What Measure Is A Non Human / Comic Books

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Examples with their own page

• DC Animated Universe

Other examples

• 2000 AD:
  • Judge Dredd:
    • Their twist on the matter involved an alien shapeshifter escaping to the Big Meg to get out of slavery. Dredd, who wants to arrest the shapeshifter for murder, is partnered with an alien administrator who wants to return it to its owners. The shapeshifter is finally left with the decision to either stay in Megacity One, where he counts as a sentient being and is, therefore, subject to the city's comically strict justice and faces a long prison term, or return to Allentown, where, legally counting as property, he can not be held culpable for his actions, but will remain a slave.
    • Robots are sentient and exactly like humans, but are still a slave race and abused. Dredd himself is responsible for destroying a robot revolution and sending everyone back to slavery. (Usually, the writing is on the side of the robots, as is reader sympathy.) Note that Dredd himself is a robot-rights supporter; the only reason he shut down that particular revolution is that the robot leading the revolution was clearly evil.
  • XTNCT: Humans use genetically engineered animals to fight their wars for them and are able to discard or replace them just as easily.
• An Age of Ultron tie-in has a harsh aversion. Ultron's drone army is just mechanical drones, but they're considered just alive enough to kick the Ebony Blade's curse (which is fuelled by taking life) into overdrive, leaving the Black Knight out of the action.
• Aquaman: It's long been assumed that doesn't eat fish or would be offended by others eating fish. As of the DC New 52 relaunch, Aquaman shocks a restaurant full of patrons by ordering fish. As a telepath, he knows the fish he's ordering have very low order intelligence. While he doesn't get bent about people eating fish, he however doesn't tolerate the rampant killing of sea life. This quote also sums up his feelings about taking a life.
  Aquaman: "Do not assume I'm governed by some code against killing or fear of legal consequences. No one will ever find your body."
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) explored this concerning Nicole the Holo-Lynx with the Sonic Universe storyline "Spark of Life". Dr. Ellidy, Nicole's accidental creator, is very put off around Nicole due to the fact that Nicole was actually his daughter, Nikki, who died during an attempt to save her life by digitizing her. This attitude concerns Sally, who even asks Big the Cat his thoughts on Nicole, who likes her just because she's nice. When the digital lifeform Phage causes trouble in Ellidy's systems and Nicole's in danger, Sally opts to be digitized herself to save her friend. When Ellidy tries to stop Sally from doing it because she's a princess risking her life, she essentially puts him in his place by telling him to never suggest that Nicole isn't a person worth saving.
• Briefly discussed in the Astro City story, "The Eagle and the Mountain". When Samaritan is disturbed at Infidel's use of female homunculi (non-sapient mindless apparitions) for his servants, Infidel asks him if he would've been disturbed if they were robots instead.
• There was a 70's comic in which The Avengers were blowing up alien ships sent by Thanos. Presumably, there were aliens inside. This is odd considering the Avengers had a strict no-killing policy at the time. What makes this even odder is that many team members have been androids, aliens, or otherwise non-human.
  • Subverted in one of the Acts of Vengeance tie-ins published in West Coast Avengers. When one of Mole Man's giant monsters terrorizes California, the right wing U.S. Agent immediately wants to kill it, but Iron Man argues against him, reasoning that the creature could just be a confused alien or even a frightened extraterrestrial child of some kind.
  • This was subverted in the Operation: Galactic Storm arc, however. Captain America and other Avengers were opposed to destroying the Kree Supreme Intelligence, a sentient supercomputer because they considered it alive, and thus its life was sacred. Iron Man and other Avengers disagreed, and Black Knight ultimately destroyed the Supreme Intelligence to prevent it from ever imperiling the universe again.
    • Depending on the Writer, the Supremor is a cyborg and therefore partly biological. It's a gestalt made from the brains of the greatest geniuses of the Kree race (though whether it literally contains some part of those physical brains or just digital copies of their memories, is not consistently clear). Hence the big blobby biological-looking face it uses as its avatar.
• Depending on the author, Batman varies greatly in this regard. However, he is shown many times to consider all sentient life sacred. An example would be where he believes he accidentally killed Judge Death in the Batman-Judge Dredd Crossover, despite Death being an undead killing machine that just killed three people in front of him.

  Batman: I didn't mean to kill him!
  Random police officer: It was a monster! It just killed (policeman's name)!
  Batman: That doesn't mean I had the right to take its life!

