• PugJesus@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    1 year ago

    Here in the US, law enforcement escalates to force far more often than they encounter someone who is already aggressive, so it raises a question why villains in comics so consistently engage first?

    … because superheroes aren’t cops?

    This is not in any way a normal reaction to a image of a woman in a catsuit called Black Cat singing showtunes from the musical Cats.

    Take your hangups somewhere else.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      1 year ago

      Except that superheroes fight crime that’s vigilantism or law enforcement. And yes, when they were fighting crime, the police did have a (well cultured) reputation of restraint, all the while releasing dogs on civil rights protestors. And yes, police in the comics were Andy Griffith police, not even COPS police.

      Take your hangups somewhere else.

      Feel free to block me if you truly think I’m being hyperbolic. I’m far from the first person to make these observations, though.

      • PotatoKat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You do know that spider-man is famously hunted by the police and is rarely on their good side. They often open fire on him before even shouting freeze. Not only that but when spider-man was the ceo of a corporation he hired someone who he caught doing a crime instead of leaving him for the police because he was doing it for his family.

        There are a ton of stories of spider-man just talking to the regular “criminals” he’s going up against and helping put them on a better path or pointing them towards FEAST, a soup kitchen that also helps people find jobs. You’re making massive sweeping judgments on a medium you literally haven’t read based off of the most watered down, focused tested, US Military approved versions that exist (and anybody who has read more than 2 comics in their life can tell you’re doing that)

        And if you wanna talk about cops in comics how about you read The Punisher or Batman and tell me they don’t deal with corrupt police

        And before you pull the “billionaire does nothing but beat up poor people to fix things” card with batman (saving you from embarrassing yourself some more) he does put his money into making the city better in every way he can. The city’s problems are just so deep that Bruce Wayne’s money can’t fix it all (ranging from things like corruption so deep the money goes back to the mafia to the city is literally cursed.

        Pick up some of the better Green Arrow runs and tell me what you see is right wing propaganda

        Read The Flash and act like it’s anti-rehabilitation when it’s literally a meme the community that when he shows up he makes his villains feel bad because he’s disappointed in them

        Or just read the freaking X-Men and tell me that shit ain’t progressive

        You know literally nothing about what you’re talking about and “your” observations are as shallow as they come. Baby’s first leftist comic critique

        Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having read your posts. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

        • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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          1 year ago

          Curiously, the GCPD in much of the canon is owned by the Carmine Falcone which is a bit more typical of Chicago during Prohibition, and political power gained by law enforcement justified by organized crime (and the War on Drugs and the War on Gangs) that drove us to our present state in which precincts are run very much as crime syndicates, turning those powers to prey on common citizens. In the United States, the police industrial complex hunts for liquidatable assets that can be seized via asset forfeiture that are in the hands of civilians who could not afford a legal defense.

          It’s a huge racket. In 2015 it was estimated $5 billion had been seized across the states, which is more than all the burglaries. Some states are trying to limit or stop asset seizures. Police are often ignoring the law, figuring they’ll get excused by IA or some back-the-blue judge.

          I bet police in Batman aren’t robbing the people this way, even in 2023. I’d be impressed if he was. I’d be impressed if Batman cared when SWAT raided houses in black neighborhoods or when police gunned down a kid without cause in the district park. I bet Batman is still punching thugs.™ I’d be delighted if I was wrong.

          The United States (and the UK, and Canada, and parts of the EU) need to systemically change, and if superheroes aren’t acknowledging this then they are champions of the establishment, not the people. We can’t save the world by punching Thanos in the face; in fact, Thanos killed only half of all life. What is happening IRL is going to result in more than half of all life dying, and that’s going to happen even if we achieved carbon-net-zero today. Thanos and Darkseid and all other fictional world eaters have been made irrelevant by real-world events.

          And yes, Batman trying to save Gotham by punching thugs makes him irrelevant as well. Feel free to continue reading Detective and rooting for him, but we just don’t exist in that world anymore.

          Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having read your posts. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

          If someone’s depending on me to inform their opinion, then they can’t get much dumber. I invite people to go online and do some websearches about the real shit going on in the world, what real-world corruption in the 2020s looks like (as opposed to the 1920s) and the real monsters that we are facing that will take way more than superheroes to oppose.

          But also I get it if you are so miserable, so overworked, so distraught that seeing Batman fight Two-Face is the only light in your world. In that case, yeah, read. Smoke your doobs. Do what you need to do to survive, because this world is fucked up enough that everyone is justified coping however they do, and comics are not the worst habit in the world.