Sunday Symposium: Superhero Registration

[Joose]

No, I'm not Dog Pants. I came up with an idea for a subject for here and he suggested I posted it myself, partly because I know the subject better and partly to show that it doesn't all have to be from him. So here I am!

This is a little different from the other subjects we have had so far, because it is a hypothetical question about a situation that will probably never come up in the real world. We are all nerds here though (to a greater or lesser extent) and nerds like a good debate about things that are not real, so lets give it a go.

For those of you who are not familiar with Marvel stories from nearly ten years ago, there was an event in their universe called the Civil War. It was based around the american government passing something called the Superhuman Registration Act. In simple terms the SRA stated that any super-powered vigilante had to register their identity with the government or they would be considered a criminal and be hunted down by other, registered heros. This caused an idealogical split in the superhero community, hence the Civil War. Marvel kept using the phrase "Whose side are you on?" during the event, and used it to explore themes around responsibility and accountability, but also McCarthyism and how people can hide bad things under a cloak of good intentions. It also raised questions like what, exactly, is a superhero? At what point does something count as a "power"?

It also set the stage for some of what I think are the best story events in all comics: The Secret Invasion and Dark Reign. But thats not really the point of this thread.

The thing is, the subject of registration and the questions it raised can be applied to pretty much any comic, film, tv series, book or computer game universe where superheroes exist. So, the question I put to you is this: If we lived in a world like the Marvel and DC universe, filled with people who have super powers and fight crime wearing masks, would you be in favour of a SRA-like law, or against it?

Personally, the reason I find it such an interesting question is that I have no idea. I am completely split between the two groups.

On the one hand, the pro-registration side makes a lot of sense to me. With heroes wielding crazy powers there is a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong, and if they are anonymous there is no way of making anyone take responsibility for screw ups. Just because you can make lasers come out of your eyes or walk on the ceiling doesn't mean you are qualified to take on criminals, and as was touched on in the new Spider-man films sometimes a well meaning vigilante can make things worse by doing what they think is the right thing. Making it official doesn't just mean you have someone to blame when things go pear shaped, it means that the vigilantes that do register can be given access to better support networks and be trained by professionals in how to better do their crime fighting job.

On the other hand, superheros who hide their identity don't tend to be doing that because they are shy. They tend to have friends and family who would be put at risk if criminals knew their identity. That alone could make some people think twice about becoming a superhero in the first place. If Spider-man didnt put on the suit because doing that would mean registering and therefore putting his aunt and girlfriend at risk, he wouldn't have been there to save the day on the many, many occasions he did so. Plus there are practical issues: How do you decide if someone has super powers? I mean, Superman clearly does, as does Wolverine, Green Lantern and so on. But Batman is, technically, just a clever rich guy who trains a lot. Would this law mean that anyone who does martial arts can no longer intervene in a mugging without first having registered with the government? And what about the people who didnt choose to have super powers (which is, traditionally, most of them)? It would be understandable if people who were, for example, born with special powers saw this kind of law as the first step towards camps and number tattoos.

So, what do you guys think? If they existed, should super powered individuals be registered with the government? If you do, how would you address the practical and ethical issues with doing that? If you don't, what about the issue of accountability?

[Dog Pants]

Taking it as read that superpowers are fantastic, I think the act is an unrealistic scenario anyway. It assumes that everyone with super powers would be using them for fighting crime, or committing it. I would expect most people would use them to make their lives easier and be better at their jobs (to command a higher salary for the most part). Many of those who were both superpowered and inclined to serve their country would probably do so in the usual ways - as civil servants, police, firefighters, soldiers, albeit spectacularly good ones and probably in very specialised roles. So there wouldn't be quite so much call for the anonymity and therefore less cause for the McCarthyism. Even not taking that into account, it's one hell of a leap of political logic to go from registering superpowers, which seems reasonable, to hunting down those who don't, which is extreme. Of course the plotline wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if a couple of super-auditors showed up and fined Sous-per Chef because he was illegally using his unregistered power to heat liquid to boiling point. I'm also assuming there were some nefarious characters in the background too. Sticking with the theme I'd say these things have a habit of sorting themselves out, so they're probably better off leaving the super-people to manage their own affairs. Isn't a training school for supes exactly what Prof Xavier runs in X-Men?

Regarding what constitutes a super power, if high levels of training constituted a super power then there would be a lot of people about on that list. Military special horses, competition martial artists, and all sorts of other people who exist unregistered in the real world. The only issue I could see with differentiating a normal person from a super person is if superpowers were widespread enough to blur the lines of what constituted normal.

That's my uneducated take anyway. Superhero stuff isn't my thing, so there might be loads more to this I'm not getting.

[Joose]

Taking it as read that superpowers are fantastic, I think the act is an unrealistic scenario anyway. It assumes that everyone with super powers would be using them for fighting crime, or committing it. I would expect most people would use them to make their lives easier and be better at their jobs (to command a higher salary for the most part). Many of those who were both superpowered and inclined to serve their country would probably do so in the usual ways - as civil servants, police, firefighters, soldiers, albeit spectacularly good ones and probably in very specialised roles.

To be fair, it is kind of implied that this is kind of the case in Marvel. For example, there's a few mutants who primarily use their abnormal abilities for art or science. Plus there's a bunch that don't really use their abilities for anything much special. Its just that the ones that are the focus of stories are usually the ones who use their powers to biff criminals, because that makes a more interesting story.

Plus, not all of the super abilities are something that really lend themselves to normal work. If the only thing you can do is explode really hard there isn't much you can use it for other than to threaten people with explosions.

