Social Services Does Not Exist: Difference between revisions
→Comic Books
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* Billy Batson, aka the first [[Captain Marvel]], was thrown to the streets by his uncle after his parents died, said uncle keeping Billy's inheritance for himself. At least his sister Mary ended up in a orphanage.
** After Billy became [[Captain Marvel]], he managed to get around the subject by simply transforming into the Captain, putting on a fancy suit, and pretending to be his own uncle. It doesn't hurt that in his Captain Marvel form, Billy resembles his dad, so it's easy to pass off.
* Something must be seriously wrong with [[Batman|Gotham's]] Social Services system considering how many of the rogues were abused. Riddler beaten for cheating? Two-Face on a fixed, drunken coin toss? Black Mask neglected by his socialite family? Scarecrow's grandmother used to lock him in an old church after putting something on his clothes to make birds attack him. Presumably he would have either missed school entirely afterwards or come to school with at least a few visible wounds. Surely that was an extreme enough case to get the ball rolling with social services even back in the day. But no... You just had to let him grow up to be a sadistic [[Mad Scientist]] with [[Mommy Issues]], didn't you, social services? Then again, seeing as how Gotham's municipal government is routinely presented as being underfunded and rife with corruption, the only surprise is that we're surprised.
** This is lampshaded by Catwoman in the graphic novel ''Selina's Big Score''. Selina, a straight example of this trope herself, had pulled off a multimillion-dollar heist, and gave a good portion of the money to her recently-deceased friend's mother and young daughter, knowing full well Gotham's social services are a joke.
** Averted at least once when a social worker came to Wayne Manor to ask questions about Jason Todd's death and left vowing to save the other children (Tim and Cassie) living there. Then played straight when nothing came of it (because it's ''[[Fiction 500|Bruce Wayne]]'').
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** Also subverted later, after {{spoiler|the Pride were all killed off. No sooner had the kids escaped, than Captain America found them and put them all in separate foster homes. The kids all promptly escaped and regrouped, because they missed each other and found social services ill-equipt to help them get over the trauma of having one's super-villain parents being killed by Biblical giants.}}
* Deliberately averted in [[Stan Lee]]'s work for [[Marvel Comics]]: he disliked the idea of superheroes having juvenile [[sidekick]]s, saying that in the real world they'd be hauled before a judge for imperiling the safety of a minor. It didn't stop him from creating [[Fantastic Four|Johnny Storm]] and [[Spider-Man|Peter Parker]], both of whom were teenagers when they started their superhero careers.
== Film ==
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