Off My Mind: Should Superhero Teams be Government Sponsored?

Aren't most comic book stories written about how bad the government is whenever they try to step in when they clearly have business interfering with peoples' lives?

Whatever did happen to Runaways?  I stopped reading after they went back in time.

Why did you use a picture of Runaways to open the article?  You didn't mention the team once, just had their picture up for no reason.

Johnny Spam is on the money, WildStorm has the best depictions of Government sponsored Superhero teams. StormWatch and The Authority (the former less so until Warren Ellis came along) are great semi-realistic takes on what happens when the government intervene in Superhuman affairs.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Avengers but I'm not sure I would be down with a team of insanely powerful dudes doing whatever they deem "right" by their own standards on the coin of a drunken billionaire.

if their government sponsored then its always gonna be done the way that the government wants it to be.

I 'm not certain-whilst it would be nice if a superhero group could be totally independent financially afrom the Government, it is STILL going to have to play ball with the powers that be( as we saw with the old Soviet Super Soldiers(now the WInter Guard) along with the Avengers  -and to a lesser extent the FF and X-Men)if wants to get things done. Like a town or city that is exempted by mutual agreement from being attacked by belligerents in war, said superhero group would be best if it stayed out of the political nosh pit. The interesting part of the Civil War storyline is the SHRA in exchange for heroes registering is where the government agrees to train them just as members of the military, law enforcement and medical profession are trained.

Terry

 I personally think that ideally superhero group(s much like organized religion) should remain as far from the government of the day as is practically possible( look what happened when Henry Gyrich tried to run the Avengers) but as life is rarely ideal(and face it, not every superhero group such as the FF, Avengers, X-Men , Defenders,, has the luxury of independent sponsors with the proverbial "deep pockets"), if it accepts government sponsorship ( as Excalibur, Big Hero 6, Alpha Flight and the Winter Guard do), it should be on the conditions that it needs a certain amount of leeway to do its job(just as emergency services, law enforcement and the armed forces do-no government bean counting here)!

Obviously not,,, The government tried this with the Superhuman Registration Act in Civil War.

 I tthink the SHRA has now been repealed(by the Obama Administration presumably?) so this argument no longer applies.
 
Terry

a lot of people seem judge this question in purely in terms of previous portrayals or real world distrust of government.

Problem is that in previous portrayals its usually dramatic for there to be corruption or failure in terms of the governments involvement with superhero teams. So any given story is likely to go that route for story telling reasons

As for real life distrust of governments. People also distrust vigilantes, super powered ones would be worse.

Superhero style Vigilantism is mostly illegal, while in the comics there are varying levels of how acknowledged by the government and how competent superheros are. I have never really bought that just because these people have power and resources they are more above the law than normal people. This was a plot point not addressed in civil war well enough.

We as a society expect people to be trained and work in a supervised way with checks and balances in place for how they use their authority and power.

Government sponsorship for a superhero team would in all likeliness include such things. Which is better than not.