Comic Strips

Liberalism in a nutshell.

We just want an insurance policy, not for anything to change. We want to protect what we've built, write off the horrors of the world as isolated events like a collapsing building or asteroid impact. They stop the villains from rocking the boat, even when the villains have a morally superior position because "you have to do it the right way"

But the heroes aren't too morally superior... They can't make us feel bad. They do something about problems in front of them, and then go back to their job. They don't use their power to actually address root issues, they don't try to lead, they just defend the status quo

But, then heroes started to get more complex. Batman is a billionaire who fights crime, despite having the ability to actually fix the crime problem in Gotham, he just fights. He suffered a random act of violence as a child, and so that instilled a sense of justice. He works with the police and uses his wealth... In any way except actually changing things

Spiderman learned the hard way noblesse oblige, that his power gives him the responsibility to use it well. And he does, he saves people around him while also actively working to make the world better at his day job - inside the system. He's basically an activist

Then you have captain America, who puts his sense of justice above the system... But he mostly works inside it, but sometimes it's infiltrated and he fights or it's wrong and he stands against it

But when you get to more recent heroes, they start to get dark. The system is broken, so they work outside it as best they can. They don't have day jobs anymore. They kill sometimes. They make sacrifices, they fail. They question themselves.

People scream at them "where were you when we needed you?" And they explain the answer to that question to the readers through character development, even though there's nothing they can say to the victims

The heroes aren't infallible, they aren't strong or wise enough, they constantly struggle, and they fail. This isn't a hobby for them, they don't go back to work. But they keep trying, especially at great personal cost

And they carry every failure with them as penance for not being good enough to have saved us when we needed them

there are plenty of reasons to hate those movies. this is just another.

I agree. When the heroes are vigilantes, they're only acting as vigilantes because either the police are corrupt, or the police are overwhelmed.

I am not a Batman fan, and love to joke that if he and the other Gotham billionaires paid a reasonable tax, Gotham wouldn't be such a hellscape. But, the Batman theme is that the police are frequently corrupt and always overwhelmed, so a civilian needs to step up and protect the people.

Spiderman's whole deal is "with great power comes great responsibility." He puts his life on the line to protect people, and mostly from small-scale disasters like a run-away train.

What this comic gets absolutely wrong is that comic book heroes never try to stop someone from changing the status quo if they're doing it peacefully. The only ones they try to stop are the ones trying to do it by force.

So, paw patrol is a libertarian dytopia?

Tbh they're just misrepresenting the argument. Most (famous) superheros aren't fascists. They spend a lot of time punching imperialists in the face at a minimum.

What they represent is a social desire for the hero-figure, the strong-man, to fix society's problems instead of collective and democratic action. That's the dilemma people like Alan Moore are pointing out when they talk about how comics can enable fascism.

It's cool because it deconstructs the whole thing, down to having a quasi god as one of the heroes

Season 3 spoilers:

Only at first, when he was naive.

I love OPM, however I think it’s more about shonen anime stereotypes rather than western superhero stereotypes

Saitama is hilarious in the driest way possible, which is a humor that not everyone can appreciate