Cardboard Prison: Difference between revisions
→Comic Books: Importing old post from TV Tropes.
No edit summary |
(→Comic Books: Importing old post from TV Tropes.) |
||
| (5 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:jaila.jpg|link=Homestar Runner|frame|You gotta get us out of the joint, man!]]
{{quote|''In the big rock-candy mountain''
''all the jails are made of tin,''
''And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in''
|Various artists, [[Older Than They Think|most famously]] Harry McClintock for ''[[O Brother, Where Art Thou?]]''
In the spirit of [[Joker Immunity]], [[Police Are Useless|the judicial incarceration system is worthless]]. It may keep certain villains off the street so that the heroes just have to deal with one at a time (except for those [[Legion of Doom|"teaming up"]] deals), but expect them to bust out real soon or find a very sympathetic parole board.
Line 12:
Perhaps a necessity in stories which feature a [[Rogues Gallery]], since you need to find a way to keep bringing them back but have the heroes seem somewhat effectual. This was particularly true in comics in the days when the [[Comics Code]] held sway—the villain had to be clearly defeated at the end of each and every appearance, requiring an escape from either incarceration or [[No One Could Survive That|apparent death]] before he could show up to vex the heroes again.
Naturally, in stories where the hero is imprisoned (often unjustly and has little legal recourse for release) this Trope tends to be Averted, Inverted, or at very least Downplayed, in order to make a [[Great Escape]] storyline more interesting. Of course, heroes do tend to have the advantage of allies on the outside who can supply help.
In some cases, a '''Cardboard Prison''' can also serve as an [[Tailor-Made Prison]] that's [[Sealed Evil in a Can|just waiting to be opened.]]
Line 41 ⟶ 43:
** Lampshaded in one [[Superman]] novel, in which Luthor is sent to prison. [[Jimmy Olsen]] immediately starts writing his report about Luthor's escape, before he had actually done it. In the course of the story Olsen mentions that following one previous escape, Luthor had later broken back into the prison to retrieve something he had inadvertently left behind, then escaped again.
** Generally averted, or at least justified in ''[[Knightfall]]'' where Bane attacks Arkham with the arsenal of a small country to break it open.
** Even the much [[Lighter and Softer]] campy 60's version of ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' showed how poor Gotham corrections could be at times. At the beginning of one episode, King Tut was being examined by a doctor at the psychiatric ward where he was being held, who fell asleep while the villain was talking to him. When Tut noticed, he was simply able to walk away, noting that "I always knew you were never listening!"
* Intermittently, [[The DCU]] attempts a solution to both the in-character problem of Cardboard Prisons and the metafictional problem of [[Badass Decay|keeping losing villains effective]], [[Boxed Crook|by having villains perform missions as part of the US government top-secret Task Force X, a.k.a.]] [[Suicide Squad]]. This program offers early releases for imprisoned supervillains if they participate in, and survive, extremely dangerous secret missions that are subject to official denial. Thus, the villains temporarily become [[Anti-Hero]] protagonists.
* Justified in the case of [[The Flash]]'s Rogues Gallery by the fact that one of them can travel to an alternate dimension and back via mirror. Every time the Flash arrests any of his friends, Mirror Master goes and fetches them right back out again. The warden explains that they've tried to have the mirrors removed but prisoner-rights liberals won't have it.
Line 70 ⟶ 73:
* In an subversion in the [[Marvel Universe]], the Absorbing Man was once literally placed in an cardboard box in a prison cell because it was deemed the ''only'' way to hold him in prison since he takes on the nature of any matter he touches. Unfortunately, there is a water pipe leak which dripped on to the box, allowing him to take on the nature of the water and then use that form to reach the brick and iron work of the cell, change into that material and smash his way out.
* Any prison is this for [[Diabolik]]. The first time he had been arrested (alluded in his first story and shown in a flashback years later) it had been because his [[Latex Perfection|perfect masks]] weren't known yet, so the police didn't realize he was wearing one and he walked out of a maximum security prison with a stolen guard uniform after taking the mask off, but later imprisonements, happened after his masks and real face were known, all ended with him breaking out rather easily in spite of always increasing measures to keep him long enough to execute him, with a [[Jerkass Victim]] getting executed in his place once.
* One benefit to being a member of the Serpent Society (in [[Captain America]]'s comics) while Sidewinder was leader is that no member ever had to fear prison, Sidewinder had the power to teleport himself and could rescue any member that was arrested, making ''any'' prison, to them, a Cardboard one.
== Fan Works ==
Line 116 ⟶ 120:
** Lampshaded in the novel ''The Face of the Enemy''.
{{quote|'''The Master:''' Brigadier, if I wanted to break out, ''I wouldn't still be here.''}}
{{quote|'''Guard''': [''on the phone to his superiors''] You'd better get down here, sir, she's doing it again. Dr. Song, she's... ''packing''.}}
* Parodied in the ''[[Ripping Yarns]]'' episode "Escape from Stalag Luft 112B", in which Major Phipps becomes the only man ''never'' to have escaped from the prison camp of the title.
* ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'' plays this for comedy with Mayberry's jail. The Sheriff keeps the keys on a hook next to the door so that the town drunk can lock himself up at night and let himself out in the morning.
| |||