Beating up people does NOTHING to solve an issue. Assholes with power will always rise up, people that grew into shitty life conditions will look into crime as a way to make some money, and the best a person like Batman or Punisher have achieved at the end of this is that there's a few less bastards in their city.
The fact that you attempt to use characters and the stories themselves as evidence "that no, they actually don't enforce the status quo" tells me you don't understand this. Superheroes like Batman never attack the government, never start a revolution, never attempt to attain permanent change in the world, why?
Because comicbook narrative and executives portray this as EVIL. Nevermind sharing their power, money and nifty technology with the world, DC and Marvel periodically shit out stories attempting to justify why doing this sort of things would somehow make the world a militaristic dystopia or whatever is in vogue at the moment, when the real answer is that there's no money to be had on characters that actually attempt to move society forward, but rather spinning the same old tired tales again and again. Revolutionaries, anarchists and anyone that isn't a bland fence-sitting bootlicker that only goes after supervillains or purse-snatchers are always portrayed in the wrong in mainstream comicbook narratives.
WW2 destroyed the abolitionist energy of Superheros.
When Superman came out he was fighting crooked Senators, stopping wars and taking down arms dealers.
His first recurring enemy was the FBI because he tore down a slim in order to force the government to provide for the people.
Superheroes fighting government forces or the like wasn't seen as the domain of edgy AUs like The Authority, Injustice or the Justice Lords, it was a matter of fact that the State had just as much, if not more so, villainy than petty crime.
When WW2 came along, being anti Nazi was no longer counter cultural, it was mainstream. We got a little bit of the revolutionary zeal when Wonder Woman came out, what with being explicit political propaganda for a gynocratic polyamorous consensual BDSM utopia, but for the most part this lead to buy war bonds and slap a jap style stories.
The one two punch of the 50s comic backlash and the post -code hero revival gave heroes their "aww shucks" square style image. Marvel re-injected edge with them groundbreaking character dynamics but the actual political themes and messages fell into the underground until Watchmen and TDKR dug them back up in the great 80s wave of leftist backlash against Reagan and Thatcher.
That wave of leftism is what gets us the US Government being the big bad of Ellis and Millar 's Wildstorm work and also leads to the anti government impulses of stuff like Transmetropolitan.
But heroes have truly lost their revolutionary zeal in the mainstream. Which is a shame because a superhero is a fundamentally abolitionist concept. If the system actually helped people, we wouldn't need them.
Honestly I am waiting for a Batman story to take the classic "Gotham sucks , GCPD are corrupt" beats into full on ACAB terratory.
Jack Martinez
You're going to spend the rest of your life confused and angry, because life is more complex than something that can squeezed onto a pity t-shirt, and thats as much as you are willing to engage with.
William Perez
Miller was facing accusations about making Batman a fascist in real time as TDKR came out.
Elijah Morris
Miller took the horseshoe and used it snort cocaoen
Easton Edwards
Superheroes are fascistic in nature and every writer worth their salt agrees.
Jacob Russell
And as much as you complain about nobody starting actual change you waste your time shitposting on an anime website
Batman is a literal manchild who made a promise to punch crime in the face when he was eight and sticks to it because he literally cannot imagine a life without dressing like a bat and punching crime. He's a big fat baby in a onesie who wants playtime to never end. So he hems and haws and makes excuses to not to anything that would actually fix Gotham because he doesn't want Gotham to be fixed but doesn't want to admit it.
Holy shit, I don't know who's a bigger cunt, the manchildren who need a scientific explanation for every plothole or you. It's pulp fiction, a piece of throwaway entertainment. The moment you start thinking about it as if you were dissecting Ulysees, you've officially lost your grip on reality.
Josiah Clark
The original Superman was too left wing even for FDR
When it comes to capeshit, unironically yes. It's not worth the mental energy to think about the socioeconomic ramifications of Bruce Wayne organizing several foundations for the needy all the while accosting violent drug addled hooligans on the street. If you want to sharpen your wits on analyzing something, try Dave Sim's rants in the later volumes of Cerebus.
Liam Peterson
You people lower the bar for everyone.
Anthony Adams
These are the cops putting a bounty on Superman's head. In his NINTH appearance.
Because it was placed ever so high to begin with. Read something other than capeshit, for God's sake. It's not the 70s anymore, you can get your hands on different genres easily now, even Eurotrash.
