Imaginary Worlds - Law & Order Superheroes

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

You know the scene. A pair of muggers are in an alleyway when a superhero leaps down and beats them to a pulp. It’s a classic scenario, but in a year when we’re reassessing the role of law enforcement in the real world, is it time to reimagine the role of super-cops in fantasy worlds? I talk with prosecutor Patrick O’Connor and police officer Henry Wong about how Batman or The Punisher could better reflect the times. Matthew Westfox, co-host of the podcast Superhero Ethics, discusses the moral quandaries of Daredevil. Peter Nowak, author of “The Rise of Real-Life Superheroes,” explains why costumed crime fighters are no longer just in fiction, and we hear from The Grim and Violet Valkyrie, who actually patrol the streets of San Diego as their superhero alter-egos. Today's episode is brought to you by EveryPlate, HelloFresh and BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In another episode, we talked about D&D character alignments. He's also my New York Comic-Con buddy. We used to go every year, until this year, of course. And Patrick and I grew up in the same era of comics, which were dominated by writers like Frank Miller, who turned Batman and Daredevil into brutal street-level vigilantes that would break the bones of muggers or drug dealers, which as a teenage boy, I thought was cool. But I was living in the very safe suburbs. Patrick grew up in a neighborhood in Queens

that was an infamous hotspot for the drug wars of the 80s and 90s. There were shootings going on left and right. There were muggings in the subway. It was a very dangerous time. So those heroes that you read about in the comic books, Daredevil, Batman, that whole vigilante ethos was in full effect. And you love those characters, right? Yes. And when I was growing up, I loved Batman. And I actually really had a particular liking of the Punisher. I will never get over the fact that Patrick loves the Punisher,

the Marvel character who uses guns and violates the superhero no-kill policy. Because today, Patrick works in the local district attorney's office, where he runs the Gun Violence Suppression Bureau. And before that, he ran the Law Enforcement Accountability Bureau, which prosecutes police brutality and corrupt cops. A lot of what fuels the fantasy of the street-level vigilante is the idea that the cops in Gotham or Daredevil's Hell's Kitchen are overwhelmed or easily corruptible. But Patrick says there used to be another factor in the zeitgeist. If I remember correctly, when I was growing up,

I always thought it was that, not that the police were corrupt. It's just that the legalities of the time, the technicalities, if you will, that the police were handcuffed by the expansion of individual rights, defendants' rights. It's the same thing that motivated Dirty Harry and Death Wish. And those frustrations didn't just play out in comics or movies. They led to changes in law enforcement and mass incarceration. But one of the things I've noticed about these vigilante superheroes is that the fictionalized cities that they patrol are very, very white. And then sometimes they'll fight multiracial gangs,

which Patrick finds particularly absurd because he used to prosecute gangs. If you're watching the Punisher beat up a group of a multicultural group with Asians and blacks and whites, like equal opportunity attacking him and him having to take them out, you know, when you're reading it, you know why they're doing it, right? That's because they don't want to bring that. They don't want to bring that element in of the white. And usually it is a white vigilante who's beating up on minorities. I was thinking about all this after I saw the trailer for the new Batman movie, which reboots the franchise yet again, this time with Robert Pattinson as Batman. And the new movie is apparently going to emphasize the detective side of the character,

which I'm really looking forward to. Batman. And the new movie is apparently going to emphasize the detective side of the character, which I'm really looking forward to. But from the trailer, it looks like they're trying to have it both ways. There's a scene where Batman confronts a group of thugs. The hell are you supposed to be? I'm vengeance. Comic book characters always evolve with the times. The reimagining of Batman as a Dark Knight may have felt true to life in the 1980s, but in a year when we're engaging in a nationwide debate over the role of law enforcement. Suddenly, that moment in the trailer felt strangely tone-deaf and off-key. And I've been wondering,

is it time to reimagine the super cops in our fictional worlds? And what would that change look like? Patrick's next-door neighbor is a police officer named Henry Wong. He's also a huge comic book fan. And when Patrick told him about this episode, Henry said he really wanted to chime in because he's been thinking about this too. Batman, he's a, you know, Caucasian character, right? You know, what if he was in a situation where there's like a crime happening, but that a perpetrator was, you know, a black person and that was all recorded.

