Torkuda said:
Here?s an issue I addressed in a story of my own and I wonder what people would think. I?ll try to summarize the story:
Lord Maelstrom, a psycho criminal, clones the powers of young Jessica after kidnapping her. After she escapes, Jessica and her friend Kyle go on a mission to try to stop Lord Maelstrom from using these powers.
What is the resolution to this story? Kyle and Jessica, at ages 130 and 170, whom currently struggle to run a search a rescue for lost human kids, try to fight someone whom is well over five hundred years old that has been running and fighting full underground police forces that believe in full fledged vigilantism and lethal justice for all of his life. What do you think happens? They barely survive even the attempt. After the evil vampire breaks some fifteen or so bones in Jessica?s body with one hit (and Jessica?s species has no healing powers), both characters realize they?re out of their league. They back off themselves, let the authorities chasing Maelstrom know where he was last seen, and go back to what they were doing before, looking for a lost kid.
Yes, in reality there are no super powers etc, etc, but we all know these things are metaphors at best anyway. The point of the story is to learn that sometimes it?s okay to recognize that you can?t solve a problem and move on, even if you ARE in the right and you ARE rightfully involved. Yes, it?s a situation that requires thought, but it?s real enough. I rarely see a modern hero have to admit his own inadequacies like this. Is this bad not to show, doesn?t matter, or is it in fact bad to try to explore this so literally? Thoughts?
Err, well, actually it happens all the time in fiction. In western comics there have been plenty of cases where heroes have pretty much run into enemies they just couldn't handle and needed to get help, or pass things along to other heroes. In "Batman" tons of members of his "Family" have gotten themselves horrifically stomped by stepping out of
their league. The Jason Todd version of Robin even died trying to confront The Joker on his own. The Spoiler was apparently tortured to death by Black Mask trying to prove herself to Batman (though in an act of fairly bad writing
she was revealed later to not have died...). Going way back to the "Mutant Massacre" storyline for the X-men back in the 1990s, Archangel wound up getting captured by the bad guys due to his overconfidence, and was literally pinned up against a wall, being tortured to death by a bunch of guys that were way out of his league... he was however rescued by a passing Thor (who pretty much slapped the bad guys down like a bunch of 4 year olds, and then after rescueing Angel was told rather stupidly "we don't want your help, this is a matter for mutants to solve"). In the classic "Watchmen" there are a lot of subtexts not present in the movie, such as how the heroes step up to try and save a world that really isn't worthy of them. The overall resolution though which DID make it into the movie was that they were a day late, a dollar short, and totally outclassed as they had let themselves go for too long. The heroes greatest success was ironically failing to stop the villain, and the survivors are the ones who give up, the last one to hold onto the heroic ideal is slain.... (though his journal survives). In the anime "Speed Grapher" the hero and the villain meet for their final battle, the hero winds up losing, and in the process of doing so winds up burning out his eyes (his vision being the one thing that gave him pleasure, he was a photographer) the bad guy lets him live on in this broken state, and finishes his plan to bring financial ruin to the world and end capitalism before himself dying... only to have it mean nothing as the people (including those who worked for him) miss the point and you just see a worldwide disaster after which nothing changes.... in other words epic suckage for everyone, the entire battle wound up being pointless as nobody got what they wanted.
I could go on of course, but the point is that there are a number of stories where the bad guy effectively wins, or where the heroes fail and/or give up. In shared continuity universes the latter can be especially common, a villain might very well defeat a hero in one title, as a lead in to being defeated by another in a different title. Younger heroes stepping out of their league and needing to be rescued by their elders (as a sort of metaphor) is also fairly common. You've had various teams of Mutants in "X" titles wind up needing to be rescued or deal with the repercussions of starting something they couldn't win without the intervention of more powerful heroes. In DC this kind of thing has happened with teens like "The Teen Titans" and to a lesser extent "Young Justice".
That said it is more common for an underdog hero to come back with some gimmick and win in a rematch. The usual logic when dealing with superhumans in particular is that even if outmatched entirely, the superhuman hero still has more of a chance than a normal person does, and thus feels responsible.
In response to your story if I understand it correctly I'd say this guy represents a threat that most people couldn't handle, and Kyle and Jessica are a bit better than anyone else. I'd imagine that having gotten into that position to begin with, they would figure they can't just let the guy rampage, and there isn't anyone else who would be effective to turn it over to. Typically in such scenarios your super hero sets a trap for the villain. I'd also point out that half the point of a lot of heroes is exactly how far they step out of their league and manage to win reliably. Take for example "The Punisher" who despite several huge changes over the years has generally defaulted to a military veteran with police experience who shoots regular criminals, but periodically winds up being forced to confront guys with
powers who could literally kill him as easily as breathing under most circumstances. Typically he wins by being able to contrive something to exploit the enemy (and having the writer on his side) or simply approaching the situation from well outside of the box. While not directly from the comics, his type of solution might involve dealing with someone who is 10x stronger, faster, and more durable than a normal person and who can shoot lasers out of his eyes. In a direct confrontation he'd lose. On the other hand if he knows where the guy will be, nothing is going to prevent him from just popping the guy's head with a modified anti-material rifle from close to a mile away (a nearly impossible shot IRL but the kind of thing that passes for this guy's "power"). Sniping some dude from super-long range just isn't the kind of thing that comes up in comics because it isn't dramatic... but it makes sense. From the way you describe things something along those lines might be a great way to take out Lord Maelstorm.... most people don't bother to consider
how vulnerable they are to snipers, and in the context of heroic fantasy unless some dude has the power to literally bounce say an armor piercing .50 round off their forehead, it's going to solve a lot of problems. Of course if this was followed through logically most comic books would wind up with a lot of corpses in spandex and the authorities probably wouldn't need to even consider robots the size of buildings. I mean realistically even Magneto needs to concentrate to an extent, if some dude is that far away and he doesn't see them..... god forbid the bullet isn't made of metal too. Soon the only heroes and villains left would probably be the "bricks".
