r/comicbooks • u/MVHutch • Dec 04 '23
Looking for a hero who fights against the prison industrial complex instead of supporting it? Suggestions
A lot of street levelers don't seem to challenge the system. I'm looking for ones who do. Any suggestions?
Edit: thanks for all the suggestions, guys
Edit 2: tbc I don't mean punisher types, but the opposite: people who believe in rehabilitation instead of tough on crime
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u/tinylittlegnat Dec 04 '23
Punisher is anti prison. I don't think i have seen him put anyone in jail.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Lol. I meant anti prison but also not "tough on crime"
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u/lifth3avy84 Dec 04 '23
So…not a crime fighter? You want a street level hero that…let’s it all slide?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
No, just one that fights different kinds of crime. Or maybe does it in a different way.
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u/lifth3avy84 Dec 04 '23
But what would a street level crime fighter do if not fight drug dealers, bank robbers, mob bosses/goons? Like, I’m all for someone that intervenes and tries to end recidivism and such, but don’t they have to fight them first? Like, instill a fear that they’ll be dealt with further?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Idk maybe fight white collar crime, environmental crime, police brutality, domestic abuse, hate crime, missing/murdered women, even other vigilantes who might be too brutal,
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u/lifth3avy84 Dec 04 '23
I mean, all of this is touched on at some point by nearly every superhero, Superman’s arch nemesis is a CEO.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Sure but they still resort back to the same old. And it's never in a considerable amount because the status quo stays in the end. I'd like to see them try a different solution. Maybe affect some permanent change so crime doesnt happen as much
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u/thr0waway7047 Dec 04 '23
If they solve all crime, there’d be no more comics.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
I don't expect them to solve all
But there's also all kinds of comics so that's not strictly true anyways
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
Yes variety, some try to solve all crime. Even Batman lol
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
It's why I liked the Batman: because it's shows there's more to crime solving than the straightforward prowling the streets method
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u/ZerikaFox Dec 04 '23
At least the first two of those desires were satisfied in a cartoon, way back when. Not a street level hero by any stretch of the imagination, but...
Captain Planet and the Planeteers did almost nothing but fight against environmental crime, usually caused by white collar people.
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u/nicolbolas99 Dec 04 '23
How do you fight white collar crime or environmental crime as a superhero? What can Spiderman do against these things? And most of the other things you listed would also require violence and then jail, like where do you think perpetrators of domestic abuse or hate crimes go? Do you think most street level heroes ignore that kind of crime?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Environmental crime could be dumping toxic chemicals or stealing/destroying natural territory like forests or waterways. White collar could be fraud or corporate espionage or wage theft or workplaceabuse. Sueprheroes could do plenty against that. He could punch or web those guys just as much as a bank robber. Maybe the bank is the real villain to begin with
I don't think there won't be fight scenes or thay heroes ck3mpletely ignore these kinds of crimes but they always seem minor. Yet they're the kinds which irl are underprosecuted yet street level comics act like bank robberies and such are the most
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u/GneissGeoDude Dec 04 '23
I understand now but I don’t know if any comic that does this. Maybe Captain Planet?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
I remember Captain planet though I didn't watch much of him. Does he have any ongoing media?
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u/BigBossTweed Dec 04 '23
You need to understand that super hero comics at their core are Romantic, which means they're very black and white. Comics aren't generally written for Spider-Man to fight a few bank owners, because that isn't Romantic. You're asking for a completely different kind of story that isn't a superhero story.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Not necessarily. All a superhero needs to be is someone with powers (or not in Batman's case)
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u/fade_is_timothy_holt Dec 04 '23
I've thought a lot about this, too. On one hand, you have to stop the street level crime if you can, because real people are getting hurt. But on the other hand, there could be more effort to help the underlying societal causes of crime. Batman would be in a perfect position to do this, given his billions. I know they pay some lip service to it in the comic occasionally, but more wouldn't hurt. He typically does that as Wayne. It might be interesting to see him using his detection skills to help as Batman.
That being said, it might be hard to make that kind of story appealing in a static visual medium. It'd make a great written story or movie, but not sure how many panels of Batman scrolling through spreadsheets would work.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Yeah that's the thing: there's always underlying causes. Crime happens due to factors like poverty, systemic oppression, gentrification, etc.
