Marvel’s Civil War resonated with me when I read it. This crossover event was possibly the best American comic event I had read in years.
After a fight between a group of superheroes and supervillains goes wrong and destroys a small American town, Congress passes the Superhuman Registration Act. An enhanced version of the Mutant Registration Act, it required all beings with superhuman abilities, heroes and villains alike, to register their powers with the government. This, of course, causes a lot of debate in the superhuman community about freedom versus security, the role of government, individual responsibility, and so on. New lines are drawn and heroes and villains both find themselves being drawn into pro-registration and anti-registration forces lead by Iron Man and Captain America, respectively.
There is a huge final showdown -
I’ll admit that the ending is a bit weak, but the questions this whole conflict raises still linger. If there were superhumans in our world, would you want want them to be registered?
It could be compared to gun control debates of our world. Or perhaps the stories of boxers and black belts getting their hands and feet registered as deadly weapons, since superpowers are a little more innate than handguns. That always seemed silly to me. At what point is someone or something dangerous enough to require registration? Does registration actually make us safer?
You could even take it a rhetorical step further and liken it to sex offender registration or the Nazis’ eugenics programs. (Yes, it only took me five posts to Godwin myself.) Superpowered individuals would undoubtedly face prejudice and ostracism. Where is the balancing point between their civil rights and our safety?
Maybe I should think about pursuing a Constitutional Law focus, if only to preserve my secret identity. I could be like Daredevil!
I, like most Marvel readers, sided with anti-reg, but actually I don’t think mutant registration can be compared to anything in our reality. Having mutant powers is not a choice, cannot be taken away, can be extremely dangerous and often are difficult to control.
Play Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2! It’s fun, and the story is set in the Civil War period =D
I agree that there isn’t anything in our world that hits all those criteria you listed to be equal to mutant powers, but you don’t think that there are things that meet some of those criteria and are comparable?
Depending on your beliefs on “sexual deviance,” it could meet the first, second, and fourth criteria and while not “extremely” dangerous, it can easily be harmful to self and others; thus my sex offender registration comparison. And the same could be said about the Nazi eugenics registration program (and everything else they did in the name of “racial hygiene” up to and including the Holocaust). It was directed against minorities who had no choice, no control, and no possibility of change.