Silver/Bronze age post-modern apologetics

[massey]

Weird thread title, huh?  I tried posting on this subject a few years ago, but the thread didn't get many responses, in part because I didn't even understand what I was asking for.  I had a hard time putting the idea into words.  Therefore, I got very few responses.  Hopefully I'll have better luck this time.  The thread on Galactic Champions, where discussion turned towards Emperor Superman taking over and making the world a better place (why shouldn't he do it?), reminded me of this and so I wanted to raise the topic again.

 

So the basic idea is to look at Silver and Bronze age comics and come up with workable modern explanations for why things happen the way they do in those old stories.  Come up with Iron Age-worthy explanations for why older, brighter stories could take place.  Justify the happy world of the comics I grew up with to a modern, cynical audience.

 

For instance:

 

--With the presence of Superman and other heroic characters always saving the day, there was no pressing need to force updated fire codes, or improve airline safety.  There's always some burning tenement building in Gotham or New York or wherever, because the local superhero always saves everyone.  You haven't had those disasters where 200 people burn to death.  A headline that says "Building Burns in Hell's Kitchen, Zero Dead Thanks to Daredevil.  Molly the cat missing." doesn't generate near the calls for political action that you saw in the real world in the mid-20th century.  So there's always some kind of emergency for the heroes to react to.

 

--In the real world, huge increases in violent crime in the late 70s through the early 90s led to a "tough on crime" approach that saw incarceration skyrocket and police use more aggressive tactics.  In the 60s and early 70s it was not uncommon for murderers and other criminals to receive shorter sentences, or often be placed in mental hospitals (compared to today).  Many courts were also more likely to use the exclusionary rule to keep out improperly obtained evidence, the whole "bad guy goes free on a technicality" thing that you've heard about.  When Bloods and Crips started massacring each other in the 80s (and then all the crazy meth-related crimes of the 90s), courts became much more conservative and far less likely to do that.  If superheroes are present, that spike in crime may never occur, leading to the "revolving door" that lets supercriminals back out of jail.

 

--Investment into super-technology has led tech development in a different direction than in the real world.  iPhones and internet are less important when people can build flying robots and things of that nature.  Tech trends towards big and bold industrial scale instead of small consumer oriented devices.  The Batman Animated Series villain HARDAC is a great example.   It's a super-computer 80 feet tall that is self aware and can shoot zap bolts.  That's cooler than Angry Birds.  The justification is that when people have super-powers, the investment is going to go in the direction of countering and/or duplicating those abilities.  This also means less money for things like ever-present security cameras, or facial recognition software.

 

--More tolerance for vigilantes and known "good guys" because of the prevalence of super-crime.  Mind control rays and extradimensional evil twins are a proven thing.  People know they exist for a fact.  So when Batman, who has defended his city for 10+ years, suddenly goes on a week-long crime spree robbing banks, once he "gets over it" and starts being a hero again, no criminal charges get filed.  Batman tells the cops that the Joker used a hypnosis ray, and everybody says okay and just believes him.  After all, everyone remembers last year when half the city got hit by a hypnosis ray and spent the afternoon thinking they were chickens.  Known superheroes are going to get the benefit of the doubt in almost all situations, because everyone knows they're the only ones who can really stop some of these villains.

 

 

 

[dsatow]

With the appearance of super geniuses, drugs seldom have any side effects other than to be highly addictive.  Kidney's don't fail, teeth don't fall out, you just are a happy, spaced out druggie.

 

Manufacturing is totally automated causing a huge depression in the cost of things.  Robbing a bank for a few hundred thousand  could pay for robotic super armies.

[assault]

11 hours ago, massey said:

--Investment into super-technology has led tech development in a different direction than in the real world.

 

I don't have enough available brain cells to answer your question right now, but this one is easy.

 

Super-technology created the world we have now. Without it, we would be living in the technological equivalent of the 1930s, or maybe the 1950s.

 

If you can, watch some episodes of Lost In Space. See what the more remote bits of the USA looked like according to the 1960s version of the future.

Super-tech gave us the world we have now.

 

To get more serious, modern science is "big science". It depends on a whole bunch of people working together. "Super-science" is "little science". It's much more the work of a few people, or even individuals, working on a particular issue.

 

If you have super-geniuses, or even Mad Scientists, "little science" makes sense.

 

We have all the technology we have now. It might not be as evenly distributed.

 

I actually tried to edit that link out.

[Cassandra]

Technological advances are sometimes held back for commercial reasons.  The beginnings of cell phone technology started in the 1940s, but radio interests used their influence to suppress the technology.  Since many superheroes are wealthy they could adapt such exotic technology years earlier the it would be available to the public.