Even not taking that into account, it's one hell of a leap of political logic to go from registering superpowers, which seems reasonable, to hunting down those who don't, which is extreme.

Not really. The whole point of getting them registered is so that there is accountability for their actions. If you don't go after the ones that don't register, then the people who are most likely to cause problems (irresponsible people) are also unlikely to bother registering (knowing there is not going to be any come back on them if they don't). If you don't enforce registration there is little point having it in the first place.

To give it a real world metaphor: Its like gun licencing. You need to register and get a licence for guns so that if you were to shoot someone the records can be used to trace it back to you. If you don't enforce gun licencing then people will just not bother getting the licence, and then you will have no records to use to track shootings.

Of course the plotline wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if a couple of super-auditors showed up and fined Sous-per Chef because he was illegally using his unregistered power to heat liquid to boiling point. I'm also assuming there were some nefarious characters in the background too. Sticking with the theme I'd say these things have a habit of sorting themselves out, so they're probably better off leaving the super-people to manage their own affairs.

OK, two points here: Im not questioning whether registration should happen in the context of a story. Saying it wouldnt be an issue because really there wouldnt be superheroes and supervillians is kind of missing the point: There wouldnt really be superheros because there wouldnt really be superpowers. You have to accept that there are both heroes and villains as well as powers or the question is kinda moot.

Secondly, in the event in Marvel at least, the whole point is that the world in general doesnt trust super people to manage thier own affairs any more. The event that really kicked things off was when a bunch of super powered kids attempt to take on villains way out of thier league in an attempt to become famous via a reality TV show. The ensuing fight causes an explosion that kills 600 people, including a bunch of kids at a nearby school. The SRA is basically people saying "we dont trust superheroes to manage thier shit any more". Its the government saying they are no longer content to let things sort themselves out, so they are going to sort things out themselves.

Interestingly, there are no nefarious characters in the background (theres some buggers who take advantage of the situation, but they are not involved in causing it). Marvel did a very good job of making both sides of the argument entirely legitimate, and doing what they do with the best of intentions. In fact, right up to the conclusion of the event it was really not clear which side was going to win out (for the record, Iron Man and the pro-registration side won in the end. Captain America was leading the rebellion and he quit. Its a bit more complicated than that, but thats the gist.)

Isn't a training school for supes exactly what Prof Xavier runs in X-Men?

Nope. Ok, it is a bit in the films, but thats because all of the films simplify everything, a lot. I'm not saying that as a critisim of the films, its no different to how films of books have to cut out a lot of the complexity. Its not realistic to expect a 1.5-2 hour film to contain all the detail from the last 60 years of X-Men comics. In the comics, its just a school. Its for mutants, but only because mutants are the victims of massive prejudice everywhere else. The X-Men are a tiny part of the school, the rest of it teaches them regular things like maths and languages alongside how to make the most out of any powers they might have (Sidenote: Not all mutants have something anyone would call a power. The lucky ones can fly. The unlucky ones just look a bit like a bird.)

Regarding what constitutes a super power, if high levels of training constituted a super power then there would be a lot of people about on that list. Military special horses, competition martial artists, and all sorts of other people who exist unregistered in the real world. The only issue I could see with differentiating a normal person from a super person is if superpowers were widespread enough to blur the lines of what constituted normal.

Which is exactly the problem. In worlds like Marvels there are literally thousands and thousands of people with powers, and they range from near godlike to kinda pathetic. If you are going to make a law about it you need to have things defined, so how do you define something as nebulous as "superpowers". Quicksilver can run at hypersonic speeds, which is clearly a super power. Usain Bolt can almost make 30mph. So at what point between those two speeds does it go from "damn, he can run really fast" to "he has SUPERSPEED"? The same can be applied to a bunch of things: strength, intelligence, dexterity and so on.

Although I've got to say, I am pretty sure a Military Special Horse is not a regular human.

[FatherJack]

Rounding them up is too much like McCarthyism in 50's America where being faaabulous was classified as a mental illness. I would hope we're a bit more enlightened now and don't punish people for what they are, but sadly we're no less paranoid either.

Whatever you want to call them: people with superpowers, mutants, or the next stage of human evolution, when they first appear they will be seen as freaks by most and feared by the authorities and public alike.

If you think we've grown beyond freakshows and grotesqueries then a quick look at the schedule on TLC will disabuse you of that notion. If you think you can build a bomb, or some other weapon that simulates what some superpowers can do in your shed without fear of prosecution then you are also mistaken.

Heroes covered the topic and I guess what happens in that is fairly close to what would really happen, superpowers would be kept quiet, the most dangerous locked away somewhere in secret and an agency put in place to find and monitor any new occurrences. I would guess people with minor powers who weren't a danger to others would be left alone as long as they promised to keep their powers a secret - which most of them would want to do in any case, lest they be labelled freaks.


If the mutants were already well-known (as is suggested in the stuff I've seen in cartoons and movies) then there's no hiding them away secretly. In any case how could a regular government hope to dictate anything to a recalcitrant, truculent super-powerful being unless they already had other super-powereds on their payroll?

If there were many, many people with powers and the stories about heroes vs villians are just the most interesting ones, then I guess people would be more accepting over time, the way we have with other things that mark people as different.


People really have mutations and what seem like superpowers already, some genetic, some trained. People really dress up in superhero costumes and try to fight crime. We tend to just see both as freaks of nature, insane, deluded or advertising gimmicks and largely ignore them.