Poll of the Day > Are you okay with superheroes sometimes making sure someone never gets up?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like the fight is done, they're standing over the villain, but they make sure to end it instead of "it's over, I'll let you live." They make the choice to deal a fatal blow instead of "taking the high road."

It's fiction and comic writers bring dead characters back to life all the time so I really don't care as long as the overall story is entertaining

That particular scenario doesn't come up very often; usually they're either willing to kill if necessary, or the villaiydied in a way that the hero wasn't responsible for and couldn't avoid. Personally I wouldn't use "superhero" to describe someone like that.

Jason Todd wanted Batman to be like this when it came to The Joker.

keyblader1985 posted...

someone like that

Would you use the term, "anti-hero"?

It obviously depends on the character and what makes more sense.

Batman once murdered people left and right like a generic vigilante, then had to tone it down because it was for kids, evolved later into "I can't kill Hitler because then I'll lose my mind and kill everyone and take over the world", which was stupid, so that turned into "I tell myself and everyone around me some lie but in reality I'm only Batman because I'm afraid of other people dying"

Basically a plot device because Batman obviously can and should kill the joker, which is his main rival that they need later, so you have to make it his weakness for his character to make sense. Or, you have to make it so that he has some deeper wisdom than the other characters, which I think never works out.

You can see it at the end of Arkham Knight when Batman indirectly killed Ras Al Gul, finally growing as a character, and Ras tells him he's proud of him. That's a better version of his writing.

EclairReturns posted...

Would you use the term, "anti-hero"?

I'd probably just keep it vague with "vigilante."

Yeah every edgy anti-hero from the 80s and 90s

Just pull a Mal and shoot them before the fight starts

No

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.

I'm inclined to say, though, that the prevalence of that philosophy is probably less of a moral commentary and more a matter of wanting to be able to continue capitalizing on an established character without needing to come up with an excuse for resurrecting them.

Yellow posted...

Batman once murdered people left and right like a generic vigilante

I have read pretty much the entirety of the golden age Batman, and I can say this is exaggerated a bit. Yes, villains died quite a bit, but Batman was really only directly responsible in one or two instances. In most cases it was the "Villian trying to escape and accidentally killing himself" trope mentioned above. Probably the most infamous case of him straight up murdering someone was his first comic (which is the one everyone shares as a "SEE, BATMAN KILLS PEOPLE!!!" case). But after that it was accidents in pretty much all cases.

I will say though, golden age batman felt no remorse over those deaths. He just went "oh well..." and walked away like nothing happened.

To be fair, what can you say or do when a villain does themselves in? At best that's just a "damn bruh" moment.

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.

yes if it means the writing will suck less, but comic books and manga aren't typically made for that as it usually means less money in the long run.

the Justice Lords arc in Justice League was basically about this

This is pretty much the entire premise of The Punisher. Don't recall Spawn letting many people get up and walk away either. Now that I think about it, this was damn near every comic book hero from the 90s. Pitt was another brutal one from that era.
I remember watching an interesting video a while back about how the big comic book wave in the 90s was a sort of augury of how Gen X saw the future. We killed Superman and Batman, only to make new heroes that were bigger monsters than the villains they were fighting.

Are you okay with a superhero being gay, @BUMPED2002 ?

It really depends on the story and the character