On a Sunday night in October 2011, a group of men was assaulted outside a night club in Seattle. The CCTV footage showed two men wearing masks and costumes attacking a group of four, using cans of pepper spray to incapacitate their victims. The perpetrators, Benjamin Fodor (a.k.a. Phoenix Jones) and his sidekick (nicknamed ‘The Ghost’), were members of a group known as the ‘Rain City Superhero Movement,’ a group of masked vigilantes who patrolled the streets of Seattle at night; they later explained that they had witnessed what appeared to be a fistfight and proceeded to separate those involved.

After posting the bail of $3,800, Fodor was released from jail and appeared before the court in a gray striped shirt over his superhero armour. When the judge asked him to remove his mask for the hearing he duly complied, although he put it back on before talking to the reporters outside the court. While the judge considered Mr Fodor's actions to be well within the parameters of the law – most US states have provisions for some form of citizen's arrest – the representatives of the police force were less than sympathetic. Detective Mark Jamieson, a spokesman for the Seattle police, stated:

While the actions of Phoenix Jones and other ‘real-life superheroes’ may seem like a caricature of the deeds done by their fictional counterparts, the sentiment expressed by Det. Jamieson echoes what has been a staple of superhero narratives for almost four decades now: the heroes of modern comic books, movies and video games – figures such as Batman, Superman, Captain America or Iron Man – find themselves consistently at odds with local and federal authorities. Indeed, numerous panels and pages have been devoted to discussions of superheroes and their status in relation to the legal system of the worlds they inhabit.