How would that go over, you know, with the way things are now? I don't think it would go over very well. It wouldn't go over very well with him either. To me, it's a point where I really want to see like a mask, vigilante beating up on like, you know, people. I don't know if I would buy that comic book. Putting on a uniform can change a person. It is supposed to turn a cop or a superhero into a symbol of justice.

And that is what Henry wanted. For me, it was just more of an opportunity to see if I could be a positive influence in my community. He grew up in New York's Chinatown. And today, that's the neighborhood he patrols, which was on purpose. But becoming a cop was actually a fairly recent decision. My background isn't necessarily in law enforcement. Before I even got on the force, I was in finance and accounting for over 10 years.

But, you know, at the age of like 31, 32, I made a decision with my family to, you know, maybe it's a good time to look into becoming a police officer. Because you can't join the police if you're over the age of 35. Unlike superheroes who get to be 35 forever. Henry used to walk his beat feeling a sense of pride. But when he puts on the uniform, he's no longer Henry Wong. He's a symbol of whatever experiences people have had with the NYPD. And lately, when he thinks of superheroes, they're not an escapist fantasy.

He's been thinking about the burdens that characters like Batman have to live with. Sometimes you go through some rough nights, and it's kind of the same, I feel like, for superheroes sometimes. It's like, you know, they put themselves out there, and again, they put themselves in a bad situation, and they have to come back home. And then how do you, you know, kind of like disconnect from that? Lately, a lot of vigilante superhero TV shows and movies have been asking similar

questions, except they're wondering how much they can disconnect from the way we understand policing and crime today, while still giving us that gritty, realistic appeal. Batman comics have gone in the opposite direction. They've sent Batman into sci-fi alternate universes where he's battling evil doppelgangers of himself, which are cool stories, but they totally avoid reality. And Patrick says... Even the Punisher comic books, he's always going after some really, really international foe.

I think they had like one series, recent series he was going against, Baron Zemo. Supervillvillain. Supervillains that are just beyond the pale that you need somebody who's uniquely skilled to deal with. Yeah. Does it feel right with the times to you? Or is there part of you that's like, I still miss the part where you just beat up a bunch of thugs? Nah, I don't miss the thug beating up anymore you know you read those punisher comic books and it makes he was going after drug dealers big time and the drug dealers were just portrayed as being like these evil like you know just chaotic evil characters when the reality of the situation is as we know when it deal when we've been like living with this problem of narcotics and narcotics

addiction like a lot of the drug dealers in real life are drug addicts themselves, and they're just trying to make money to get to their next high. Although there is a live-action superhero show that does reflect the zeitgeist, The Umbrella Academy on Netflix. They're a team of sibling superheroes

who are trying and sometimes failing to save the world. Diego is the brooding vigilante in the group, but everybody makes fun of him. And I've never seen that type of character played for laughs. That is a perfect analogy to what we're talking about, right? I mean, Diego is completely out of his depth. He's completely out of step with everybody else in the Academy, in the Umbrella Academy, all his mates, when they're going out and dealing with the situation, right?

Yeah. It's almost like he is the fanboy who grew up reading Frank Miller and wants to be the Frank Miller vigilante and all the other characters just like, dude, give it. What is your issue? Like, calm down. Let's look at the big picture, what we really have to deal with. Look, I know you. You like playing by the rules, but you live for putting the scumbags away. So why don't you put that badge down for one night and you come out on the streets with me without all this bullshit? You're right. That sounds super fun. But I think you missed some things when you got yourself thrown out of the police academy. I've done all this bullshit. You're right. That sounds super fun. But I think you missed some things when you got yourself thrown out of the police academy, so let me explain.

This bullshit is what gets convictions in a court of law. What you do out there is a fantasy. There is one more important vigilante character that we need to unpack. Daredevil. He has been one of my favorite characters since I was a kid because he is a living contradiction. By day, he is a lawyer named Matt Murdock who defends criminals in court. And by night, he beats criminals to a pulp as Daredevil. And he justifies what he's doing because he never takes a life. Matt Murdock should be disbarred for almost every day of what he does, unfortunately. Matthew Westfox co-hosts the podcast Superhero Ethics.

I love Daredevil. He's probably my favorite character in the sort of the ones that are on TV right now or used to be. But the idea that you can say, I will never kill someone. I'm just going to hit them in the head with a metal pipe, is utterly ridiculous. I say that not just as a joke about bad writing, but that the entire idea that you can practice non-lethal violence is ridiculous. People are going to die even when you don't intend it. The Daredevil comics have always wrestled with the morality of street-level justice because Matt Murdock is a devout Catholic.