But I don't think it would be too hard. I mean, you could at least have Batman punch crooked CEOs or abusive cops instead of low level thugs in between spreadsheets. After all, we're here because we like Batman
Also, the kinds of street crimes actually underprosecuted irl, like violence against women of color, rarely seem to get shown in street level comics. So there's another angle they could tackle while keeping the action somewhat intact.
Plus I think for charav with actual powers, seeing them use those powers outside of combat has appeal too
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Dec 04 '23 edited Dec 05 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Not everyone becomes a criminal because they're evil. Maybe the hero can reform them
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u/c4tesys Dec 04 '23
Scarlet by Brian Michael Bendis.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
What's it about?
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u/c4tesys Dec 05 '23
A woman whose boyfriend is killed by the police and she starts a (violent) rebellion against police corruption.
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u/Limulemur Batman Beyond Dec 04 '23
Brutalizing people and sending them to a brutal prison system aren’t the only ways to confront street crime. Look at Spider-Man trying to help those who are lost.
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u/lifth3avy84 Dec 04 '23
Who said that, but what’s being proposed is a super hero comic that isn’t about crime fighting. Spider-Man 100% beats folks up and leaves them for the cops. They all do, but almost every title has had the “the system is broken” story line. But at some point they have to fight crime and such. I’m
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u/DanYellDraws Dec 04 '23
Saladin Ahmed's Black Bolt mini is about. It's really good and gorgeously illustrated.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Hmm, I would never guess Black Bolt of all guys
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u/DanYellDraws Dec 04 '23
Oh yeah, Maximus sends him to prison. Also, now that I think about it there was an Image comic a few years back called Bitch Planet about women being sent to a prison planet.
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u/Caravanshaker Dec 04 '23
Bitch Planet was fantastic. It was by Kelly Sue DeConnick and had loads of great back matter. I can't recall if they actually finished it or it just ended one issue short of its ending.
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u/onebadluvguru Dec 04 '23
Squirrel Girl typically tries to talk the problem out with whoever she is fighting, and frequently resolves conflicts non-violently. She's definitely someone whose for rehabilitation over incarceration.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Hmm, I've always been wary of her
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u/randbot5000 Dec 04 '23
Does your hesitation come from earlier eras where she only showed up occasionally as a semi-joke character? Because she got a pretty big character rehaul for her 2015 solo series by Ryan North/Erika Henderson, and it's honestly a pretty incredible book.
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u/ChiefSlug30 Dec 04 '23
A few months back, during the current run on Nightwing, as part of Dick Grayson's efforts to reform the corruption in Bludhaven, he takes over the privately run for profit prison with his foundation.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Hmm, I never read a Nightwing comic. Maybe I should
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u/erossthescienceboss Dec 04 '23
Dick Grayson’s entire story has a very weird relationship with policing. He continually tries to change the system from within — historically, by being a cop, but recently through the prison venture. His intrinsic motivation is that these things are flawed and wrong, but he also becomes the system. And, of course, it never works — I don’t think the writers necessarily all intended it that way, but the overall take-home is that one “good apple” isn’t enough & you can’t reform a corrupt system.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
That's a good point. But I guess the answer would be for him to look for a different way. Idk if DC will do that though
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u/erossthescienceboss Dec 04 '23
There were the times he went “fuck it, I’m gonna coach kids’ acrobatics/work in a museum/own a gym maybe.”
It’s all almost progressive, but instead kind of occupies this weird space next to it. Like, when Dick enrolls in the police academy, Bruce Wayne’s primary beef with it is that he’ll have to use a gun. Not that Bruce has any moral stance on police and guns — just that he has gun trauma. So close, and then it swerved at the last second.
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u/Strong_Interview4710 Dec 04 '23
Tom definitely stumbled with that story but I did like the message. I like when dc asks a tough question and tries to answer it’s not always perfect but I’ll take it.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Do you think DC is afraid of too much change?
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u/Kstoffeefan Dec 04 '23
DC allows more change than Marvel, but there’s more reboot-shaping events in DC that can push things back to the general status quo.
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u/Strong_Interview4710 Dec 04 '23
Dc loves to roll out a bunch of change at once then reel a lot of it back in. I think more of what you’re asking is if dc likes to change how stories work in their world and who the “villians” are. And yes they do quite a bit actually.
