Grrl Power #847 – Status quoverthrow
If you think about it, all superheroes (except some vigilantes) are there to maintain the status quo. Galactus playing mini-golf through Manhattan? Call the Avengers. Don’t call the Fantastic Four though. Mr. Fantastic actually argued that Galactus (the guy who eats inhabited planets) should be spared because he’s a force of nature. If the Weather Wizard used his powers to stop hurricanes, Mr. Fantastic would probably beat him up for it.
Sorry, I digressed. While everyone else is trying to keep Magneto and Hydra from taking over the world, (i.e., maintaining the status quo) guys like the Punisher are arguably trying to change the s.q. I say arguably, because murdering a bunch of bad guys is likely to have limited effect. In the area he’s operating, sure, but his efforts are likely to be a minor blip in national statistics. Don’t get me started on Batman and the revolving door that is Arkham.
Obviously, maintaining the status quo isn’t a bad thing… if your quo is humming along just fine. If you’re living in “The Nazi’s Won” universe, or “Insert Dystopian Government/Reality of Your Choice,” then the civilian population is probably champing at the bit for a little re-quoing. If you’re living in a society that’s doing anywhere from “Excellent” to “Used to be all that but is in something of a backslide” to “Not great but up and coming,” having someone come in and stamp all over your quo is harder sell.
I have no idea how brandy snifters… I was going to say ‘work,’ but I get that it’s about smelling the brandy as much as it is drinking it, and sometimes that involves a slightly heated glass. I don’t know the etiquette. It’s possible blowing cigar smoke into the glass is some sort of high crime against the haut monde. Though alternating between brandy and a stogie probably means you’re not there to appreciate the subtle notes.
Actually, Max isn’t chomping on a stogie. I decided to google the word after I typed it, and learned that a stogie is “a thin, inexpensive cigar” which sounds a lot like an unfiltered cigarette to me. I also learned that a ‘corona’ is the benchmark size against which all other cigar sizes are measured. Given the news for the past few months, that piece of information caught my eye.
If I had googled cigars before drawing this page, I definitely would have had Deus smoking a ‘culebra‘ which is like three cigars braided around each other like a cinnamon twist.
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Found this article which explains why Deus, despite his methods, probably would have been seen as a massive breath of fresh air by the local populace (as in actual details rather than just assumed prejudices as some people might have thought or wondered just how bad it can get in some nations)
Folks at the bottom of the pecking order in 3rd-world countries* have a pretty rough go of it, especially with COVID drying up a lot of normal economic activity. I have been a supporter and huge fan of Kiva microlending for years, which lets you pool small amounts ($25 increments) with thousands of other people to make life-changing business loans to individuals. They have a historical 97% repayment rate (though it has dipped the last few months, given the dumpster fire that is 2020), and local partners that administer the loans and provide business coaching – very much a “hand up, not a hand-out.” Many great causes out there, especially at the moment, but for anyone wanting to reach out to the larger world this is a great way to do it and bypass corrupt administrations that create situations like the above article.
* although the term ‘3rd-world’ is really becoming obsolete, living standards have risen dramatically and are comparable around much of the world when comparing income levels directly instead of national averages.
I’ve read some articles about this kind of low dollar amount lending. It seems that loaning money to women is the key, as the men can be counted on in most cases to drink up the profits while the women want what is best for themselves and their children and work hard to make the loan work for them.
Kiva seems to be about 50/50 by gender. They published more detailed data years back, but now that they’re pretty established I don’t know if they have an annual report or anything that would show defaulted loans broken down by categories. My own ‘portfolio’ is about 60% to women, but that hasn’t been deliberate.
Is someone seriously going to try to assassinate Deuce right there in front of a military badass?
Lorlara isn’t going to take very kindly to this CIA / FBI Agent, is she?
