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Being a superhero in any universe isn’t cheap. Here’s why DC’s greatest, cash-strapped heroes could use a financial boost to stay in business.
From expensive gadgets, signature vehicles, and secret hideouts, being a superhero in any comic book universe is a costly endeavor. Superheroes like Batman and Green Arrow are able to fund their crimefighting careers with their personal fortunes and Superman and Green Lantern benefit from otherworldly technology, but the typical startup superhero would find the entire effort to defend the DCU out of their own pocket prohibitively expensive. This raises the question of whether superheroes in the DCU should be compensated monetarily or if the qualifying criteria involve only heroes that can afford to pay for it themselves.
The new DC series One-Star Squadron (by Mark Russell, Steve Lieber, Dave Stewart, and Dave Sharpe) has a team of superheroes assembled by a corporation who publicly solicit their services through a smart app Heroz4U. Despite being led by a veteran hero and former Justice League member Red Tornado, the characters must now contend with investors, user ratings, and the most absurd requests from prospective clients as part of the everyday cost of heroism to finance their activities. Though this corporate-sponsored ensemble certainly endures more tedious duties than their all-star counterparts, this doesn’t mean they are any less heroic than the Justice League, even if they don’t possess deep pockets to spare them of the professional humiliation.
This isn’t the first time that DC heroes have been corporately financed before, with Justice League International backed by Maxwell Lord who was an amoral businessman that financially benefitted the team but did so with questionable moral scruples before eventually revealing himself to be a supervillain. The time-traveling superhero Booster Gold has always been interested in capitalizing on being a public hero for fame and fortune, constantly vying for major corporate sponsors through his acts of heroism and vaunted reputation. However, this less than noble pursuit has always led many DCU heroes to take Booster less than seriously, with some doubting his selfless commitment to being a superhero.
This suggests that the path to financially supporting superheroes may be best served by not bringing corporate interest into heroics but treating them like public servants or emergency service personnel such as firefighters or the police. While considerably more costly to maintain than these civil services, this would mean superheroes would be funded from municipal or federal budgets. Any level of civil funding would come with a heightened amount of scrutiny and oversight, the very thing that drove the Marvel Universe into Civil War when Captain America felt a controversial law that federally regulated and supported superheroes violated their civil liberties while polluting superhero activity with political agendas. The DCU really hasn’t gone quite that far with its contentious relationship between heroes and the federal government yet but hasn’t offered extensive support either.
The topic of funding superheroes would keep the cost of heroism to being more than simply a rich man’s game though it should be noted that Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, and Ted Kord have used a significant portion of their personal fortunes to help finance their allies. While individuals should become superheroes not out of a desire to get rich and famous from their seemingly selfless acts, all of this, unfortunately, costs a tidy sum and at an amount not all superheroes can cover themselves. Perhaps a billionaire could create a sort of grant system to keep their less financially gifted counterparts the necessary funding to make themselves self-sufficient because, after all, not every hero is born with a trust fund and their own thriving family business and shouldn’t be de facto gate-kept out of heroics because of a hefty price tag.
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