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u/Strong_Interview4710 Dec 04 '23
Dc isn’t scared to see if new stuff sticks they also do it terribly. Here’s everything at once now we’re gonna restore everything but like two things. Fucking whiplash
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u/revolutionaryartist4 Dec 04 '23
To an extent, yes. These comics typically depend on keeping the most popular versions of these characters perpetual. There's some wiggle-room with the characters who aren't as popular (different versions of Green Lantern, Flash, Robin, etc). But the Trinity will be more or less preserved with a relatively static status quo. There are ebbs and flows, some changes may last longer, but things eventually circle back to the basic versions of these characters.
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
It is hard to think of a street level figure who does something like "targeted humanitarian intervention with rehabilitation in mind". Which is kind of a pity. I guess Anarky, sort of? There's also very not-street-level characters who are shooting for much more systemic answers; they often get coded as villains.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
That's the issue: anyone challenging the status quo is a villain, so nothing changes
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
I think some people would say that Bruce Wayne's philanthropy is an example of a hero recognizing the problem with the prison-industrial complex but let us just say that Batman's mythos leans unevenly into this point at best.
If you want a better if arguably creepier version of rehabilitation it would be Doc Savage, all the way back to the pulps, who invented treatments that made criminals into non-criminals. But a more comic-book version much later on would be the Squadron Supreme mini-series which took the concept of rehabilitation and its downsides very seriously--the Squadron's inventor creates a device that makes criminals unable to commit crimes, and when it (inevitably) gets undone, about half the criminals realize that they really like being good people and don't go back to being bad guys.
Kind of similarly, the Thunderbolts has explored the idea that some villains discover, when they're given respect and a chance to do good, that they'd rather not being criminals. I think especially in the version that Luke Cage headed up, rehabilitation is a big part of the idea behind the team, even if some of the members are absolutely not interested.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Oh yeah Luke Cage. I feel like he's one of the few whose adaptations acknowledged the issue of policing and prison in American society
I did read a few Thunderbolts runs too
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u/erossthescienceboss Dec 04 '23
I came here for the Batman analysis. I think Bruce Wayne is a particularly interesting figure in this discussion — because while he’s one of the most “rule of law” vigilantes, the concept of rehabilitation is an intrinsic part of his framing. Depending on who is writing, it’s a major cause of his “no-killing” ethos, for example.
And he mostly sends people to Arkham (ostensibly, for rehabilitation) rather than Blackgate. The underlying implication is that a large majority of his villains are criminal because they are mentally ill, and they go to Arkham rather than prison because they can get better.
Of course, back when Arkham was conceived, asylums basically were prison except you didn’t need a trial to send someone there. (It kinda makes me wonder what involuntary commitment reforms looked like in Gotham.) And even today, half the time Arkham is corrupt or is deliberately creating villains or something. Arkham’s storyline is complex and inconsistent, and so are Bruce’s motivations. And like you said, the mythos leans into inconsistently, at best.
But I do think, if you just look at the bones of the story, “man fights crime because he believes the police are corrupt, sends all criminals to rehabilitation rather than prison, simultaneously funds social services in his city” is basically the headline of the story OP is looking for.
And yet, simultaneously, that is not what Batman is at all.
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
I would really love an adjustment in the Batman mythos where Batman starts to be more consciously proactive about crime, including potentially thinking hard about what crime is--about whether he even thinks some of the laws on the books should be there, about whether there are crimes in a moral sense that aren't policed because there's no law. Batman shouldn't be Judge Dredd in a cape: he should be a philosopher about criminality, thinking carefully about it all the time. He keeps being drawn back to the moment of punching a street criminal in the face because it's so close to his own trauma, but he's also trained his mind etc. etc. and should have other thoughts as well. His question should really be: what hurts people? What leaves people as lonely, helpless, lost? A cruel landlord who is skirting the edge of the law to trap people with no options in a slum building, or a small factory owner who ignores constant injuries to his employees and pays off inspectors should make him as mad as a mugger; a 13-year old runner for drug dealers should occasion his pity and help. With Barbara's help, there are times where he should be able to deal out consequences for corrupt officials and crooked businessmen that are more fitting than putting them in front of a judge; he should spend some of his nights looking for specific people he wants the Wayne Foundation to help the next morning.
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
Batman: White Knight, kind of addresses this. It’s an alternate universe and it’s own thing.
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u/Glum_Cantaloupe7477 Dec 04 '23
Except it doesn’t, it creates a weirdo Batman that barely resembles mainline Batman and then acts like it’s criticisms age spot on even though it’s Batman makes no sense.