“Crisis intervention”, not “maintaining the status quo”. The reactive sort of superheroes do have a weakness when it comes to “systemic” problems like, say, a country spending two billion dollars a year settling police brutality lawsuits, but until they start interrupting protests it’s probably more helpful to think of them as firefighters than as cops.
It’s true that they deliberately limit themselves to crisis intervention in order to avoid abusing their powers but after you prevent enough crises you can be considered as maintaining the status quo. To use your analogy of firefighters, in American comics the “firefighters” started putting out fires on their own time using their own resources because they are good people. But they’ve been doing it for years now and have become the only reliable method of “firefighting”. Meanwhile, the “fires” have been spreading and getting worse while the government that is supposed to be fighting the “fires” has failed to produce a proper group of “firefighter” or even convince the existing group of “firefighters” to collaborate with the government to expand their operations. As a result, the status quo has remained almost exactly the same and if the “firefighters” suddenly all retired the government would be in the same place it was before because they’ve never truly been forced to change
if thats the case then this case of specific supers havent as much mantained the status quo but expanded it, supers are recognized as practicaly an invaluable national resources and are given either the payment of a four stars general for servicing their country in the front lines or a really good incentive to work in the private sector as a pletora or jobs (even without being part of arc-swat someone like hiro wouldnt have any dificulties finding a job with his skillset) so they have plenty of reasons for cooperating with the goverment which while squabling isnt actually all that bad (the goverment in most super hero comics is exagerated to an insane degree and most of the time straight up evil)
the supers are changing the world little by little too, for example by being able to stop the fel invasion single handely in a couple of minutes they gave the us goverment a bargain chip with the aliens to actually get something out of them instead of just being laughed out and ignored because there is a valuable and loyal asset that is capable of blowing a capital ship on a single shot, that technology is very likely going to be a huge boon to humanity with all the technology available in it, not just the FTL engine the entire ship is likely to lead to a huge technological boom that would change earth forever for the next couple of decades
of course i know you are probably talking about stuff like stopping corrupt politicians and the like, but arguably arc-light would be better prepared to handle such operations than arc-light
You say that disrupting the status quo in America in American comics would be a tough sell but honestly if I lived in one of those comic universes I would be actively rooting for HYDRA, AIM, or just about any other evil organization. Aliens and demons are constantly invading the planet. Killer robots, monsters, and solo super villains all pop up randomly and manage to rampage unimpeded until the super heroes show up. Meanwhile, the government’s only consistent response are teams of “reformed” villains who under-perform when compared to the various super hero groups which have no government funding and limited government support at best. Whenever the government does succeed in creating something powerful enough to make a difference it invariably goes rogue and has to be stopped by the super heroes. And all of that has gone on for years if not decades (depending on which reboot you are reading). Yet despite all of that, criminal organizations are able to keep popping up with powerful tech, excellent tactics, and an impressive track record. Their causes may be disgusting but they are able to fight evenly with the good samaritans who keep the world safe while tax dollars go who-knows-where. I would much rather rely on a HYDRA government to repel a Skrull invasion than to hope that what is essentially the neighborhood watch with super powers would step in again to pick up the actual government’s slack. I know that the comic writers deliberately avoid getting political but with how long these stories have been going they have inadvertently taken a stance of “government is useless” because an effective one would make it harder to explain all the challenges these super heroes have to overcome.
I was actually really annoyed by some of the dialogue in the X-Men’s new story involving their new country. They bring a bunch of diplomats from other countries over and show them around and one diplomat makes a statement along the lines of “It’s going to take some time to get used to this. Modern military tactics are going to have to be changed to cope with a nation capable of teleporting an entire army anywhere on the globe.” (I’m paraphrasing that). That line made me angry. The entire dialogue was supposed to set a tone of “we’ll play along with this for now but we’ll be keeping our guard up around you”, but instead that particular line just hammered home how incompetent these governments are. Every single super group has at one point or another had to deal with an army of evil being able to pop up anywhere at will. Whether that is through sci-fi teleporting, time travel, magic portals, or any other number of means it is not a new concept. But here’s some diplomat saying flat-out that his country would be just as unprepared to handle it as ever.
