this goes for the DC universe, as well
Putting aside all the actual supervillains and just concentrating on the human element - doesn't it seem like normal people are more likely to commit crimes in the comic universes?
Take our own world: sure we have crime, and we have gangs and what not, but it's relatively rare compared to what we see in comics.
In your own personal life, how many major crimes have you been a witness to? In a major metropolitan area, how many major crimes take place in a day? From watching the local news every night, and I'd estimate maybe an average of four or five instances every day. This covers things like rapes, murders, gang shootings, robberies, and other things. A rough estimate, maybe it's a little higher, but ten instances tops, I would think, on average. (I'm basing this on the Philadelphia local news. New York is a much larger place, I realize)
Now you jump into the Marvel universe, where 99% of the activity we see is concentrated in New York. The 616 New York is patrolled by DOZENS of superheroes, which one would think would act as a deterrent. And yet, crime is high enough to keep these heroes busy on a regular basis. Also consider that the heroes stop or capture many of these criminals. Sure, a fair number can slip through loopholes and not be convicted, but they can't all be dumb enough to go back to their criminal endevors only to get the crap kicked out of them by Spider-Man again the next week, and so on and so on.
The Punisher is the real conundrum, because unlike most Marvel vigilantes, he chiefly deals with the human criminal element. And he doesn't just capture them, he executes them, eliminating the possibility of them returning. Yet, if you were to add up all of the Punisher's victims since his initial appearence, you would be well into the four digits. And again, most of them in the New York. Most of these are organized crime associates. In our own world, what are the estimates of the populations organized crime groups in a major city? I have no idea, but I would think maybe a few hundred, at most.
And the appeal of being a mob boss in real life is that the organization has money they can bribe officials with or pay for fancy lawyers, and you have buddies who can intimidate witnesses or vouch for you and what no. So basicly, the consequences are lessened.
But when you put the Punisher in the picture, the consequence is no longer just being arrested and being let out, it's being blown away by a man who has killed hundreds of people in the same line of work, and has never been stopped. How suicidal are you to operate as an organized criminal in New York with that man running around? And that's just ONE of the local vigilantes who might take you down. Nevermind the normal human police who also get their jobs done.
Let's broaden the scope a little to terrorist organizations: In our world, we have things like Al Queda, who're halfway around the world, and then things like the Klu Klux Klan and maybe some of those nutsos who live on compounds in the middle of nowhere. But in the Marvel Universe, you have AIM, Hydra, the Secret Empire, and more. These organizations are able to recruit hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of henchmen. And these people are not usually foreigners, no, they're Americans. Americans convinced to take down America. How common are those in our world? We get a Timothy McVeigh or a Richard Reid every few years, but they're extremely rare.
And again, the take-down factor: How many Hydra facilities has Captain America single handedly shut down? How many AIM bases has Shield blown up? And unlike the criminals people like Spider-Man takes down, Hydra or AIM agents taken in by Shield are almost garaunteed to go to jail and spend a long time there. So where do these groups keep getting people? Are there really that many disaffected Americans in the Marvel Universe? Are they just stupider?
Thoughts?
