Superheroes and Crime

To be honest the question of how superheroes would work in a world, or maybe more accurately how they would shape their world has been a fascination of mine. The MST3K mantra is all well and good but at times it's fun to think about how it can shift the world, and sometimes doing so can also give some interesting insights on our own world that we might not otherwise find.  And yes, I know that this is kind of a weird thing to talk about, but hey, as said it is a site about geeky thoughts and I might as well share this one.

There are two things that got me thinking about a particular one, this is, I should add, mostly a DC focused issue. There is actually a somewhat popular blog that I am happy to give more traffic to, http://lawandthemultiverse.com/ , These guys have some very interesting articles and a lot of their stuff is actually pretty damn fascinating and can even be good inspiration if you want to write a more in depth or 'realistic' portrayal of superhero style books or just try some new potentially interesting story routes.

What actually got me though was this article it talks about game theory in regards to superheroes, batman specifically. It starts out talking about how the general idea of game theory with crime is that if you show a signal of force against a gang doing certain violent crime, they begin to either stop doing those crimes or at least deter others, and move on down to lesser gangs until crime is more controlled or even hypothetically eliminated. Now what the article did was look at it in the sense of the superhero universe and used Batman as the example, and they pointed out that if anything arguably Batman made it worse. Given that many of his rogues gallery seemed to exist specifically to battle him and many of them were far more dangerous or psychotic than any of the common thugs. Though they also pointed out that it isn't universal, the Penguin is more dangerous without a Batman than with.

One of the other things that was brought up, I believe by a commenter of the blog article, was the idea of how many of these villains seem to tear through henchmen, often killing minor criminals etc. The endless mook and minion thing has been joked about in the comics and in other mediums as well, the venture brothers henching jobs as a fine example. Well as I thought about it my mind latched onto a fairly intriguing idea about both where the henchman armies were coming from as well as even explaining some of the differing crime rates in the DC universe (IE why Gotham seems to have much more vicious psychopathic villains than say, Metropolis). The other reason I bring this up is that with Batman and Superman being the most popular/well known superheroes out there or perhaps post avengers at least among that list they are easy to reference and are in the largest spread of media.

The first thought that I came to with this was actually where all of the thugs and nigh endless minions that various villains, even the ones apparently known for shooting, shredding, or exposing henchmen to nerve agents or experimental equipment. My thought, at least for Batman, was that I almost imagine Batman as a kind of law vs. crime arms race escalation problem. Remember that Batman began to deal with general street crime, attack muggers, thugs, the low level crime. The various crime families were deeply entrenched and had other alternatives for income and power, but the low level criminals...well things were tougher. It was also helped along by the fact that there are a lot of myths about Batman, some criminals see him as a quasi supernatural force, others as simply an insanely skilled man. There are a few good comics or examples in other media like the animated series episode Almost Got 'Im where several members of Batmans rogues gallery discuss their own theories ranging from there being a whole squad of batmen set up like a kind of elite swat team to a really advanced robot though the latter is ridiculed. The whole idea here is that Batman is scary, normal criminals aren't just afraid of getting caught, they're afraid of getting caught by HIM. Given that he is just a normal person, albeit a skilled and well equipped one, that kind of fear can be useful, criminals are either deterred or ate at least more likely to give up if cornered fearing what the dark defender of the city might do to them, as there are surely a lot of much darker rumors about Batman as well as the normal ones.

In this scenario a lot of the supervillians, the craziest and most powerful, are the only ones that can seem to make things work. Maybe they have better organizational skills, or maybe they're better equipped or maybe they're just so much scarier. The thugs and minions aren't necessarily super loyal or anything like that, they just look at it as joining a kind of protection system, as a henchmen, sure they're at risk of their boss and they might get pinched by Batman or the cops, but they figure that they also have the advantage of someone very dangerous backing them. It's the same reason why there are kids that will be friends with a bully in school, they view it as protecting themselves from another bully or threat. In essence the lower level criminals that either can't go straight or don't want to decide that they're safer or at least might get a better chance of hitting it big as part of the gang of one or more of the various supervillains.

Superman is kind of a different angle though, in the superman comics, and in fact in most media, his city is safer, cleaner, almost universally better off crime wise even before superman arrived there. Now some of it is the writing of course but it is interesting that there isn't quite the same level of escalation. Supermans main enemies, while some are quite capable of doing large amounts of property damage many of them are relatively containable and actually lack the army of henchmen. Now some of it is the genre, Superman is generally lighter, friendlier, etc. But I actually wonder if there is something else to it too, Superman doesn't need to cultivate a reputation of terror or a mythos. He's bulletproof, able to throw a semi with relative ease, as well as able to see through walls and fire blasts of heat from his eyes, in short Superman is a very scary prospect as a criminal. It's also worth noting that almost all of his rogues gallery are again focused on him, but most of them aren't, say trying to blow up the city or fill it with toxins or anything like that to get Supermans attention.

This led me to this hypothesis, what if most of the street level criminals in Metropolis, there are at least some, might actually decide that it would be easier in Gotham. Even if Batman is scarier at least he isn't able to see them through walls and might be able to be repulsed by gunfire, as it is Superman is almost a point where most street criminals would probably just decide that it isn't worth trying.

So that's about it on my thoughts, I could go further in this vein or try other areas, I wouldn't mind hearing what others think or topics that might interest readers.

Geeky Thoughts

Hey everyone, going to try doing this again, my gaming blog didn't work out too well but I have been thinking that maybe I should give this whole thing another shot. In this case I'll be a bit more diverse, especially as I often got a lot of interesting ideas or questions on subjects when I looked at games. Examples include how the mythologies of games can tell us a lot about not only the world but also give us some ideas of relation to it. Or, in one of my next posts, on a kind of odd set of thoughts involving superheroes. Hope people will enjoy reading.