8. Who Pays For Everything?
Marco D€™AlfonsoSure, it's simple if you're Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne or one of the other totally entitled capitalist superheroes who manage to fund their "altruistic" fights against crime with money that they inherited from their rich mummies and daddies, but what's everyone else meant to to? We've had Spider-Man stories where Peter Parker's hard up on cash from making webbing and repairing his outfit (WHICH COULD BE BINNED ENTIRELY), but for the most part superheroes manage to get by just fine despite frequently missing days off work, having their homes and equipment totally destroyed, and trips across the universe happening on a regular basis. Even less explicable is who pays for all the other stuff that gets broken, besides our valiant heroes' private property. If you've ever seen one of Cinema Sins' great "What's The Damage Videos?", you'll know that the average cost to repair all the damage caused in an action movie tends to be up there in the millions if not billions of dollars. Now let us remind you that these sorts of city-levelling, knock down drag out fights happen between superheroes and villains in almost every issue of a comic book, and in some cases happen in the same city over and over again. It's rare, however, that we ever see a superhero's city in a state of disrepair (the constantly mangled Gotham aside). Which means that they're constantly being repaired, and quickly. But who's paying for that? How would the local government or taxpayer manage to tidy up after regular Hulk rampages without getting into loads of debt, or even bankruptcy? We don't know. Comic books innit.