Microblog Memes

I think this is what The Incredibles does very well. It throws you into a world with super heros, makes you think they're cool, then shows you what would actually happen to them when they start "saving" people and smashing up infrastructure. Probably one of the best super hero movies out there.

The whole plot of the Captain America Civil War movie was built on the impact of collateral damage. For another franchise, The Watchmen movie was full of super hero atrocities and even the destruction of entire cities.

I really like Marion G. Harmon’s Wearing the Cape series for this. Hero teams are governmentally regulated, and state or federally mandated, and have to work with local authorities whenever possible, often acting as first responders specifically regarding super villain events. They’re required to plan and mitigate collateral damage. Heroing is literally their job and they have standard and on-call hours, as well as patrols and the like.

Socially heroes and villains are treated kind of like celebrities, and there are sort of unwritten rules about no killing, and no going after civilian identities or people’s families outside of costume as that’s grounds for both villains and heroes to look the other way regarding the aforementioned “No killing” rule.

With the knowledge that villains are hard to impossible to fully stop, emphasis exists on imprisonment and rehabilitation, and over the course of the series some villains and heroes end up changing sides.

There’s one hero in the series who is a federal agent with the ability to replicate clones of himself and is embedded in most hero teams, as well as being secret service, generalized security, and informant as all clones have the knowledge of the rest. Nobody he works with outside of the President of the U.S. even knows how many of him are out there.

On top of this, besides the typical hero teams, there are more “B grade” teams that are not specifically super heroes but act as emergency responders and construction crews for both hero events and fights as well as generalized incidents, and things like heroes without borders that act as global humanitarian aid on a volunteer basis, similar to Doctors Without Borders.

Vigilantes are frowned upon, and can end up liable for crimes as they’re not sanctioned to use their powers to fight.

It’s a very interesting series, and deals with a lot of “real world” consequences of super heroics, including long term injury and death, PTSD and other trauma, and the impact of things like super powered terrorism and extremist groups, as well as anti-super sentiment.

——

Besides that series, I’d also recommend the web serial “Worm” by Wildbow (John McCrae), but that one’s a doozy, both in terms of content (it only goes from bad to worse and things never really get better) and length (it’s absurdly long, maybe equivalent in length to 15-20 full length novels, broken up into fairly long chapters and sections).

IIRC Marvel has handwaved this through an actual government agency who's job is to fix shit quick. Department of Damage Control IIRC, very steeped in realist humor, and I mean actual school of realism not cult of "wahmenz in super hero movies is unrealistic!"

Invincible handles consequences pretty well.

One example: At one point Atom Eve uses her powers to turn an empty lot into a playground. But it turns out

To their defense, the MCU kind of made a whole movie addressing exactly that, back when it was still really good

Watch The Boys, it addresses collateral damage.

“Fuck supes”

George R. R. Martin edited a terrific series called Wild Card that is really well grounded. The premise is an alien virus that gives people random mutations and some of them are horrific (the Jokers) but some get fantastic powers (the Aces).

It's pretty gritty and 'realistic' like they really go deep into how the various powers would realistically affect people and be used.

I really liked it up until

Chronicle probably doesn't exactly fit your description, but is an attempt at a more grounded look at superpeople.

This is also addressed in Hancock (2008).

I mean, most decent superhero movies I see acknowledge inner city chaos to be bad. As soon as a horrible villain starts throwing fireballs, they’re trying to get civilians out, save people amidst chaos, etc.

There’s maybe another conversation to have on property damage; I think there’s not much story there due to the way insurance works. To us, these chaotic battles happen every summer, but in these worlds they’re rare freak occurrences - just like earthquakes.

If it weren't for that opening I would not watch the show. Had no idea what it was about, never read the comics. Just saw a video on why Homelander is a great villain and I went to check it out. After that scene it was just "oh wow. There are stakes!"

And instead of actually trying to perform a public service, the superhero is

"Act of God", get fucked. Also we raised your monthly fee by 50% because, based on previous events, you're more likely than others to have you car Hulk-smashed.

I once played at Iron Man knockoff for a super hero ttrpg. The source of his wealth was shorting insurance companies.

A few years ago i had to get my upper lip sewed back on after a mountain bike accident and the insurance still has not paid for the surgery because a cosmetic surgeon was the only person at the hospital who could do it

This is the plot of Spiderman Homecoming

He just throws it on top of your coworkers cars, so now you can't even carpool the day after.

Seeing as how the cops can cause collateral damage and be completely unaccountable, yeah, no. You ain't getting shit.

(We should totally end qualified immunity though.)