do you think the referendum would swing?
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E is the right answer, and I was trying to illustrate that superpowered population monitoring is probably not as big a "want" as the comics universe make it out to be... I mean the story behind the sentinels is neat, but for events to roll out in a way to allow a Days of Future Past future, it assumes that humans are just complete idiots incapable of analytical thinking and completely malleable by politicians and corporations....
oh wait...
:)
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it's funny that in the Marvel Universe, both the government and the corporations are evil, and both are trying to undermine the other... it's almost a sum zero kinda thing, leaving the good guys with enough time and energy to deal with... the... bad guys? hmmmmmm.... ;)
There was a Spider-Man story where Mac Gargan revealed to Spidey that Norman Osborne had let him in on a secret: The explosion in the number of villains is because corporations actually purposefully created them, in order to distract the superheroes away from the illegal stuff they (the corporations) were doing.
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it's funny that in the Marvel Universe, both the government and the corporations are evil, and both are trying to undermine the other... it's almost a sum zero kinda thing, leaving the good guys with enough time and energy to deal with... the... bad guys? hmmmmmm.... ;)There was a Spider-Man story where Mac Gargan revealed to Spidey that Norman Osborne had let him in on a secret: The explosion in the number of villains is because corporations actually purposefully created them, in order to distract the superheroes away from the illegal stuff they (the corporations) were doing.
The current Thor story arc is captivating in this regard. Roxxon has purchased the town of Broxton while Thor was away and renamed it "Broxxton" and put a big sign at the edge of city limits saying "Welcome to Broxxton: where gods fear to thread".
No, not regularly. Not every Mutant is an X-Man, not every meta is Superman, and very few fights are all-out slugfests in the middle of downtown with Magneto or General Zod. The vast majority of Mutants are the boy with black eyes that let him see infrared, or the girl with scales and gills. Just like Batman and the Punisher are outliers for the normal human population, the heroes we read about are only a small fraction of the empowered in their respective universes.
...And locate and monitor the supers you can't recruit.No. No. NonononononononononoNO!
You do NOT put civilian metas under surveillance. One of the ugliest ways to turn a person into a criminal is to treat them like one beforehand. That stuff bleeds over into regular life.
Hell, and that's assuming you could even do it on an individual basis (you can't.) There are way too many Mutants to watch them all separately(counts given are usually in the tens to hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions). You're have to Concentrate them in one location somewhere. a Camp of some kind where you could put them all under Internment...
See where that is going?
We're pretty much talking past each other at this point. I wonder if I we do read completely different sets of comics.:)
But I'll address this one bit. You don't monitor or recruit all mutants or metas or whatever. You ignore the ones who just have scales or something.
But all the ones with effective combat powers. And all the ones who start doing vigilante stuff.
Given that there are mutant detectors in the Marvel universe and that they register power levels (Cerebro), this isn't that hard.
No, not even them. Remember, we're talking about people, not just powersets.
You don't monitor anybody who doesn't give you an actual reason to. By which I mean something they actually do or are caught planning. Not just because of something they might do.
That kind of stuff tends to breed discrimination. If you've got the government watching you, employers will be less likely/willing to hire you. Neighbors may harass you or demand you leave. You could get kicked out of school (especially private schools
It's pretty much the same as being put on the Registered Sex Offenders list, except you didn't actually do anything wrong. You know what that breeds? resentment. And what do you think happens when they can't get work, can't get a good home, can't get into a good school (and let's hope it doesn't bleed over to their families (although it WILL). What do you think will happen when you combine desperation, a reduced ability to make a living honestly, and a fair to high amount of potential destructive ability?
Situations like that are why the phrase "This will not end well" exists. The fear of empowered criminals/terrorists should never lead to courses of action that create the very problem you're afraid of.
No, not even them. Remember, we're talking about people, not just powersets.
You don't monitor anybody who doesn't give you an actual reason to. By which I mean something they actually do or are caught planning. Not just because of something they might do.
That kind of stuff tends to breed...
Nice in sentiment, but not really something I would be behind in real life.
In comics, I LIKE secret IDs and the tropes that make comic heroes what they are...
In real life, if there is a threat, I would want it monitored. You don't round them up in camps based on things they 'could' do... but if you know they can kill with a thought and just let them be till AFTER they accidentally murder people... then that's the governments fault. It's like handing a toddler a machine gun and saying we're going to wait till he gives us a reason to take it away...
What do you think about Prof X? Sitting in his chair, monitoring all new mutants that show up and then trying to draft them into his school for training?
That's pretty much immoral monitoring... but since he's not 'government' he's seen as the good guy?
Frankly they would be such a unique and special subset of people with unique and specialized needs... they SHOULD be looked for. There should be all sorts of programs set up to make sure they CAN live ordinary and simple lives.
