Superman V.S The Elite

[CharlesPhipps]

Imagine trying to run an insurance company, or a mortgage lender, or do any kind of long-term financing in these worlds. At any moment your car/house/blast furnace/factory/office building/wife/life could be lost because the Metal Men had to stop Dr. Morrow. There is NO stability, it's like Class 5 hurricanes happen on a monthly basis and that's because these are comic books and they need to be exciting to be sold - not have worlds that hand together at all levels of inspection.

And yet the technology is good enough that everything is repaired in hours.

[Madner Kami]

I'm certain Flash Building Services and Hulk Wrecking Incorporated and Superman Construction Company are a thing. They have to finance their habits somehow, after all. Or do you really think that Professor X can fund an underground lair, including hologram-generators, supercomputer and a custom-built SR-71 Blackbird without pimping out Emma Frost and Kurt Wagner every so often?

[Nealithi]

I'm certain Flash Building Services and Hulk Wrecking Incorporated and Superman Construction Company are a thing. They have to finance their habits somehow, after all. Or do you really think that Professor X can fund an underground lair, including hologram-generators, supercomputer and a custom-built SR-71 Blackbird without pimping out Emma Frost and Kurt Wagner every so often?

You are talking about a psychic that can make you dress and think you are a little girl and threatens that sort of thing for relatively minor issues. I think making people work on a project and forget about it is not beyond his abilities or morals.

As to DC vs Marvel in reconstruction. They had Damage Control in Marvel to show some people are there to do this sort of thing professionally. Reed Richards spends a good amount of time putting things back. Of course only things damaged or destroyed by a super villain. If standard humans do it then suck it. Looking at you World Trade Center.
DC I have heard that Wayne (whatever they call it this week) works on such rebuilding and is part of why they stay solvent. Also that Superman and company do try to help with cleanup.
So I am guessing construction worker is a steady job in the major cities.

[CharlesPhipps]

My headcanon is the rebuilding of Coast City was such a drain on the economy that the money ran out for Gotham.

[Karha of Honor]

Superman is not aloof.

Yes, with his Fotress of Solitude and all.

How is it to late? Who is going to force them if they decide not to? The Martian Imperial Monarchy?

It would create a vacuum of power that would usher in another period of instability just like we had in the first half of the 20th Century which led to the dethronement of the previous global hegemon, the British Empire and its replacement with the US.

Such instability would impact the United States if only through the severe economic disruption it would produce and the wars that would come with it would be a return of the World kind, just as the conflicts around the global hegemon grew in scale until they reached that level since the first came into being in the 16th Century (The Spanish Empire).

Yes, with his Fotress of Solitude and all.

Does not make him that.

It would create a vacuum of power that would usher in another period of instability just like we had in the first half of the 20th Century which led to the dethronement of the previous global hegemon, the British Empire and its replacement with the US.

Such instability would impact the United States if only through the severe economic disruption it would produce and the wars that would come with it would be a return of the World kind, just as the conflicts around the global hegemon grew in scale until they reached that level since the first came into being in the 16th Century (The Spanish Empire).

If a large mass of people want to kill each other the US cannot stop it, period.

How do you know?

People across the world cannot wait to die despite the information revolution and higher living standards?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Interesting take about how the nation was shaped before WWI and leading up to WWII. I don't think it saw itself so much as the noble hero in international affairs, just that Superman's demeanor was more a cult of personality within its own culture. What did you do during the Great War was more about fulfilling duty, with a more somber attitude about stepping in.

As far as US as an international hegemon, you can look back to the 1800s to see US state affairs putting its nose into areas for benefit of commerce. Opening Japan to the world market was one thing, acquiring Pearl Harbor as a naval base in exchange for duty free sugar sales into the states was another.

[Beastro]

How do you know?

Because it has happened every time a hegemony has declined and weakened. First with the Second Hundred Years' War after Spain began to go under between France and Britain, then the World Wars when Britain's decline began and Germany challenged their position which ended with the peaceful baton passing to the US as Germany was dealt with, then the fallout of that right after in the Cold War as the Soviet Union challenged the US (the USSR's ability to do so earlier interrupted by WWII and Germany's continued challenging), which was prevented from going hot through nuclear weapons that arose at the very end of the last period of instability.

