I really don't have a ton of time to pitch this story but it's been on my mind: comic books are going to really have to reassess how they address crime going forward.

comic books and the superhero in general exists out of a very exaggerate idea of how much crime there actually is in the country in a given time. If Batman were in, say, NYC, he'd probably spend most of his nights doing nothing.

I thought about this while re-playing the Spider-Man game and there's a prison breakout midway and the streets are overrun with escaped maximum security criminals committing crimes. I'd imagine, though, in reality, most of them would just, uh, go chill somewhere?

Prison breaks are the big nightmare for super heroes. Knightfall is about Bane destroying Arkham and releasing all the villains and they just run amok for 3 days. Obv. these are supervillains but still we are trained to believe imprisoned populations are villains

The idea that police ever need the help of someone with superpowers is pretty absurd. Why does Metropolis, for instance, even have a police force? You can't tell me enough crime happens on a given day to overwhelm Superman.

so what superhero creators did was essentially invent criminality to justify the need for their heroes because reality doesn't justify superheroes existence. But in doing so they have contributed to the mythological definition of what exactly a "criminal" is

and you can tie this directly into why people can't imagine a world with defunded police. Because otherwise "criminals will roam the streets"...because that's what we've been taught since Superman first picked up that car

so what do comic books need to do? Well, I think every hero should have a goal and reason to exist beyond "fighting crime." If Batman wants to actually eliminate crime, then what does that look like? And who is REALLY trying to stop him from locking up Black people?

I imagine if Batman worked to actually eliminate crime through pumping his billions into the city and creating an equal playing field, he may be dealing with corporations who depend on prison labor or even the police themselves.

X-Men work so well because they have a goal that is couched in disrupting the current societal status quo. They want to create anti-racism and their villains are largely governments across the world who want to perpetuate it.

but the crime fighting superheroes? Spider-Man, Superman, Batman. They also need something bigger to fight for. Superman saw his planet destroyed essentially by global warming. What does fighting that on Earth look like and then who are the villains?

The country is currently re-envisioning what crime looks like and comic book creators need to do the same. Otherwise they are perpetuating a mythology that locks us into a police state.

Anyway, I got more thoughts but that's it for now.

gonna revisit this when someone pays me to write comics one day lol

Lotta white folks assuming I am not an AVID comic book reader. Hm.