And that’s the problem with status quo in comics today. /end rant.
The problem is usually shitty writing. Any time a comic-book writer steps into the realm of politics, the company needs to step in and bring in a consultant who has at least a master’s degree in political science.
Superpowers change how the whole world would work, and yet most comic writers just drop superheroes into a real-world-government setting. Even after the first super-powered alien invasion, nothing changes. The government remains the same, even after half a century of super villains running around.
I’m a fan of bad, fundamentalist-Christian movies … the kind that they write for themselves to keep their kids away from the evils of secular entertainment. Some of the movies that are simultaneously the most funny and most maddening are the ones in which they try to dip into the realm of science. These are young-Earth creationists trying to do something scientific, which is a direct contradiction. If they understood the first thing about science, they wouldn’t be young-Earth creationists.
They really need to call in some secular types and wave enough money at them until they get a few who will sacrifice their principles and help them wrap a plausible veneer around their bullshit.
Then again, I suppose I’m not their target audience, obviously. Their fundie viewers understand as little or less than they do about science, so they aren’t bothered by it like I am.
I like that Deus actually looks momentarily solemn in panels 2 and 3.
Also, I don’t think the example in panel 6 demonstrates Deus’s point very well.
Interesting. Did we know before this that Max smokes? I don’t remember. I imagine she’s probably not doing herself any harm, though. If anyone were going to be immune to the negative health effects, it would be her.
We saw her smoking a cigar early in the comic.
And if any self-respecting superhero had the job of status quo enforcer, that might mean something.
Someone like Superman does not run people’s lives for them and does not override elected authority. Their job is to defend people from existential threats. It’s not a superhero’s responsibility to fix societal issues that require collective solutions. It’s their job to set an example for those who actually have that responsibility.
But then, Deus is full of philosophical sewage and is appealing to Max’s authoritarian tendencies. He seeks to satisfy his ego. Nothing else matters.
I don’t think Deus is suggesting that Max use her power to fix the world. He’s saying that there are people above her in her chain of command that would direct her to oppose anyone who did set out to fix the world. There are plenty of people profiting from how the world runs right now who would oppose change for the better, and they certainly have the ear of “elected authority”.
at the same time how do we know that the world under Deus would be a better place? yeah he fixed a tiny african nation that was being controlled by a tin pot dictator in the middle of fucking nowhere and bringed them from thirld world shit hole into at least acceptable living conditions, but that is a really small area of land in a continent that has been on a pretty bad streak of failures and there are already plenty of international efforts to try aand fix the region is just that ultimately is up to the local population to fix their own issues we cant just come crashing down and take over that hasnt gone well the last couple of times
the world is a big place and one persons utopia is another’s distopia, Deus could believe that he is doing the best for everyone but there would be resistance everywhere and people that just rejects his position and they would never stop, and he isnt the only one with supers under his thumb or advanced technology available who is to say for example that germany doesnt have a reed richards level super genious that created a FTL engine years ago and the goverment is just keeping it as a close guarded secret from everyone, or that china has a super capable of going toe to toe with maxima and they are just keeping him under wraps for when the time is right, in the end his attempt at taking the world would just generate untold chaos and many deaths like it has happened in the past
and i wouldnt like this to go the way of invincible where BIG FUCKING SPOILERS but robot takes over and basicaly makes everything better and everyone is happy with his reign and the world is a better place and everyone stops fighting against him because he is such a good leader and what not, if deus actually goes with his plan of taking over the world and manages to succede to a degree it would be cool to see that it isnt as glamorous as he through it would be or there is far more resistance than expected
and yeah there are idiots who opose even changes for the better, but there are ways of getting around such people without having to burn down the entire system
World dictatorship is so boring.
And impractical.
Just build an AI and have that be your problem solver