He spends a lot of time in confession booths. So I'm glad that the comics have actually been delving into these messy questions. Like in the current storyline, Daredevil discovers that he has accidentally killed a henchman who was not white. At first, he was in denial until he talked to a doctor who treated the henchman. And suddenly Daredevil realized there's somebody who has to clean up after him and heal those broken bones.

Then he went through a defensive stage until he learned that the henchman had a sympathetic backstory. And in the most recent issues, Daredevil has turned himself over to the police. I have been riveted by that story. And for once, I have no idea how it's going to turn out. I'd love to see more superheroes go through a similar evolution. I think that one of the things the superhero genre is really having to wrestle with is that our understanding of crime is fundamentally changing. To me, one of the questions I think is most interesting is, OK, let's say Joker or Kingpin is doing these terrible things. And you can say, okay,

whatever race they are, they're making this active decision. But in order to get to them, our hero has to beat up probably 20 or 30 henchmen. The henchmen aren't all people who agree with the villain. The henchmen are probably people who are taking the job they can take because that's where they can get money, because they're in situations where they don't have access to jobs or they don't have access to other things or whatever circumstances has led them to that. The big question with superheroes and law enforcement is accountability. Once they put on the costume or the uniform,

does that embolden them to make violent choices that they wouldn't otherwise in civilian clothes? There's the old adage that when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I think superheroes are the best example of that I've ever seen. You know, if you are of the belief that you solve problems by punching them, I think one of the things that's so powerful about the Daredevil story is, and maybe this is a reason why he goes more and more into that vengeance side, is when you try to use the law to fix something, that's a slow process. It's hard to do. It's gradual. It's hard to see the change happen. When you punch someone, they hit the floor. It's immediate. It's visceral.

And so it's really easy to start going more and more in that direction. And I think cops in the real world do that. I think military can do that all the time. I think anytime you take on this identity of, I am a fighter, I am allowed to use violence to do good, of course, that's going to become the thing you default to all the time. And heroes, I think, are a perfect metaphor for that in our own world. Although vigilante superheroes may be more than just a metaphor. We're going to show you some masked men that patrol Seattle looking for crime. They say they're part of a growing nationwide movement aimed at making the streets safer, but are they for real? New tonight, one local man came within seconds of having his car broken into, perhaps stolen, until a superhero came to his rescue. Some of these vigilantes do indeed pull on skin-tight costumes and wear masks.

After the break, we will hear about a movement of real-life superheroes who are actually taking to the streets to fight crime. And some of them might be showing a positive example of how we could reimagine costume crusaders for justice. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Imagine costume crusaders for justice. and Shea. That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. Peter Nowak is the author of the book, The Rise of Real Life Superheroes. It's a really interesting book and full disclosure, I wrote a blurb on the jacket cover.

Now, real-life superheroes are not dressed as licensed characters from comics. They create their own superhero identities with makeshift costumes of armor, capes, or masks. And some of them don't want to punch criminals. They dress in costume as a form of charitable work. So they'll do homeless handout missions, what they call missions. So again, they'll get together in groups and they'll go to where the, you know, usually the homeless people are camped out and they'll bring them things like sleeping bags, toiletries, socks are actually a very popular thing apparently. And among the biggest

needs that homeless people have are clean, dry socks. Of course, they could do that in civilian clothes. But Peter says they want to wear costumes to draw visibility to the problem of homelessness. But there are plenty of real-life superheroes who want to fight crime and keep the peace, like the Extreme Justice League, which patrols downtown San Diego. And many of their members are ex-military. And I think one of the reasons why they do this is because they were stationed overseas and they would do these kind of community patrols in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And they would be essentially peacekeepers there. And I think they sort of kind of almost miss it. So they come back

to the U.S. and they figure they want to keep doing this uh but they want to do it in a non-threatening way so they that's why they put on the the superhero costumes to kind of give people an idea that they're not you know some sort of militia or something like that but then others are that there's some who aren't actually military types there's some that are uh you know they have some form of martial arts training. And so, you know, they go out there and they look for these altercations happening, fights brewing, and they'll get involved. They'll intercede. They have trained in, you know, de-escalation techniques and that sort of thing. So they actually try to defuse the situation before they actually evolve into something violent. The Extreme Justice League works with the San Diego Police Department.