 

[massey]

One of the criticisms I've heard of older comic books is that nobody could maintain a secret identity.  With as many cameras as we have today (everywhere) and facial recognition software, you'd think that by the end of his first day in Metropolis, Clark Kent would be getting e-mails from hundreds of spambots where the advertisers had already figured out he was Superman.  clarkkent@hotmail.com would be flooded with "Superman, do you need ways to make you penis bigger?  Order now!"

 

So restricting what technology becomes available in universe would be, I think, an important step in allowing some of the Silver and Bronze Age tropes to continue.  Technology that would shatter the suspension of disbelief needs to be either explained away, or gotten rid of if we can.  My proposed justification is that instead of research going into microelectronics, instead it would have gone to things like giant robots, ray guns, or spaceships.

[steriaca]

Hear is a small hint. When I got my non-driving license renewed, I had to take off my glasses when they took the photo, cause the holograph picture couldn't recongise it. Might be the same with face scanners. Which is why Clark wears thoes glasses.

 

And it would probably be ClarkKent@DalyPlannet.com .

[RDU Neil]

It is an interesting creative exercise, but I struggle with it because trying to rationalize some very illogical things just points out MORE why they are illogical. Ultimately, EVERYTHING that motivates people who are "human" (meaning, human drives, hierarchy of needs, etc.) is economics. Even irrational decisions (from an objective POV) are driven by a sense of "Is it worth it to me or not" evaluation, just often a flawed evaluation.

 

Unless you change this baseline human drive, then none of these things make sense. Why would Daredevil continue to keep rescuing people that continue to put themselves in harms way because they are "super dependent?" Why is it worth it to him to do so? Also, while no one dies, you ignore the costs of damage to the surrounding areas, environmental damages, replacement costs, rehousing and relocation costs, mental stress from everyone living in the precarious position of "will the super save me next time?" etc.

The fact that superhero comics almost NEVER address the real economic effects of metahuman existence is one of those things it is just hard to overlook. If you remove the economic driver concept, suddenly you are in a realm that is less and less "relatable" to the audience, because they don't accept the motivations and repercussions (or lack thereof) of the characters.

 

I'd say you are better off just finding the right play group who is willing to suspend disbelief to the extent you want, and don't worry about explaining it. That only ruins the moment. I myself can enjoy the occasional silver/bronze agey game at a Con, a one shot, a post-modern deconstructionist adventure, whatever. Long term campaign... no way, as logical world building and character growth are important to me and they both quickly collapse in the face of too much nonsense.

[massey]

5 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

It is an interesting creative exercise, but I struggle with it because trying to rationalize some very illogical things just points out MORE why they are illogical. Ultimately, EVERYTHING that motivates people who are "human" (meaning, human drives, hierarchy of needs, etc.) is economics. Even irrational decisions (from an objective POV) are driven by a sense of "Is it worth it to me or not" evaluation, just often a flawed evaluation.

 

Unless you change this baseline human drive, then none of these things make sense. Why would Daredevil continue to keep rescuing people that continue to put themselves in harms way because they are "super dependent?" Why is it worth it to him to do so? Also, while no one dies, you ignore the costs of damage to the surrounding areas, environmental damages, replacement costs, rehousing and relocation costs, mental stress from everyone living in the precarious position of "will the super save me next time?" etc.

The fact that superhero comics almost NEVER address the real economic effects of metahuman existence is one of those things it is just hard to overlook. If you remove the economic driver concept, suddenly you are in a realm that is less and less "relatable" to the audience, because they don't accept the motivations and repercussions (or lack thereof) of the characters.

 

I'd say you are better off just finding the right play group who is willing to suspend disbelief to the extent you want, and don't worry about explaining it. That only ruins the moment. I myself can enjoy the occasional silver/bronze agey game at a Con, a one shot, a post-modern deconstructionist adventure, whatever. Long term campaign... no way, as logical world building and character growth are important to me and they both quickly collapse in the face of too much nonsense.

 

I have the right play group.  This is just an intellectual exercise for me.  I think it's fun to think about.

 

I'm not worried about superhero motivations.  Daredevil continues to save people because he's a superhero.  I'm talking about why hasn't Daredevil (a known vigilante who breaks the law, even if a lot of people in NYC generally like him) been caught by the police?  In comics, it's because that's not the kind of story you want to tell.  But what is the best justification we can find to allow him to continue to operate as he does?  Where does the fictional world differ from our real world?

