The first obstacles that come to mind when confronted with the question of the possibility of superheroes joining our reality are those related to physics. We are required to abide by the physical laws of the universe whereas the typical superhero (which is to say, just about every superhero who is not Batman!) faces no such limitations. From Superman’s casual ability to fly and exist without the necessity for oxygen to Nightcrawler’s even cooler method of transportation which bypasses even the need to fly, one or another superhero defies every known law of the universe at one time or another. That being said, the question of whether or not superheroes have the potential to join our reality should not be one based on the laws of the universe.
Especially when the laws of American society make for a much more interesting point of contention.
Let’s be honest about the ideological backdrop of the underlying conceit of superhero crimefighting: they are, by and large, of an uncomfortably fascist ilk. A superhero sees a crime being committed and sweeps in and, after rescuing the damsel in distress, captures the bad guy. No need for reading Miranda rights warning, no pesky need to find a judge to sign off a search warrant and as for that whole Fourth Amendment thing, well…there’s the point of contention.
Could superheroes join our reality and get along every bit as smoothly as they do in their own particular realities? Of course, not. Even the ability to defy every known law of the universe is not going to be enough to keep the typical superhero out of a civil court every other week. One might well suggest that perhaps the first time a superhero violates the illegal search and seizure tenets outlined in the Constitution that it would be criminal court that keeps them from actively joining our society. Only those people who have not been paying attention to the news would be capable of such ill-informed thinking: if non-super crime fighters can go around killing innocent 10 year old kids without ever even needing to show up in criminal court, we should hardly expect such violations to keep superheroes out of the same reality.
The problem would be with lawsuits filed against them. While we all know that cops who kill never go to jail, they do on occasion find themselves having to deal with the inconvenience of settling lawsuits out of court. Just how much money law enforcement agencies have had to cough up for their less public forays into jackbooted fascism we will never know, but it is certainly to be expected that superheroes who fly through the air or strong enough to push an innocent bystander through three stories of made-in-America construction are not going to benefit from such a low profile violation of civil rights.
The real question to be posed here is how many lawsuits would it take before Superman or the Hulk or the Flash or any other superhero endowed with powers that defy physics was not only forced to cough up a fortune to cover the astonishingly high cost that seems to go hand-in-hand with their capturing the average criminal, much less the super villain type criminal, but to actually give up using those superpowers? (Or, in the case of superheroes like Batman who fight crime without such supernatural benefits, how many lawsuits would they have to settle out of court before finally being forced to reveal their secret identity?)
The sad fact is that even if our reality could be amended somehow to account for the significantly unfair advantage over physics that superheroes routinely enjoy, their transition would still not go smoothly since their fascistic tactics would be employed at a much higher rate of visibility than even the average cop on the beat now forced (despite their best efforts) to deal with the inconvenience of witnesses equipped with cell phone cameras.
