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starwolf_oakley (starwolf_oakley) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-23 23:27:00

Entry tags:

publisher: wildstorm, title: the authority

runespoor7's post of Jason Todd talking to Mia Dearden led to a thread discussion about billionaire vigilantes beating up poor criminals.

A panel from THE AUTHORITY: TRANSFER OF POWER shows that at least a few comic creators are aware of this.

"The Authority" was always pretty "out there" for superheroes. But that's Warren Ellis and Mark Millar for you.

For more than a few superheroes, actually being a superhero can be seen as a case of Noblesse Oblige. Noblesse Oblige can be seen as "With great power comes great responsibility... and a really smug sense of superiority."

It came back to Batman, as these things do. After all, we never really go into detail about how "well-off" the Kents were from farming, or how much Clark Kent's Daily Planet take-home pay is. Some seem to think it ties into "Lonely Place of Dying," that since Tim Drake's family is wealthy, Tim isn't as "street" as Jason Todd.

Quotes from users via http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/987439.html?thread=27947311#t27947311:

runespoor7 said: "The fact is, 'Oh, Jason was lower class and her turned out badly, and then he was replaced by Tim, who came from a good family the same side of the streets as Bruce and who did very well as Robin' leaves a strange impression."

lynxara said: "In particular, confronting the class issues at work in the Batman stuff is impossible without coming to the conclusion that most of the characters involved are selfish monsters so steeped in white privilege that they've lost all grasp of reality."

icon_uk said: "Dick was suddenly an ethnic Romany with angst about the likelihood of him ending up in jail like so many of his kin."

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OT, but in light of the Authority-bashing...

ladymirth
2009-09-25 06:07 am UTC (link)

Just saying this because it needs to be said - I'l take the Authority over the rest of DC's moral-waffling superheroes any day. Because they alone had the guts to go out and finish off the bad guys in suitably gory ways, instead of being so worried about the pristine state of their immortal souls that they let psychopaths go out night after night killing innocents.

Yeah, so tht wasn't most people's idea of superheroes, but I'll take a bunch of people who'll get the job done and make the world a better place by taking out the monsters than a bunch of posers in spandex.

It is also why I loved Jason Todd in "Under the Hood". That guy who said "fuck capes and heroics, the only way to save people is by getting your hands dirty. Later on, the scandalized DC editorial later made it so that this was because Jason was a craji chicken what got bopped on the head and dipped in crazy juice. Actually, he didn't need to be crazy - he just needed to be sensible and realistic.

Regarding the classist issue - I will always maintain that Bruce could have done a hell of a lot more good as a business savvy benevolent Lex Luthor-type of guy than posing as a wastrel and attempting to protect a city of 8 million people by himself. Classic example- the whole No Man's Land fiasco. But then, the comics would have a lot less asskicking.

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