 

Your point about economic costs should be addressed.  Fights where supers smash each other through buildings and bring down half the city should be very rare.  In fact, that's a very Iron Age thing to do.  Upping the property damage to crazy levels is a fairly recent phenomenon.  Same with upping the body count.  Sure, you can find examples from the 60s and 70s where that sort of thing happened, but it wasn't nearly as common as it is now.  I don't think the mental stress is as big an issue as you do.  This was the Cold War.  In real life we lived with the possibility of getting vaporized each day, people just dealt with it.

 

--

 

So let's say we want Batman, Daredevil, and guys like that to be able to beat up criminals without legal repercussions.  They need to be able to arrest guys, tie them up, and leave them for cops to find.  They need to be able to not show up to testify in court, and have those people still get convicted.  How do we do this?  What is to prevent Joe Criminal from saying "I was just walking down the street, and I saw the store window was busted.  Then some dude jumped out of the darkness, beat me up, and hung me upside down from a lamppost.  I didn't do anything wrong at all."

 

We need a semi-plausible explanation for it.  It doesn't need to be enough to satisfy a criminal defense attorney, but it should make at least as much sense as a Law and Order episode.

 

I'll suggest that superheroes began in the 30s, like most comics.  With Nazi saboteurs and rampant organized crime to deal with, masked vigilantes probably got more legal protections than they did in the real world.  Cops would be less inclined to go after the guy in the costume who beats up mobsters.  If it's Batman who kept guys like Al Capone in check, then that's going to diminish the historical importance of the FBI.  It never needs to become the organization it is today.  Law enforcement in general can use less advanced methods.  They don't have to improve, because the supers normally keep the crime under control.  This means that as time goes by, a hero gets shot and leaves blood on the ground, the cops aren't collecting it to analyze the DNA.  They might learn what blood type Mystery Man has, but that's it.

 

As far as making arrests go, perhaps criminals do go free because Daredevil doesn't come in to testify (in the Silver Age, Batman was actually officially deputized).  He's normally concerned with stopping violent crimes in progress, not putting away cat burglars.  Just dropping off the jewel thief with the suction cups to Officer O'Malley (or whatever his name was in the first Superman movie) might not be enough to get you a conviction, particularly if the crook keeps his mouth shut.  But at that point, the worst that happens is that some guy who would not have been caught in the first place gets temporarily taken off the street and gets his mugshot and fingerprints taken.

 

--

 

The general principles I think we should follow are these:

-Weird stuff happens in the world, thanks to aliens/super-geniuses/mystic artifacts.  This would be the case with or without the superhero.

-On the whole, superheroes save lives and undo as much of the weirdness as they can.  They are seen as stabilizing forces for society.

-Society ends up a somewhat happier version of the real world, mirroring our own history, but dependent on the supers to maintain it.

-Real world accomplishments may suffer stagnation to the extent that supers have already fulfilled certain needs, or require it to continue operating.

[RDU Neil]

58 minutes ago, massey said:

The general principles I think we should follow are these:

-Weird stuff happens in the world, thanks to aliens/super-geniuses/mystic artifacts.  This would be the case with or without the superhero.

-On the whole, superheroes save lives and undo as much of the weirdness as they can.  They are seen as stabilizing forces for society.

-Society ends up a somewhat happier version of the real world, mirroring our own history, but dependent on the supers to maintain it.

-Real world accomplishments may suffer stagnation to the extent that supers have already fulfilled certain needs, or require it to continue operating.

 

These are well stated for the type of game/SIS you are trying to develop. I think this kind of thing is excellent, because your players either buy into them, or they don't and find another game. I'd definitely be on the "Have a nice game. I'm out," side of things. Your second principle/axiom, that super beings are seen as stabilizing, I could just never buy into. YMMV, and obviously does.

 

While I didn't state them as bullet points, my long running campaign had its own thematic guidelines.

It is about power and responsibility.
It is about heroism and evil and all the gray areas in between.
It is about the question, "If you had the power... how would you change the world?"

[massey]

Changing the world carries massive consequences that people cannot foresee.  Who would have thought that the cell phone would deal a near-fatal blow to newspapers?  Superhero stories aren't just about power, they're also about the wisdom to use that power wisely.  The story "Does the world need a Superman?" addresses a lot of these issues.

 

Do you want Thor deciding how we should run our country?

Should Batman have input on how you raise your kids?

What does Luke Cage know about farm subsidies?

 

Who elected these guys?

