In light of recent events, I was thinking once more about the vigilante aspects of superheroes, particularly with characters like Batman and Punisher, where the stories are based on the idea that our institutions are insufficient to deal with criminal behavior and that extrajudicial punishment is necessary.

Granted, these are just stories, and it's an argument used by people who would rather blame video games than prevent access to deadly weapons, but as a friend who worked in the Japanese animation industry once told her superiors, "if you don't think these stories have any effect on people, why do advertisers spend so much money placing ads in them?"

I was also remembering at the end of the Daredevil TV series, where Daredevil is shown giving the dramatic Batman pose and going after a mugger, but no inclusion of the work Matt Murdock was doing as a lawyer, as if that was insignificant.

Just curious as to what you all feel about this...

It's long been a standard aspect of Batman (and with superheroes in general) that he solves crimes, foils bank robbers, muggers, etc... and then hands them over to the police.

As much as the Bugle editorial made mileage out of Spider-Man's supposed vigilantism, the reality is that Spider-Man would also do basically the same as Batman, leaving the vanquished foe webbed to a lamp-post with a note for the cops.

This is different to the Punisher, who actively seeks to mete out punishment to criminals at his own hands.

In Miller's take in DKR, Batman was shifted a little into Punisher territory ("There are seven working defense from this. Three of them disarm with minimal contact. Three of them kill. The other -- HURTS"), but crucially DKR was supposed to exist outside of proper continuity and Batman still ultimately maintained his own code of no killing (though you can interpret a few bits in DKR a different way) and was aiming to hand over criminals to the authorities.

Superheroes also tend to fight supervillains. I think a reader would really have to do some work to start translating this into real life vigilantism. I'd contend for a lot of classic super hero tales the most likely takeaway would be an upstanding set of morals. Crime always pays, try to the do right thing even in difficult circumstances, etc.

Ref The Punisher, I'm okay with him meting out justice these days in a mature readers only comic. I don't consider him a hero, just a character in hard-hitting stories outside of the mainstream Marvel Universe.