In fact, I read one officer describe the group positively as a, quote, force multiplier. But that is not the case in every city. Like in Seattle, there is a controversial real-life superhero named Phoenix Jones, who's part of the Rain City superhero movement. You know, Phoenix Jones actually ended up in court because the cops brought him in. They said that he ran into this situation where he started pepper spraying everybody. The police there are not fans of him, not fans of his group. And there's a bit of a contrast there too.

In San Diego, the Extreme Justice League would actually cooperate in situations where they would need to give evidence. They would give their real names. They would actually appear in court and provide that evidence. Whereas in Seattle, they basically refused to do that. Yeah, but with real life superheroes, I mean, the ones who are not adversaries of the cops, I mean, how do they justify what they're doing in costume? Like, why not just become cops? Yeah, there's a couple of reasons for that, I think. So one is there's definitely a certain number of them that do believe the cops are corrupt and the media is corrupt and all that.

And it's sort of almost comic book-ish in why they do this. The other part of it, too, is that they want to contribute in some small way, but they don't want to go through the whole process of training as a police officer and having to be told what to do. You have to go out and give parking tickets. You can't go and, you know, bust up the muggers or whatever. I mean, I assume they must have support from their family. I mean, how many of them, I mean, that would lead to divorces pretty quickly otherwise. Yeah, it's funny too, hearing those stories. You know, I think in a lot of cases I heard stories about how they would go out and do this sort of thing and kind of hide it from their spouses or their girlfriends. Some of them, once they revealed it, their spouse said, no, no way in hell are you doing

this. You have to retire. And so they did. In a few cases, the spouse actually joined them. A great story was there's a couple in San Francisco slash Oakland, the Bay area, rock and roll and night bug. So night bug was, he was doing this real life superhero thing. And there was an HBO documentary documentary back in 2011, simply called superheroes about this phenomenon. And they went to a screening

of of this documentary in a theater and the director was there nightbug in his real identity took his uh significant other to the screening and they were they watched it in the audience and then he at the end of the film he said uh excuse me i I got to go to the bathroom. He went to the bathroom. He suited up into his Nightbug costume, went out on stage and started answering questions and talking to the audience. Meanwhile, his significant other is sitting in a crowd thinking, well, this guy sounds really familiar. Wait, that actually worked? That's like the common trope that people laugh at that like, you know, he puts on how she could how could she not recognize it's her husband right away or her boyfriend right away well i mean his costume nightbug he's uh he's one of these guys who wears all black but he's got this like really he's got this red face mask that's a cross between like wolverine and venom or something like that

you know they're very they're both uh skilled at martial arts and so she was telling me that she's like, well, if he can do it, if he's capable of doing this, I'm like, I'm actually way better than him in these things. So I certainly can do this as well. So she got into it. At this point, I really wanted to talk with some real life superheroes. So Peter connected me with The Grimm, who patrols San Diego, particularly an area called the Gaslamp Quarter, which is full of bars and clubs where drunken altercations will sometimes break out. I wear a blue skull helmet and then body armor that's covered with generally a hoodie and some sort of pants. And this is Grimm's colleague, Violet Valkyrie. Her costume has gone through a few iterations.

But there are some things that are consistent. I'm always wearing the color violet. That's one thing that's always happened. I usually have some type of headpiece that is Valkyrie-esque themed. And they said, unlike the movies, most real-life superheroes don't wear all black. So we're trying not to look like robbers?

I mean, basically, I just don't want to be mistaken for the bad guys. I would add that, like, all black kind of fetishizes what we are. Everyone wants to be the Batman. Everyone wants to be this dark, mysterious person. But we're going out there to actively help people. And wearing all black is not going to help our cause. I mean, are they surprised when you show up and you're wearing superhero costumes?

I mean, are they just confused and be like, wait, what is going on? It'd probably be weird if they were expecting it. and be like, wait, what is going on? It'd probably be weird if they were expecting it. If they're upset with someone else, and then superheroes enter the fray, then it's like, oh, wait, now I'm dealing with this. It definitely helps to sidetrack them

and not keep focused on what they were so intently focused on in the first place. Have there ever been times that it hasn't worked, where you get caught up in an actual physical fight? Yes, it's happened. Sometimes people are just trying to fight someone. I don't know. I guess it's never really been an issue because most of the time when people divert their attention away from someone else and then turn it towards us, we are actually prepared to deal with that. Or are they?

