Starting Off From That Steve Rogers Thing Again

During the discussions of Steve Rogers giving the OK to torture in Secret Avengers, there was a point raised about whether superheroes do this sort of thing in comics all the time. A commenter pointed out it isn't uncommon to see superheroes beat people up until they provide information. The question was if that's any different from Rogers letting/telling Moon Knight to stab people in the hand until someone talks.

I had to think about that, because you do see heroes going into bars to threaten their friendly neighborhood snitch, or Batman's dangling some guy off the roof by his ankle. If I wanted to try splitting hairs, I could argue the people being dangled are usually career criminals, whereas there was only a 1 in 3 chance (six possibilities, two Avengers) the Secret Avengers were actually going to hurt the guilty party. I don't want to split that hair, though. Just because someone made mistakes in the past, shouldn't mean they have to be subjected to that the rest of their lives. They decide to rob a jewelry store and Daredevil shows up and kicks their teeth in, fine. They made a decision to commit a crime, they can accept the risk that accompanies that. In our world, that's jail time, maybe getting shot depending on how far they go in trying to escape incarceration. In a comic book universe, add a guy in a costume swooping out of the night to beat them up. To have Costumed Person come into a bar where they're getting a drink and starting punching them in the face until they say something the puncher wants to hear/believes, because they committed crimes in the past, no.

I started thinking about specific examples, and most of them were older comics. In most cases, the hero was presented as not being himself. The worst thing I could remember Captain America doing was holding a couple of teenagers up against a wall by their shirt collars to learn where he could find some drug dealers. That was during Gruenwald's "Streets of Poison" story, when Cap had been caught in an explosion at a factory where they were producing heroin or cocaine or something. He was probably concussed, and definitely having a reaction to drugs he was exposed to. As a result, he was behaving strangely, hearing voices, distrusting his friends, beating the crap out of Daredevil. He even had scruffy stubble to show how out of sorts he was.

During the "Death of Jean DeWolff" story, Spider-Man comes charging into bars, busting heads in a search for Sin-Eater. One of the random mooks in the bar comments he recalls seeing Spidey like this once before, when he was searching for the Master Planner. What I took from that was this is atypical behavior from Spider-Man. Daredevil alludes to it later on when he has to fight Spidey, that the webslinger was too worked up, probably feeling the situation too intensely. There's also a scene where Spider-Man drags a drug pusher to a known criminal hangout and makes a big show of how they're such good buddies in an attempt to force information out of Mr Jablonski (Spidey at least feels bad about doing it). It doesn't work (Gerald doesn't know anything), but it does force Jablonski to turn state's evidence so he can go into witness protection before all those questionable characters who saw him talking with Spidey pass that along to the wrong person. It's ugly, but again, Daredevil calls him on it, though he tries to make the distinction between that and roughing someone up for info, which yeah, I'm not so sure about that.

It happens with Batman too, sometimes, where if he gets rough with someone it's taken as a sign he's not quite himself (slapping Snitch around in the Untold Legend of Batman, though Snitch had pulled a gun on him by that point).

I feel like, for the heroes who aren't known for their excessive violence (Frank Castle, Wolverine, Moon Knight sometimes), the more standard progression is: Hero enters hive of scum and villainy. Hero requests information, either of specific person or the crowd at large. Some of the crowd object, try to rearrange hero's face with pool cue, chair, broken bottle. Hero defends self, much larger fight may break out, or may not. Eventually someone decides it would be better to talk than waste time fighting badly, tells hero useful information (or is suitably convincing that they don't know anything useful). Hero leaves, possibly thanking informant. Note: Thank you may be sarcastic, depending on hero.

In the cases where the hero comes in spoiling for a fight first and foremost, it was presented as unusual, a bad reaction to stress or some outside influence. When Spidey's after the Master Planner (psst, it's actually Doc Ock!), it's because the Planner stole a serum Spidey needs to save Aunt May, who is dying from the radioactivity in Peter's blood after he helpfully gave her a transfusion. So yeah, he's feeling the pressure a bit. In a more normal circumstance, Spider-Man would stick to the reactive model of superheroics. He's already reacting to a theft by searching for the Master Planner, but he wouldn't resort to violence until someone else resorted to violence against him first. The Jean DeWolff thing is similar. He's too worked up, nearly beats Sin-Eater to death, but when he's calmed down, had some time to think (and Daredevil's gotten himself in trouble), he swings in and saves them both from an angry mob. He reacts, and he saves people in trouble, even if he doesn't like either of them very much at that moment, because that's what a good guy does.

Of course, all the examples I mentioned and can think of are from the early '90s at the latest, going further back from there, so perhaps not terribly relevant, except as comparison between then and now. I think the point then was to illustrate that a hero might use violence, but it was as a way to protect innocent people. When the hero uses it out of frustration, anger, whatever, that's out of line, it's wrong, and typically unproductive. Might have been to make a point to younger readers, because the writers truly believed it, or because of the heroes' vigilante status. They're already operating outside the law, it's risky enough to be intervening in actual criminal operations. Seemingly hurting people unprovoked in some vague "search for information" might have been a step too far.

Maybe that isn't such a concern anymore, at least in the Marvel Universe where so many heroes seem to be connected to a government somehow. Or they were, I'm not clear on what the status is these days (What's Rogers a Commander of, for example). I would think working for an official governing body would mean more oversight, but maybe it's a suspicion of authority theme. The idea people in power will cover up and sanction what you do if it helps them. That's fairly cynical (though not without justification), but not new to superhero comics. How many times has a plot involved a hero uncovering a seedy operation an agency was running quietly? The difference now is the heroes may be the ones doing the things being covered up.