What did you do during the Great War was more about fulfilling duty, with a more somber attitude about stepping in.

The only thing somber about US involvement in WWI was the realization that Germany was acting against US interests for the same reasons the US had an antagonistic relationship with Revolutionary France despite their open love for each others republics.

As for the fulfilling duty, it was more evangelizing to the ignorant masses. Wilson's repeated phrases near the end of the war sum up the view point his was at the vanguard of: Peace without victors.

As far as US as an international hegemon, you can look back to the 1800s to see US state affairs putting its nose into areas for benefit of commerce. Opening Japan to the world market was one thing, acquiring Pearl Harbor as a naval base in exchange for duty free sugar sales into the states was another.

"International" is a fudging word here as its ultimately vague when applied in this way. There is a place for it in the politically realistist viewpoint I'm describing but it's just a part, not a major facet as it is in something like Internationalism, where no surprise given the name it's it's cornerstone.

What you describe is a regional hegemon, entities which have existed since civilizations first began to spread out into the first empires. The wider global character came with the Treaty of Tordesillas and the stronger position Spain had in the relationship between the other main signatory, Portugal.

It is relatively easy to become a regional hegemon, if only to be the most powerful nation in a region. Brazil has effectively always been that in South America and much of that comes from its natural position on the continent and hardly to do with things of their own making. The US was that in North America and the North Pacific until it began to cross and overcome the British Empire. In the same way China is the regional hegemon of the Far East for decades as the displacement of the RoK from the UN Security Council shows in that it could no longer be ignored.

What the US did with Japan was extend its own sphere while doing so in keeping with the interests of the British Empire. The British wanted Japan open as well and if the US got to it first all the easier to spare them the effort. In the same way Britain was willing to acknowledge German regional hegemony of Continental Europe after the Franco-Prussian War, just as France was recognized in their position of influence after they backed down from challenging Britain for good after 1815. The Germans were not content in that position and their ultimate desire, even if they didn't realize it, was the position of global hegemony, which is what their "place in the sun" entailed given their sense of entitlement.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

When I said international hegemon I just meant between countries, and not global scale. I'm not certain that regional and international are contradictory in this sense, but I could be wrong. And the main point was, isn't that not unlike what US does in middle east?

As far as evangelizing to the ignorant masses, isn't that what American nationalism entails anyway?

[Beastro]

When I said international hegemon I just meant between countries, and not global scale. I'm not certain that regional and international are contradictory in this sense, but I could be wrong. And the main point was, isn't that not unlike what US does in middle east?

As far as evangelizing to the ignorant masses, isn't that what American nationalism entails anyway?

The only place I could see a term like "international hegemon" applying to this would be within Minimal Realism, which emphasizes the softer, coalition, "leading the way for others to follow" approach compared to Maximal Realism's "make examples out of other nations" one.

As far as evangelizing to the ignorant masses, isn't that what American nationalism entails anyway?

It's all a facet of the "City on the Hill" side of American self-perception.

[Jonathan101]

Their best hope in decades had been Stormwatch, a U.N. backed metahuman law enforcement organisation which worked within the law after its insane chairman was ousted from power. The Authority worked with them, right up to the point where Stormwatch was annihilated by an alien invasion. After Stormwatch's destruction and it was dissolved, there was no major organized force left. The few remaining teams either worked on small-scale operations, were on the run, or had been disbanded. Even the closest thing that the world had to their Superman, the High, went into self-imposed exile for decades only to be killed shortly after he returned.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I thought that Stormwatch was destroyed because they found out that their leader the Weatherman was actually a supervillain who had been using them the whole time to further his crypto-ultraconservative political agenda? And he got exposed when going overboard trying to stop The High and his superhuman cohorts from trying to take over the world and turn it into some sort of utopia, which is what ends up inspiring Jenny Sparks and others to form The Authority in the first place?

(ironically this last story of Stormwatch was the first I read).