I take no issue with this concept. Even superheroes need a place to rest and collect all their crime-fighting equipment. And not every hero can make due with the spartan settings used by the likes of Spider-Man (who uses a cramped New York apartment) or Wolverine (who seems perfectly content falling asleep in alleyways). Sometimes fighting crime requires some space to store your stuff. But sometimes superheroes take things too far.
The Teen Titans have a tower shaped like a "T." That just seems wasteful and somewhat architecturally unsound.
S.H.I.E.L.D. operates out of several flying aircraft carriers. I understand their need to be portable and react to emergency situations around the world, but do there also need to be offices and prisons inside of the floating fortress?
The X-Mansion is filled with high tech gadgets and expensive alien technology which is constantly being replaced after being blown up by Sentinels and evil mutants from the dawn of time.
DC's Justice League takes things to a new height of absurdity by having placed their headquarters on the moon. Thats right, the goddamn MOON! This hardly seems like the most effective base of operations for fighting crime unless your sole concern is preventing astronauts from stabbing other astronauts. Rather than taking whatever funds and supplies they have amassed to feed the hungry and house the homeless, the Justice League felt that the most efficient use of their resources would be to create a multi-leveled base of operations on a planetoid other than the one where they actually fight crime. Not only did they build this structure, they also took the time and money to bling it up with a trophy room and nifty teleporters so they can get to the actual planet they police. The money used to provide pressurization and air to the hall of justice alone would likely be able to feed and house a large portion of the homeless in New York City.
And you may argue that the Justice League needs to have a headquarters away from Earth in order to protect themselves. Well, that doesn't exactly work.
In my short duration as a Justice League reader, the JLA watchtower on the moon was blown up twice and attacked directly another time. In fact, the watchtower was even leveled at the beginning of Infinite Crisis. Well done, Justice League. I'm sure investing all that money into what is now a smoking pile of rubble on the moon was a worthy investment. Much better than say, curing cancer.
Superman as an individual however, shows great restraint in his headquarters. Though the "Fortress of Solitude" is a fairly pompous name, Superman was able to build a hero's home that is economical and useful. Built cheaply and easily out of Kryptonian crystal technology, the Fortress of Solitude houses species from Earth and different planets as well as advanced technology Superman uses in his never-ending battle against the forces of evil. Hell, I would bet that the Fortress of Solidtude could even be classified as green. Well done, Man of Steel, well done.
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16 comments:
Analysis of the Batcave, please.
This is a great post, and makes some very good points about unnecessarily expensive headquarters when they could be spending the money on something useful.
I believe the building of the Watchtower on the moon is more of a gesture than a security function. In the same way that Superman put Captain Marvel's cape up on the United Nations flagpole, it says to the world that the League, while of Earth, are not partial or belonging to any specific state. Also speaking of Kingdom Come, the creation of the superjail was one of those events where you actually saw metas building a structure. Something tells me that something similar happened during the building of the Watchtower. You don't need to spend much on a building that was blinked into existance by Firestorm and ventilated by Red Tornado.
Could having superhero headquarters on the moon actually be a benefit to Earth?
After all, it has been discussed how supervillains may gravitate to Metropolis to fight Superman, and thus that it might be worth it for the rest of the country to subsidize Metropolitan insurance, in order to keep all of the damage in one place. If those villains similarly seek out bases to attack, then placing those bases on the moon could avoid collateral damage to terran structures.
Putting a supervillain jail on the moon is an obvious concession to NIMBY, and could also make escape much more difficult.
The question shouldn't be whether a base built on the moon is safe but whether it is safer than one built on earth. After all maybe things would have been even worse if it had been built on the earth.
You're making something of a "guns to butter" error, here. Just as simply cutting funding to the military (guns) does not automatically produce housing or food for the homeless elsewhere (butter), So hacking away at the budget for the Justice League Watchtower does not magically produce a cure for cancer (in fact it makes it less likely, as it denies all those JLA supergeniuses a laboratory for WORKING on cures for cancer.) Planting that tower on the moon does have several important advantages that outweigh the expense: tactical isolation (for when the next runaway experiment starts tearing up the terrain), politically neutral territory (no one nation claims sovereignity there), reduced environmental concerns (the EPA sort of frowns on antimatter reactors and kryptonite collections), and yes, security (consider that putting the thing on the earth won't exactly make the attacks RARER... to say nothing of what it'd do to property values to plunk such a fat target in the middle of, say, New York City.)
Please don't forget Spider-Man. He has the kind of attitude which is needed in today's economical chrisis: he has no headquarter, he seems to be some kind of homeless sperhero. And he makes his own dress, too.
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