Registration Schemes

[bigdamnhero]

One of the things that made Marvel's registration plotline so silly was that about three months in-universe before that, it had been revealed that the U.S. government had made the Red Skull secretary of the Defense Department, so naturally the heroes aren't going to be thrilled about giving the feds all their personal info and agreeing to follow orders.

Good point, and one of the key differences between our world and a comic book world.

 

But even without the government being infiltrated or outright taken over by supervillains, there's still the issue of how much credibility the government would when civilian heroes are constantly being shown to be infinitely more effective than the government. Reed Richards saves the world every other Thursday at least, while the best the government can usually do is clean up the mess afterwards, and maybe lock the villain up for a week or two before they escape to do it again. So I can see some sort of superhero registration working early on when heroes first start appearing (so it might work in the movies); but after several years-to-decades of this, I can't see public suddenly calling to put an demonstrably-incompetent government in charge of The People Who Keep Saving Our Butts Over And Over Again.

 

I also think this has interesting implications for society at large. The bulk of sociological & archeological evidence now supports the conclusion that Hobbes Was Right, and the single biggest factor in reducing crime and violence is a strong and effective centralized state with a laws and courts and a monopoly on violence. Any time that state role is removed or greatly diminished (the 19th Century American West, numerous failed states around the world), crime and violence surge dramatically. So in a comic-book world this could result in a downward spiral, where the very success of vigilantism undermines the state's credibility and ironically leads to an increase in crime.

 

...which would be pretty depressing and not a comic I'd want to read, thank you very much. But it's an interesting thought exercise IMO.