That's the big question. When I talked with NYPD officer Henry Wong, I asked him what he thought of real life superheroes. These guys are putting themselves in a, you know, potentially very dangerous situation. It might get them seriously hurt or they may seriously hurt someone. Because as a police officer, you're going to do the academy, you're going to do continuous training where you have to either de-escalate the situation,

basically using verbal judo, or control the perpetrator in a way where it doesn't hurt them or you. They don't necessarily have that training or that, I guess, mental reaction. And it might get them in a situation where it really may not be good for either party. The Grimm says that's a fair criticism of real-life superheroes

who don't have a military background or first responder training or mental health training. He says each of the real-life superheroes that he's worked with have had some part of that training. But he thinks it's hypocritical when police tell him he couldn't have the same type of judgment that they have. When they talk about sometimes people are passionate but don't use the best judgment,

I'm like, you obviously have not Googled cops using bad judgment. Google's cops using bad judgment. That is going to show you what happens. And people die a lot from cops showing up and not knowing what they're doing. The Grimm was one of the few Black members of the Extreme Justice League, or XJL for short. And he recently split from the XJL because they disagreed on how to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. When I was protesting because Black Lives apparently had not mattered before, I kind of was looking to the rest of the group for like support, something to stand for the injustices that had been going on. I felt like I was just kind of left out in the wind.

I felt like I was just kind of left out in the wind, and it was kind of heartbreaking. I need to stand up for injustice, and if you're not going to do it with me, I'm going to do it by myself. When he was part of the XJL, Grimm had a good relationship with the police, and they knew his secret identity. Now he says at protests, the same cops give him dirty looks like he's betrayed them. And he feels equally let down. He was hoping they'd have his back. Yeah, it's definitely different. The relationship now between me and the police is broken. It is unrepairable.

But he's not alone. Violet Valkyrie has joined him in this new mission. I'm such an advocate for Black lives and Black lives mattering. And I felt that the X-Files focus was just, is different than what I want to focus on. We are still real life superheroes. And we have changed our focus by focusing more on protesting. So we have begun to engage more in protest safety, protester safety,

and being visible at protests in our superhero garb out there on the streets. In this case, trying to deescalate situations and protect people from the police. Defund the police is a common slogan that you'll see on protest signs or social media. Advocates of reform believe that the police should only focus on higher level crimes. And then some of their funds should be diverted to social service professionals who could handle lower level crimes, misdemeanors or disputes before they escalate. I would imagine that a lot of people

who are pushing for a new type of community policing are not thinking about real life superheroes. But Violet says, why not? When I personally put on my costume or put on my gear, it is with the thought that people need to see us. People need to be able to know us. There's brand recognition. Going back to the theory of police, you know what a police person or man, woman looks like because of their outfit.

You know what they're wearing. You know that is them. So when we were in a group, it was the same reason. You know who we are. You know why we're there. We're here to help you without getting you in trouble, without throwing you in the drunk tank. We're there to help you through your mental health crisis. And we're there to do it as this group of people wearing these colorful, colorful outfits. I've been trying to figure out how putting on a costume or uniform changes the way you see yourself and what you're capable of. But I'm realizing it's more about changing the way other people see you. For the grim in Violet Valkyrie, wearing a superhero costume is a way of saying,

I'm not the bad guy. Look at me. I'm clearly on the side of good. And in the comics in the real world, superheroes have figured out a long time ago that in the fight for justice, symbols can be the most effective weapons, so long as we can all agree on what those symbols mean. So long as we can all agree on what those symbols mean. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Patrick O'Connor, Officer Henry Wong, Matthew West Fox, Peter Nowak, The Grimm, and Violet Valkyrie. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. By the way, if you'd like to hear about the history of black superheroes,

check out my episode from earlier this year called Truth, Justice, and the American Way, which was inspired by the HBO series Watchmen. I put a slideshow of real-life superheroes on the show's Instagram page. You can also like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. And if you really like the show, please do a shout-out on social media. That always helps people discover imaginary worlds. But the best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free imaginary world stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which is the full length interviews of every guest in every episode.

You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.