And I won.
Seriously!
Being young (!) and black (!!) I’ve been awaiting the day when I would finally get haggled by the police. I always knew it was going to happen eventually, but seeing as my 20th birthday is right down the pipeline I had really hoped I would make it until then without that fateful meeting occurring.
I was wrong but I’m not too sore about it. Until it happened, I had no idea what I was going to write today’s column about. Today we’re going to be talking about the law.
Not L.A.W.
Partially inspired by my encounter with the police last night and even more so by blog I’ve been trying my damned hardest to locate – it was written by a lawyer in regards to the events that took place in Green Arrow #32. Unfortunately, I cannot find it but I can still make my point without it (mostly).
As we all know, the law can often be applied haphazardly in comics; even in those touting their gritty realism, most of the time for sake of the writer’s sanity and the ease of moving the story along. Most of the time we glance over it because A) We glance over things like that in all our media and B) A lot of us know nothing about how the law actually works…but that’s not what I want this column to be about this. I don’t want to talk about the law and how it actually works, I’d like to talk about the law (in relation to superheroes) and how we think it should work.
There have been various comics which have touched on aspects of superhero related law; Gotham Central, She-Hulk, the entire Civil War/Dark Reign, and so on and so forth. Most of these remain vague for simplicities’ sake, however, so we never really get an idea of how the law works in some comic universes (the fact that they can get away with shrinking people in the Marvel Universe would have to send a lawyer into a tizzy.)
I’m opening up the floor for this discussion because these are thoughts that plague me at night as I’m swept up thinking about people in tights with powers beyond that of mortal men and what would happen if they really existed. If we actually had superheroes in our world and we accepted them (legally, but not with a registration sort of deal) what other things would the law change to allow?
For example, just a big wild one that’s been dancing around in my head:
Let’s say we had superheroes here on Earth, lots of ’em. Then lets say our planet was invaded by aliens and the heroes managed to fight them off (after dozens of big bloody battles and millions dying and all that.) The day is won, Earth is victorious, but that’s simply not enough for all of the combatants.
Some of the heroes (villains too) join forces, get a spaceship, travel to the alien homeworld and totally pull a Dark Phoenix on them – utter intergalactic-genocide, the entire home world of our invaders is destroyed. The heroes return home triumphant and stained by their actions.
What does the world do when they return?
(Note: those involved make no attempt to hide what they did from the world)
Do individual countries have the authority to charge their citizens with crimes committed in another region of space? Would some countries seek to prosecute the heroes as war criminals while others wouldn’t? Would the UN get involved? Would a public staunchly in favor of what occurred make governments more likely to not bring charges against these heroes?
Well, what do you guys think would happen?
What do you think should happen?
Do you think it’s a big waste of time to think about things like this?
I’m Jay Galette and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t too hot to do anything but wonder. If it wasn’t for the breeze I think I’d be rambling on about whether Goku could beat Superman.