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Damnit. I finally saw "Winter Soldier" and was hoping to find a thread discussing it. Instead I get a bunch of stuff about variant comic book arcs and realism and "deconstruction of mutant morality" and so on. (Cries)
No, not regularly. Not every Mutant is an X-Man, not every meta is Superman, and very few fights are all-out slugfests in the middle of downtown with Magneto or General Zod. The vast majority of Mutants are the boy with black eyes that let him see infrared, or the girl with scales and gills. Just like Batman and the Punisher are outliers for the normal human population, the heroes we read about are only a small fraction of the empowered in their respective universes.
...And locate and monitor the supers you can't recruit.No. No. NonononononononononoNO!
You do NOT put civilian metas under surveillance. One of the ugliest ways to turn a person into a criminal is to treat them like one beforehand. That stuff bleeds over into regular life.
Hell, and that's assuming you could even do it on an individual basis (you can't.) There are way too many Mutants to watch them all separately(counts given are usually in the tens to hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions). You're have to Concentrate them in one location somewhere. a Camp of some kind where you could put them all under Internment...
See where that is going?
We're pretty much talking past each other at this point. I wonder if I we do read completely different sets of comics.:)
But I'll address this one bit. You don't monitor or recruit all mutants or metas or whatever. You ignore the ones who just have scales or something.
But all the ones with effective combat powers. And all the ones who start doing vigilante stuff.
Given that there are mutant detectors in the Marvel universe and that they register power levels (Cerebro), this isn't that hard.No, not even them. Remember, we're talking about people, not just powersets.
You don't monitor anybody who doesn't give you an actual reason to. By which I mean something they actually do or are caught planning. Not just because of something they might do.
That kind of stuff tends to breed...
Except it's not like a registered sex offender list, it's like a license to own/carry a weapon.
If you have the power to shoot frickin' laser beams, it doesn't matter if you are going to commit a crime with it, it only matters that you CAN.
Just like you need a license to own a gun, and are registered as having purchased said weapon.
I've read a pair of different stories now (Worm and the Whateley Universe stuff. Granted, these are not officially published works.) that show the whole mutant registration thing is pretty workable as a story and within morality. The supers might not LIKE it, exactly, and it's not perfect, but it's better than people running around committing crimes with who knows what abilities.
The Civil War storyline just wasn't a good implementation of it.
You waited too long to see it.
The internet moves fast. ;)
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No, not even them. Remember, we're talking about people, not just powersets.
You don't monitor anybody who doesn't give you an actual reason to. By which I mean something they actually do or are caught planning. Not just because of something they might do.
That kind of stuff tends to breed...
Nice in sentiment, but not really something I would be behind in real life.
In comics, I LIKE secret IDs and the tropes that make comic heroes what they are...
In real life, if there is a threat, I would want it monitored. You don't round them up in camps based on things they 'could' do... but if you know they can kill with a thought and just let them be till AFTER they accidentally murder people... then that's the governments fault. It's like handing a toddler a machine gun and saying we're going to wait till he gives us a reason to take it away...
What do you think about Prof X? Sitting in his chair, monitoring all new mutants that show up and then trying to draft them into his school for training?
That's pretty much immoral monitoring... but since he's not 'government' he's seen as the good guy?
Frankly they would be such a unique and special subset of people with unique and specialized needs... they SHOULD be looked for. There should be all sorts of programs set up to make sure they CAN live ordinary and simple lives.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. The government would be doing exactly what Professor X has been doing for mutants since the earliest issues of the X-Man. Monitoring for their appearance. Trying to recruit and train them. Stopping the ones who get out of line - which would include the vigilantes.
They'd be doing it on a larger scale and more effectively, that's all.
Of course, in the comic book world that's better left to individuals since they can be trusted while the government can't, but mostly because that makes for better stories.
I would absolutely love to see a story that follows a mutant-accepting civilian police force dealing with everyday things, like high school students suddenly realizing they can kill everyone they know by not closing their eyes.
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What did you enjoy most about the movie, Kirth?
First off, it's very, very hard for me to take a character called "Captain America" at all seriously -- but they somehow managed to rope me in despite that. I thought that alone is pretty impressive. The acting and the pacing I thought were both outstanding, much better than I've become accustomed to from summer blockbuster-type movies. And I liked how they gave pretty much everyone at least one scene to be awesome in.
In the movie itself, I absolutely loved the scene in the elevator:
I found the scene in the nursing home or whereaver, near the beginning, to be surprisingly touching.
Finally, I have to admit, after seeing "Avengers" I was feeling pretty sorry for everyone who wasn't Thor, Iron Man, or the Hulk. I mean, you've got three apocalyptic gods or near-gods smiting everything around them, and then you've got a bunch of puny mortal nobodies trying to keep up with a bow and arrows or a shield. Lame. But giving Captain America his own movie, with him presented as a superhero, gave him a lot more credibility as a protagonist and also made Black Widow and Falcon seem like they weren't just extras.