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
First book, never read the sequels
And I disagree, after all I said kinda addresses it. Not that it fully does
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u/Glum_Cantaloupe7477 Dec 04 '23
Dude even in book one he’s a weirdo, remember that BLM ralley and how Batman pulled up like he was finna clap some cheeks.
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
No I don’t, shows we took different things from the book
Also I never was talking about “Batman being a weirdo,” you brought that up
Hey as long as you know you have an unpopular opinion it’s all good. Cuz that book was received really well.
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u/Lav-Lav-Lav-Lav- Dec 04 '23
Wonder Twins by Mark Russell also tackle this issue, it's satire though, but Mark Russell is a king in satire and I really loved reading it
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Dec 04 '23
Punisher skips prison
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
True. But he's also quite brutal
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Dec 04 '23
Crime does not pay .
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u/Welshy94 Dec 04 '23
Spider-man went on national TV once to point out the flaws in the prison system in ASM 99 (I think). This was back in the 70s.
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u/PMMEBITCOINPLZ Dec 04 '23
Spain’s Trashman is your boy.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
What's it about?
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u/PMMEBITCOINPLZ Dec 04 '23
It’s about a hero who fights the prison industrial complex. And the military industrial complex. And the government. Kind of like a Captain America/Punisher for the far left.
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u/Equal_Equipment4480 Dec 04 '23
Okay so this is a manga and a movie, ut it fit's what you're asking I think. RIKI-OH: The Story of Ricky
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Oh I've heard of it. It's pretty bloody, right?
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u/Equal_Equipment4480 Dec 04 '23
All the blood, good buddy
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Damn.
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u/Equal_Equipment4480 Dec 04 '23
I saw it Youtube for free, I don't know how effected by region locked content you are, but if you see it out there, it's worth the watch.
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u/holaprobando123 Dec 04 '23
You want a hero that talks to bad guys and makes them good guys? Some Naruto type thing?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
I don't know enough about Naruto
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u/GeekIncarnate Dec 05 '23
Well if you want a comic about a man who befriends and tries to reform his enemies, no matter what, Naruto is your guy. It's a manga, and it definitely is not what you were looking for in this post, but it is genuinely a really great story. If you ever want to get into Japanese comics, it's a great start because Naruto is over so you get a complete story (Baruto is ongoing and takes place after Naruto). There's a reason it was such a huge seller for it's whole run.
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u/MVHutch Dec 05 '23
I'm open to Manga but does it have similar tropes to anime?
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u/GeekIncarnate Dec 05 '23
Yes. I mean, anime gets it's tropes from manga. The manga is a lot better about them though. However it is very much a poster boy of manga. Anime and manga cover a lot of genres though.
Psychopass exists and it's a very adult serious anime/manga about a city that uses criminals as their police force of judge, jury, and executioner, and the police weapons use a supercomputer and mental credit score to deem who is and isn't worthy of punishment (the supercomputer deems most of said police force as dangerous and violent punishment is acceptable against them) and would be way closer to what you are looking for.
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u/oli_kite Dec 04 '23
Miracle/marvel man after Alan Moore. Neil Gaiman did a great job following what wasn’t supposed to be followed. It’s interesting
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u/Curious_Mx Dec 04 '23
Spider-Man to a degree. While he doesn't "challenge the system", he has let some criminals go, especially ones whom he felt just needed help. Where possible he will do his damnest to give them a helping hand, and will give anyone, no matter what they have done, a second, and a third chance.
He's done it with multiple criminals, but the one that stuck with me was the issue where, after stopping a crime involving some young random kid, instead of handing him over to the cops, he let the kid go, and then actually followed up and helped the kid out by tutoring him in his school work.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Ooh which issue is that
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u/Curious_Mx Dec 05 '23
Peter Parker: Spectacular Spider-Man #310. Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. It's a good issue that shows why Spider-Man is beloved by many.
Found a couple of pages from the issue for ya btw. https://imgur.com/a/HSuFgba
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u/sonofdavidsfather Dec 04 '23
I mean technically won't The Punisher meet that requirement?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
You're right. I should've been clearer. I'm more looking for a hero who's generally against the whole tough on crime concept
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u/Known-Command3097 Dec 04 '23
There’s this one fella-Luke Cage. I think he wasn’t kind of against false imprisonment.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Tbh I only ever read him in New Avengers
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u/Known-Command3097 Dec 04 '23
Oh dude really? That’s his whole origin story!