 

Changing the world also has the downside that pretty quickly, your comic book world ceases to resemble ours.  From there, you can get all kinds of disagreement with players on real world political issues.  I'd rather avoid that.  Normally players will push for changes that they think will work -- the are envisioning some Jetsons-looking future where everything is wonderful.  Is that how you as GM see those changes?  That's why superheroes as a stabilizing force, putting things back the way they were when disaster occurs, works so well in storytelling.

[Cassandra]

5 hours ago, massey said:

One of the criticisms I've heard of older comic books is that nobody could maintain a secret identity.  With as many cameras as we have today (everywhere) and facial recognition software, you'd think that by the end of his first day in Metropolis, Clark Kent would be getting e-mails from hundreds of spambots where the advertisers had already figured out he was Superman.  clarkkent@hotmail.com would be flooded with "Superman, do you need ways to make you penis bigger?  Order now!"

 

So restricting what technology becomes available in universe would be, I think, an important step in allowing some of the Silver and Bronze Age tropes to continue.  Technology that would shatter the suspension of disbelief needs to be either explained away, or gotten rid of if we can.  My proposed justification is that instead of research going into microelectronics, instead it would have gone to things like giant robots, ray guns, or spaceships.

 

How about wearing a mask?

[RDU Neil]

34 minutes ago, massey said:

Changing the world also has the downside that pretty quickly, your comic book world ceases to resemble ours. From there, you can get all kinds of disagreement with players on real world political issues.  I'd rather avoid that.  Normally players will push for changes that they think will work -- the are envisioning some Jetsons-looking future where everything is wonderful.  Is that how you as GM see those changes?

 

This is obviously where you and I differ, because that kind of discussion of real world issues and implications is EXACTLY what I want. Granted, when the game world started in 1987, we were just creating a fresh, new superhero world (ditching the original game world played in high school) and there were plenty of standard superhero tropes going on. It was just that we enjoyed playing with ramifications. After a team's HQ was attacked and destroyed, the players enjoyed working out what it took to rebuild, and where to put it... creating a much more defensible type of building in a location away from population centers. There was a bit of issue with making nice with the city government and accepting a member who was an actual police officer (in a cool tech suit) on to the team, etc.

These little things spiraled over the years... destruction of particular locations in battles that became famous, and had long running ramifications. Sometimes the players would come up with things they wanted (like eventually a series of PCs drove for autonomous nationhood for our version of Sanctuary, involving UN membership, political alliances with others (the Island Nations Alliance), etc.

 

New York team lead a political protest action against a Registration like act that spawned out of the growing political nature of superheroes, etc.

 

Love that stuff... and yes... the world changed drastically over time. In the first decade, the growing numbers of metas, knowledge of aliens, prevalent super-tech, etc., culminating in a near take-over of the world by Dr. Destroyer (he almost got his hands on Progenitor Technology that would have made him unstoppable,) involved an army of Mechanons invading all over the globe (he was always a construct of Destroyer in my world), at least two different nuclear strikes, stressed governments and economics, and in the final battle, caught on tv world wide, the nature of metahuman abilities and other physics-avoiding technology became known. (A particular MacGuffin we called Crystal Tech.) This started a series of plotlines around arms races for the stuff, started religions, began a push for off-world colonies (driven by the PCs... their idea, not mine) etc.

 

It wasn't perfect, and there were plenty of times we just had straight up "stop the villains" situations, but they were in a larger context of an evolving and changing world.

 

We'd have meta-discussions about where we thought certain world events might lead, or what events might change, etc. I lead a lot as primary GM for most of the sub-campaigns (others would GM sub-campaigns or sessions at times) but it was almost always a group effort in "feeling out" what seemed like a logical change/shift in the world.

Eventually most of the planet was laid waste in a decades long alien invasion (not all played out, as much was metagamed over email, etc.) but the world eventually ended up in a semi-post apocalyptic, Gamaworld-esque type of environment, with a third generation of supers working to rebuild.

 

I love this stuff, and epic change over time is my favorite thing.

[assault]

An obvious question: how many superbeings are there?

 

Dozens, thousands, millions... The impact increases as their number increases.

 

One godlike being can change the world of course. Assuming they want to, and what direction they want to take it in.

[Ninja-Bear]

Massey I would say Daredevil doesn’t get “caught” could be a few factors. 1) The people protect. It’s hard to prosecute when people don’t give info. 2) The police might turn a blind eye. As long as he is taking out criminals, why stop him? 3) The police could be overwhelmed/Bigger fish to fry.

[Ninja-Bear]

And quickly, face recognition isn’t as good as Hollywood  makes it out to seem.