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Except it's not like a registered sex offender list, it's like a license to own/carry a weapon.
If you have the power to shoot frickin' laser beams, it doesn't matter if you are going to commit a crime with it, it only matters that you CAN.
Just like you need a license to own a gun, and are registered as having purchased said weapon.
Except the difference is that someone can choose not to buy a gun, or even after they have it, they can choose to put it down.
Mutants don't get that choice. Hell, even some non-mutants don't get that choice. Ben Grimm didn't CHOOSE to look like a rock-monster.
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Finally, I have to admit, after seeing "Avengers" I was feeling pretty sorry for everyone who wasn't Thor, Iron Man, or the Hulk. I mean, you've got three apocalyptic gods or near-gods smiting everything around them, and then you've got a bunch of puny mortal nobodies trying to keep up with a bow and arrows or a shield. Lame. But giving Captain America his own movie, with him presented as a superhero, gave him a lot more credibility as a protagonist and also made Black Widow and Falcon seem like they weren't just extras.
First off, you do realize that Cap already had his own pre-Avengers movie, right?
Secondly, while he may not be in the Thor/Hulk tier, I'd say he's no less powerful than Iron Man than Iron Man is than Thor/Hulk. And he's several tiers higher than Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Falcon.
First off, you do realize that Cap already had his own pre-Avengers movie, right?
The difference is, I saw the first one and almost immediately forgot the entire thing. I'd be hard-pressed at this point to name any character in it other than Captain America, I can't think of a single spoken line from the film, and I'm drawing a total blank as to plot. My reaction to CA2 is a whole lot different from that.
Secondly, while he may not be in the Thor/Hulk tier, I'd say he's no less powerful than Iron Man than Iron Man is than Thor/Hulk. And he's several tiers higher than Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Falcon.
You have to remember that my reactions come only from the impressions I get from watching the films. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the source comic books.
In fact, I enjoyed the "X-Men 2" movie exactly because I apparently misinterpreted the entire plot.
Haven't seen it in a couple of years, but off the top of my head:
1. Red Skull
2. Peggy Carter (soon to be in the Agent Carter TV show)
3. Armin Zola (human form)
4. Howard Stark
5. Bucky Barnes (pre-Winter Soldier)
6. first appearance of the Tesseract
1. Yeah, I'm still pretty much drawing a blank
2. Haven't heard of the show, have no idea who that is3. Is that the guy in the computer in part 2?
4. Wait, is that Tony's dad from "Iron Man"?
5. Oh, yeah, that was like Cpt America's buddy, who made him want to enlist in the Army so he could be just like him, right?
6. I have some vague idea that "the tesseract" is some kind of McGuffin from Avengers, but, honestly, Avengers seemed kind of like it was trying to be "Thor II," and I never saw "Thor I," so I sort of ignored that.
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You have to remember that my reactions come only from the impressions I get from watching the films. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the source comic books.
In fact, I enjoyed the "X-Men 2" movie exactly because I apparently misinterpreted the entire plot. ** spoiler omitted **
Amusingly I looked around the movie theater at the end of X-2 and you could tell the comic book readers from the people who didn't. The comic book readers were leaning forward hoping to see the Phoenix Force in full CGI glory, while the non readers were 'what's with all this fire stuff?'
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Might also have given us Fameke Jansen vamping it up as Dark Phoenix and not Zombie Phoenix.
"Fameke Jansen vamping it up" would have made X-3 a MUCH better movie. :)
Famke Janssen makes everything a better movie. Witness "Goldeneye," for example...
Every single one of those things were in the Captain America: The First Avenger movie.
Right, that's what Kthulhu was telling me. My reply is that, for someone like me who didn't have any idea in advance what those things were, they didn't resonate well enough in the first movie to really be recognizable by name afterwards.
See, to my mind, a good comic book movie doesn't just appeal to comic-book readers who are already "in the know." It needs to present things to non-comic-book readers in such a way that they are memorable, so that the viewer has some investment in them. Nolan's "Batman" movies, for the most part, accomplish that -- even if you have no idea who the Joker is, you never forget him after that second movie. I had no idea going into them who the Katie Holmes character was supposed to be, but even I noticed the change in actresses in the second movie.
I thought "CA:WS" really did pulled through on that level, in a way that CA:I and Avengers failed to.
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Right, that's what Kthulhu was telling me. My reply is that, for someone like me who didn't have any idea in advance what those things were, they didn't resonate well enough in the first movie to really be recognizable by name afterwards.
I find it hard to believe you can't recognize the Red Skull after Hugo Weaving pulled his face off in the first one. :)