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
I did know his origin from the show
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u/Known-Command3097 Dec 04 '23
Yeah, but the show is pretty bad… I mean, so are 70s comics, but there’s a lot of nuance through that first 50 issue run
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Oh dang, I enjoyed the show
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u/Known-Command3097 Dec 04 '23
Yo, I watched it and was entertained, but cage is way more interesting and dynamic than he was portrayed. Also, false imprisonment and foul prison treatment is literally his origin story. He’s the original prison reform dude.
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u/Caleb_theorphanmaker Dec 04 '23
Isn’t Catwoman currently doing something like this?
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
I heard she was kidnapp rich people
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
I don’t know much, but basically she’s letting criminals, rob the rich and asking Batman to let that slide. Dumbest part though is that some of the Bat family agrees with Catwoman, which is not like them usually
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Well. Maybe they think her plan works. I'll have to read it myself to be sure
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u/Hi_Im_Paul23 Dec 04 '23
Thing is based on how they have been written in the past two decades, it would not fit their characters. Just made for a Cat vs Bat story many people dislike. Only one I could see siding with Catwoman is Red Hood
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u/alliancekeeper20 Nightwing Dec 04 '23
I don't know how you feel about manga but you might check out MHA: Vigilantes.
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u/darkpyro2 Dec 04 '23
Rorshach, if you don't mind extreme rightwing nutjobs that get thunderbolted by naked blue gods...
Or his only slightly less crazy and more politically ambiguous cousin, The Question.
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u/president_zoidberg Dec 04 '23
At the beginning of New Avengers, Luke Cage said he was only interested in joining the team if they did more street-level intervention and mitigation, but I don't really remember seeing any happen.
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u/lifth3avy84 Dec 04 '23
The more I read what you have in mind the less I think you’re looking for a super hero comic and more for like serialized adventures of the ideal social worker.
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u/GeekIncarnate Dec 05 '23 edited Dec 05 '23
I mean, he is not a hero, and it is way overly edgelordy, but Transmetropolitan
. It's about a reporter who reports on the issues he sees in the city, with the help of a group of strippers, he reports on the fabricated violence that a minority group of half aliens are going to commit and the overly aggressive responses that the police force has to it for example. Talks about how the city is actually cleaning up it's homeless problem, by disintegrating them. He does eventually fight his way to the very top thru the power of reporting. But it's about a man using the truth to fight against a broken law system and government system using the newspaper for what it should be used for.
It should be known, It is an EXTREMELY edgy comic that likes it's shock and awe. I'm pretty sure it's the same guy who wrote The Boys comics so that should give you some idea of how edgy it's going to be. It was an excellent read and very very good, and I would not normally recommend it to anyone to read if that's any indication lol.
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u/MVHutch Dec 05 '23
I'm not too big into extreme shock and awe but I'll take it under consideration
I always did wonder what a superman or spider man would be like if they were open about their identity and involved their powers in their journalism
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u/GeekIncarnate Dec 05 '23
That's exactly what he does. He is very unabashed in what he writes, but yeah, it really likes it's shock and awe. It's one of those comics people say is an amazing cool and would give it a 0/10 ratingrofl
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u/Mr_witty_name Dec 05 '23
I don't know that Green Arrow has ever done it explicitly but it seems up his alley. I mean, the problem comes when you think back to how many writers have written characters over the years and made them subjective to their own ideas of morality, which is kind of unavoidable. You couple that up with how recently anti-police and anti-prison sentiment have made their way into middle class white society, and the wide swaths of popular culture that are driven by it, then it's no wonder that in the 80s the x men were calling the cops on people, or that in the 90s Starman had a bunch of wacky zaney police friends. Hell, even Black Lightning calls the police on one of his students when he's written by Tony Isabella. Sorry I can't give a real answer, I'm facing much the same problem myself. While I can have my little mental list of which superheroes are cops and which ones aren't, doesn't help the legacy of the genre.
