For worse or better, for shame or amusement, my fictomere is the MCU's Tony Stark. Now, I am a very very very non-canon Toni Stark from a completely different universe, but seeing Tony awakened me, and so, for all its (many) flaws, I'm forever emotionally tied to a billion dollar billionaire cringefest. I don't mean to disparage my source so severely, but it's true! Tony Stark is the self-insert wet dream of a myriad billionaires and multimillionaires. He represents the supremacy of American capitalism and imperialism projected into the future, a vision that--I would argue--is representative of the politics of Marvel at this point in time. 

Why am I bringing up the MCU in a post about Superman?

Great question! Please know my background with my source is relevant to my post and don't click off. Thank you!

I watched Superman (2025) yesterday, and first of all I can't BELIEVE I finally got to see a competent superhero movie (maybe aside from the Iron Man trilogy... but that's a stretch). I won't get into it, but I really enjoyed my time watching it. The reason I'm making this rambling post right now is because I want to compare superhero accountability in my source and in the new DCU.

It wasn't a huge theme in Superman, but the question of how to handle metahumans interfering in national and international conflicts did make an appearance. This was a huge cornerstone of one of the phases of the MCU (Captain America: The Winter Soldier onward) but got dropped entirely in Infinity War (thank god, the politics were incompetent). Personally, the Accords are a shit show. Not because it's a bad idea to curtail the power of (essentially) nuclear bombs with emotions (it isn't, holy shit) but because the Avengers were stand ins for the US military, and the question of how the US should present itself on the international stage, except the Russos forgot the US's long-standing history of imperialist violence in their debate! Pretty much entirely! I cannot emphasize enough how stupid I found the Accords. I stopped watching not long after. 

By contrast, Superman has a little more nuance. He's at least acting against US military interests and the interests of a billionaire (slay!) (disclaimer: this Toni Stark is a socialist) and on his own terms, but the movie doesn't even address the question of how to solve the problem of metahumans interfering in international conflicts. 

I don't think there is a solution, not a perfect one. Maybe every country having their own version of Superman, exactly as powerful as him? But then every country just has a nuclear bomb (now with emotions!). Bad!!! That's a really bad idea! It's a bad idea in our world! In my world, the Avengers seceded entirely from the US and founded our own country in order to be able to enter into a treaty with the UN on our own terms instead of being used as weapons in America's arsenal. 

My intention here isn't to propose a solution, more to say that this makes a great plot for superhero fiction and I want to read something that actually digs into this idea. 

Toni out!