[Steve]

One of the ideas that caught my attention in Mr. Allston’s Strike Force setting was the Governor, a being artificially holding back the progress of technology despite all the super-geniuses and their weird inventions. It could be that something or someone behind the scenes is influencing the world so it takes on the appearance of the Silver/Bronze Age.

 

It could be that the world is like the Matrix, a controlled reality of some kind. There is danger and problems that requires superhumans, but the world seems to function within certain predefined parameters. Or maybe mankind somehow imposed it upon itself, a consensual reality like in White Wolf’s Mage: The Ascension.

 

Who or what is controlling reality? Why do they want it to be like the Silver Age/Bronze Age? How are they able to get people all over the world to accept this reality? What happens to those who figure out the truth?

 

And what happens if everybody wakes up?

[Cancer]

If you assume that economics really is the determining element in political structure, it seems unavoidable that those atop the economic wealth pyramid are going to alter the laws to suit their whims, and then apply crushing force to suppress their enemies.  And then if you posit superhumans with something like normal human motives ... then I don't see any avoiding a crapsack world.  Villains with superpowers would occupy all the positions of importance and would visit at least ruin and more likely death upon those who had other motives ... the heroes, if you will.  And, I believe, they would visit mass death on segments of the population that resisted them.  

 

People who think they deserve to be on top, and don't get smacked down by an outside agency, have shown over and over again that there is literally nothing they won't do to maintain their power.  Put a real superhuman in that position, and frankly, the only chance of redemption I see for Earth is the replay of the K-T event, the comet impact that extinguishes every terrestrial animal species with an average body mass of 25 kg or greater.

[Ninja-Bear]

Dealing with fires. Even with improved codes, it does happen. And who’s to say the building is up to code? And an arsonist might circumvent them anyways.

[assault]

My overall opinion: the results you would get depend on the assumptions you make.

 

There's no objective "this would happen".

 

Decide on the results you want, and set your assumptions accordingly.

 

Lex Luthor is US President, and Tony Stark is funding the Democrats...

[Ninja-Bear]

And airplanes going down, how about last year we had a rash of them over remote areas go down. 

[Ninja-Bear]

RDU Neil saying that everything that drive humans is economic is cynical. And as a former volunteer firefighter, I can tell you, not everything comes down to money. There are other desires which cause men to do the things they do.

[assault]

Also, be aware of your ideological assumptions.

 

Humanity is diverse, and their motivations can't be derived from a particular dogma. It doesn't depend on what that dogma is.

 

You can't do it with Marxism. You can't do it with Christianity. (Which Christianity?) And you certainly can't do it with Libertarianism.

[RDU Neil]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

RDU Neil saying that everything that drive humans is economic is cynical. And as a former volunteer firefighter, I can tell you, not everything comes down to money. There are other desires which cause men to do the things they do.

 

Economics isn't about money (money is just a medium of exchange). Economics is about perceived cost value comparison. How much time, effort and funds is it worth expending for what you get? If you do volunteer firefighting, you probably do it because you've determined that it is worth your time and effort to do so, instead of doing something else. There are plenty of benefits to supporting volunteer firefighting, providing a more stable social structure and community support where there would otherwise be none, and the commensurate benefits of living in a place where fires get put out instead of allowed to burn.

 

Every decision we make (however flawed by bad data, or corrupted by our particular irrationalities) is a cost/benefit analysis... is it worth it?... and that is economics.

[RDU Neil]

7 hours ago, Steve said:

One of the ideas that caught my attention in Mr. Allston’s Strike Force setting was the Governor, a being artificially holding back the progress of technology despite all the super-geniuses and their weird inventions.

 

I don't remember that specifically, but likely I did steal this idea, as in my world, Dr. Destroyer was known to target advanced technology. He was a truly dangerous, mass killer, who would happily level a university campus if he suspected advancements he didn't like were taking place. A lot of technological change had to go underground, and certainly couldn't be mass produced, as he was essentially a tech-terrorist of epic proportions, with an army of superhumans to help. When he was finally killed in a the epic battle at the end of the first decade of my campaign, it ushered in the second decade which was marked by an explosion of radical tech growth, that really began altering the nature of the world. (Space travel and colonization, teleportation tech, nanites and cybernetic mass production, etc.)

 

I'd also used this as an excuse for how VIPER was powerful from the late 70s into the 90s before finally being (pretty much) eliminated. It grew out of the underground network of tech development and funding that had to happen on the downlow and was illegal, as most nations passed laws limiting such development out of fear of massive Dr. Destroyer attacks.

[Ninja-Bear]

I add in my silver-ish games police having blasters like on the cartoons and body armor too.