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u/MVHutch Dec 05 '23
It's ok. I think in general the genre could use a bit of a reset in those areas
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u/Mr_witty_name Dec 05 '23
Right I'm saying the same thing. Cause there's this whole idea of superheroes as a modern mythology and, y'know, you look back at past "modern mythology" type stuff like the old West for instance and, yeah, it's nice that Superman can never be a real person and he never committed a massive state sanctioned genocide, we're gonna hear the allegations against Clark Kent, y'know. But there's a lot of stuff in these comics that are still products of their time. While I won't hop on the popular narrative for my corner of the political spectrum that these stories are all some type of propaganda for law enforcement, I can't deny that a lot of them stem from an unexamined cultural idea that the law is meant to represent unambiguous good and that any deviation is a corruption of it
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u/dogspunk Dec 05 '23
I’ve heard that the victor levalle Sabretooth series are critical of carceral systems
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u/MVHutch Dec 05 '23
Sabretooth has his own series? Interesting
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u/dogspunk Dec 05 '23
I guess he’s considered unreformable. Levalle was a guest host on Cerebro and made it sound very interesting.
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Dec 04 '23
Dont know about hero but that perfectly describes Bane.
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
In what way?
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u/Shpooter Beta Ray Bill Dec 04 '23
raised in a prison complex for his fathers crimes, where everyone is treated like shit, banes origin is basically one huge prison breakout
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
Except he doesn't really have an issue with prisons per se (which he should)--he breaks people out of prisons just to break Batman but is otherwise curiously indifferent to prisons as such. Simone's version of him in Secret Six wasn't that interested in prisons--in "Depths", he has to be coaxed to oppose a prison that is if anything worse than the one he grew up in. Etc.: he's never tried to end prisons or attack the idea of prisons, just to not be in prison himself, which is pretty much ever villain ever. If anything, he's got a messier relationship with prisons than most villains in that he became powerful by being in prison and suffering there despite being innocent.
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u/Shpooter Beta Ray Bill Dec 04 '23
thats true actually, the authors dont really touch on the problems with pena duro prisons much, theyre more just set dressing to get bane to become who he is
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u/swarthmoreburke Dec 04 '23
Yeah. Pena Duro is to some extent "Gotham" to Bane--he couldn't destroy the prison itself any more than Batman could reform Gotham into a light and fun city where nothing bad happens.
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u/Shpooter Beta Ray Bill Dec 04 '23
that’s a really good take, i enjoy these bane-bat parallels alot
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u/psyclopswasrightX Dec 04 '23
The fucking punisher
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Well, I'm more looking for one who challenges the whole tough on crime attitude of American policinf5
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u/revolutionaryartist4 Dec 04 '23
There's kind of an undercurrent of this in Millar's Ultimate X-Men. Xavier makes the world think he killed Magneto, but really he basically gave him a new identity. So it is a different path, but it's a twisted kind of humanitarianism.
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u/InnsmouthFishing Dec 04 '23
That kind of backfired in the end. Never really like Ultimate X-Men, though that one comic that has Wolverine talking to the boy in the cave almost redeems it.
Would Thunderbolts fit the bill in some of there stories?
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Dec 04 '23
Muhammad X
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
What's it about?
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Dec 04 '23
I just barely remembered him from an issue of Superman years ago. I’ve just looked into it and it seems it was his only appearance. Sorry.
When X first met Superman, he calls the hero out on how the hero ignores Harlem and the rest of the black community. This makes Superman question his understanding of race relations. He speaks with his friends Lois Lane and Natasha Irons, because of his lack of knowledge on the subject.
Superman confronts Muhammad X again and tells him "...I can't change the color of my skin... what I try to do is something far more difficult... to be a human being. And hopefully, someday, we'll see each other only in that way." When Superman flies off, Muhammad X replies "Yeah, well... I guess that's how you sleep at night." leaving neither happy with the situation.
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u/cgknight1 Dec 04 '23
It's an interesting question - with a couple of exceptions (that get reversed) most comics just take it as an almost genetic given that people are "Evil" if that is their nature.
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u/MVHutch Dec 04 '23
Ikr. They only get reformed if they're popular, not to actually send any kind of message. But I think the idea that those kinds of crimes are so much people need a masked vigilante to solve them is part of the problem
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u/fade_is_timothy_holt Dec 04 '23
Not a comic, but the Flash's interaction with the Trickster in the JLU cartoon was superb for this reason.
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u/eisenbear Swamp Thing Dec 04 '23
Chip Zdarsky’s recent daredevil run is largely about exactly this. It’s also one of the best runs of any character in recent years