DC's Pride book came out recently, and there was a story in it that reminded me of an earlier topic I'd made regarding an analysis made by
Literature Devil and whether Superman was still relevant. Specifically, the idea that some modern writers associate more with villains than with heroes for reasons that really paint said writers as somewhat shallow and self-serving.
The story that reminded me of this was about the Pied Piper, a reformed villain and current hero who has been gay since 1991. And while I know my thoughts on orientation swapping are pretty well known here, I didn't have any issue with this instance. Piper never really had a romantic love life before this, no girlfriends or the like that I'm aware of, so this wasn't changing his orientation so much as informing us of it.
In any case, in DC Pride, Piper comes across a new villain, Drummer Boy, who has reverse engineered Piper's tech, but using drums instead of wind instruments. Drummer Boy is using said tech to mind control a party full of rich people into sending money to a bank about. Piper intervenes and the two briefly fight, calling Piper a sell out and how Drummer is doing this "for their community". When Piper asks him to explain, Drummer mentions how a land lord has raised the rent in a neighborhood with a large LGBTQ population (or as he calls it, the "gayborhood"), and that he's going to use the funds he's having these rich people donate to a fund he can use to cover that rent.
Piper says that he can't condone using his technology to steal from people (calling the act "mind-rape-y"), but there has to be a better way to deal with a discriminatory land lord. So instead they go break into the land lord's home, use a sonic blast to knock him into his pool, and the Piper offers the land lord a check. It's apparently a very generous amount of money based on the property's current value, and the land lord is going to accept that check and sign over ownership of that neighborhood to Piper. Because if he doesn't, Piper and the Drummer are going to use their technology to shatter his ear drums, and then do worse to him.
So the land lord apparently signs the rights over, and the pair of supervillains run off into the night. Drummer Boy says "That was ICONIC", to which Piper agrees, asking what they're going to do next.
The story's title? "Be Gay, Do Crime".
You'll note I refer to the pair at the end as both being supervillains. Because that's what Piper decided to return to being here. Let's review.
The land lord increases the rent for his property, and apparently do so when the tenants can manage to meet the new price he demands. It could be argued that this is a scummy business practice, but it's also entirely legal. The response from most normal people would either to be to get a lawyer to see if their rights as tenants are being abused in some way or to simply leave for other locations that don't charge as much, and let word of mouth indicate that the land lord overcharges. He loses business and suffers accordingly. If this were a Batman story, Bruce would have investigated the guy, and it would have been revealed he was doing this for shady reasons, possibly illegal reasons, and the law would have been brought in to deal with the guy in the end.
Instead, Drummer Boy uses mind control to steal money from people. Piper rightly stops him.
Drummer Boy tells his story. Piper automatically assumes the land lord is a bigot who is specifically discriminating against gay people in that neighborhood. The problem is there's no actual evidence for it, outside of the land lord being coded as evil because he's drawn to resemble Donald Trump. There's no mention of him only doing it to these properties specifically because the people there are gay. For all we know, he's doing this to all of his current properties and people everywhere in the city, but Drummer Boy only cares because it's happening to "his people" in "his gayborhood".
Piper still says that it isn't cool to mind control people. Which is good. He is okay with then going over to the land lord and threatening him with actual physical harm to get him to sign over the rights to his properties for a fair fee. You know, the way the Mafia would make people offers they couldn't refuse, or how corrupt land owners in westerns would run people off their property so that they could get control of it.
Then Piper and Drummer Boy run off into the night, smiling and elated at having seen justice done, wondering what their next big adventure will be.
In a better story, we would have seen actual evidence of the land lord being a bigot, rather than Piper just accepting Drummer Boy's word for it. I mean, imagine if Drummer Boy was lying to him? Piper basically just automatically believes Drummer Boy because he says he's gay and that he looked up to the Piper when he was growing up. We would have also seen actual work put in to make the land lord evil, doing something actual criminal, maybe even getting him to admit on a hidden camera that he was doing this because he hated gay people.
Hell, they could have stolen an idea from Fullmetal Alchemist by having Piper talk to the land lord while Drummer Boy broadcasts everything being said across the air waves, engineering a public confession about his criminal acts. And when the land lord attacks the Piper for this, charges are brought against him for assault and Piper can spin it into him being able to purchase the property legally. Maybe have the tenants of the neighborhood preparing a lawsuit that they'll drop if the land lord signs the rights over to Piper for a generous fee.
Instead, Piper opts to avoid mind control and goes straight to threats of physical violence for someone who not only hasn't done anything illegal, but hasn't been proven to be what Drummer Boy claims. And rather than be somewhat morally torn by why he's done, being worried about sliding back into supervillainy, wondering what the Flash will say, Piper is smiling happily as he and Drummer Boy run off into the night.
It kind of reminds me of a series Hellcat had a few years back where she happily abused a man solely on his wife's say-so, without any evidence of him actually having done anything wrong. Or a She-Hulk story where Jen attacks a police transport vehicle, injuring the driver, and pulling the criminal inside out so that the criminal's female victim could have some time to get some revenge on the guy. The guy who had already been sentenced for a crime that was never specified, and who was being sent off to jail. In an act that should have gotten Jen arrested, disbarred and probably got the case thrown out and the guy set free, assuming he survived.
There's the ghost of a decent story here, but it gets killed twice over because the writer doesn't want to put in the actual work, and instead basically just go for the cheap revenge fantasy.
I'd honestly write a follow up story where it's revealed that Drummer Boy lied to Piper when the Flash confronts them both. Piper tells his story, and Flash asks if Drummer Boy actually supplied any actual evidence to back up his claim. Piper thinks about it, gets a horrible realization, and turns to Drummer Boy. Piper then uses his flute to get Drummer Boy to reveal the truth. Drummer Boy was just stealing from the wealthy there because he wanted that money for himself. When Piper showed up, he quickly spun that story to get Piper on his side. The land lord actually did nothing wrong, his prices were fair, and Drummer Boy made him out to be a homophobe to get Piper onto his side. The land lord is actually bringing criminal charges against the pair, and is contesting the sign over of his property since it was made under duress.
Piper would have something of a panic attack, realizing he just threw away years as a hero and stumbled back into supervillainy because he had a knee-jerk reaction to a story. Drummer Boy attacks Flash, saying that both he and Piper can get away, but Piper instead takes Drummer Boy down and turns himself in. Later the land lord appears at Piper's trial, and works out something with the judge. He understands Piper was tricked into doing it, and is willing to have Piper's sentence commuted to community service in the neighborhood. Piper agrees, the neighborhood becomes one he regularly patrols, and he hosts events there to help that community out.