LogFAQs > #976380450

adjl posted...

At some level, I can appreciate the whole "I'd be as bad as they are if I were willing to kill them" philosophy, but it gets pretty ridiculous when the villain has killed enormous numbers of people and has proven multiple times over that simply imprisoning them isn't enough to stop them from killing even more, such that not killing them effectively sacrifices dozens or hundreds more innocent lives.

There's an aspect of it that most people miss, however.

It's not just a case of "If I start killing bad guys that makes me bad", to some degree it's also "If I start killing people, the public will consider me a killer."

It's the difference between Batman and the Punisher - Batman is generally tolerated by the public and police because he doesn't kill (even if the fact that he's beating the ever-living shit out of people should be seen as being nearly as questionable). He can work with them, and they don't start a massive manhunt to track him down. But the Punisher is a straight-up criminal, and police will go after him (and there've been multiple attempts to go after him in-universe).

Batman can interact with other heroes relatively easily - Punisher has trouble getting other heroes to trust him (unless he's dealing with other heroes who similarly skirt the edge of the law). Innocent civilians are rarely afraid of Batman, but pretty much everyone is terrified of the Punisher.

It also depends on what universe you're talking about - DC tends to be much less cynical (or it used to be, before it became mostly shit), which makes it harder to justify heroes who are nearly as bad as the villains. Whereas Marvel is cynical as fuck (which is why the average citizen kind of hates people like Spider-Man and the X-Men in spite of them literally saving the world dozens of times).

Which might be why Marvel's version of Batman (Moon Knight) is both a killer and straight-up crazy.