  • Not that this mattered; turns out it takes more than being impaled to kill Death anyway.
  • Batman's no killing clause varies depending on the author. He has no problem killing undead in Batman vs. Dracula, and in Batman/Aliens he goes ahead and jams a Bat-grenade down a Xenomorph's throat.
  • In a late-1990's Elseworld-type story, Batman teams with Tarzan, and finds his new ally has no problem casually tossing a mook off a cliff. When Tarzan risks his life (and the mission) to save a lion, Bats reads him the riot act. Tarzan's response: "The man was my enemy - the animal is my friend."
  • In the Batman vs. Predator trilogy, Batman refuses to actually kill the creatures, but Alfred twice takes up hunting rifles against the hunters, refusing to consider Batman's no-kill policy on the matter.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Andrew admits he doesn't see the copy of Jonathan's memories as Jonathan, realizing he can't just undo killing his friend. However, the copy points out it is perfectly self-aware and swears revenge for Andrew's betrayal.
  • Xander's treatment of the fake ghost of Anya after he comes to terms with it not being Anya. He simply elects to ignore her as if she was a figment of his imagination, despite a medium confirming she's a spirit in a previous issue and more importantly, the fact that Xander is the only person she can interact with at all. Like anyone, this leads to her going mad from the isolation.
  • Riley gets called out by the Magic Council when he calls himself a representative of "normal people".
    Councilman: "Normal"? Then what, dare I ask, are the rest of us? Your bigotry is intolerable, sir!
• Clone Wars Adventures: Several stories develop the B-1 Battle Droids sympathetically. One of them tries to run away from the war after being damaged, and another is carried around by Aayla Secura on a mission (while getting some good snarky dialogue) for information after she cuts off his arms and legs.
• Probably the most interesting exploration of the zombie issue is the web-turned-actual comic Dead Eyes Open where people start coming back to life as zombies — but retain all of their memories and personality. They don't even start eating human flesh. The ramifications of intelligent living dead are the focus of the rest of the story.
• Death's Head (Marvel Comics): Death's Head discusses the rights of sentient robots and heroic ethics with Tony Stark while they are teamed up.
  Death's Head: You're not one of those guys who has a code against killing "except for robots"? I hate those Krypto-fascists.
• In the DC Rebirth Deathstroke series, after Slade has a Heel–Face Turn and tries to be a hero, he admits missing being able to grab his sword and kill his opponents and that he considers applying to Justice League to kill some aliens or other monsters during next alien invasion.
• Heavily analyzed in Earth X, not so much with the mutated population of the world (they're all people), as with X-51 (Aaron Stack the Machine Man), who wants to Become a Real Boy. At one point, Uatu actually inverts the scale since he believes the Celestials are so far above ordinary organic life that we might as well be bacteria, telling X-51 that he is superior to the artificially created organic being Woodgod because Woodgod is a biological lifeform — a "beast". Aaron never buys into this argument, though. His canon counterpart had adopted this viewpoint when he appeared in Nextwave, though. The official explanation is that he suffered an emotional breakdown after getting taken away by the Celestials and then seemingly rejected by them. His depression manifested as general misanthropy (literal misanthropy: a dislike of humans).
• Examined in ElfQuest. It's an unwritten rule that elves, especially the Wolfriders, Don't Kill Other Elves. When one elf finally has to choose between killing his enemy and losing his son, it's appropriately traumatic for the character when he decides to shoot. However, the Wolfriders consider themselves part of the forest, and as a result, they hunt, kill, eat raw meat, return their dead to the earth, and never interfere when one of their wolves is cast out from the pack (which essentially means a lonely death). The Sunfolk, who live as oasis farmers, take it one step further and lived as vegetarians for close to 10000 years before a lack of rain forced them to take up hunting. One character who particularly fits the trope is the Wolfrider chief Mantricker, who enjoys hunting humans, but would never kill one. In an unfortunate case of a localization entirely missing the point, his name in the Dutch version roughly translates to "Humankiller". Concerning the interference with the pack, Cutter, living comfortably with the Sunfolk, is able to take care of his aged wolf companion in a kind of "retirement" after he is cast out.
• In Fantastic Four, Frankie Raye agrees to become the new herald of Galactus partially so that he'll spare the Earth, but also because she really wants to explore the universe. When Mister Fantastic points out that as a herald, Frankie will likely have to let Galactus devour an inhabited planet one day, her response is a cold and blunt "So? A few less bug-eyed monsters?" Notably, it's this exact indifference towards alien life that convinces Galactus to select her for the job, as it was the Silver Surfer's sentimentality and unwillingness to let the Earth be consumed that ultimately led him to rebel during The Coming of Galactus.
• Ghost Rider, at least in his 1990s incarnation, did not kill even the most inhuman of humans, to the point where his apparent destruction of a ninja in one issue was retconned into that single particular ninja actually being a robot. However, he was quite happy to maim and slaughter demons and other Always Chaotic Evil beings, in one instance tying the photosensitive pseudo vampire Blackout to the spire of the Empire State Building and letting him die a horrific burning death as the sun came up. Blackout didn't actually die and popped up on the Raft about fifteen years later, but Ghost Rider had no way of knowing that.
• According to Kyle Baker, this trope was part of why he had Hawkman fighting mostly dinosaurs and monsters in his arc of Wednesday Comics: Hawkman's signature gear is medieval weapons, so he has to be fighting something physical, but at the same time, having Hawkman bludgeon a regular human with a mace would make him look like a brute. As he put it, "Beheading a giant space lobster with a sword seems quite all right, even heroic. A man using a mace to battle a T-Rex seems positively sporting."
• In Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, Director Manning reveals to Hellboy that the BPRD upper brass decided to install a bomb in Roger the Homunculus, as a "fail-safe" to prevent Roger from endangering the lives of agents in the future; their explicit reasoning is that Roger is expendable because he's not human. When Manning gives Hellboy the detonator, HB is not pleased: "You know, I'm not human, either, remember? When are you guys gonna put a bomb on me?" Then, when an opportunity arises for Roger to kill the Worm by blowing himself up, he's perfectly willing to do so, and it's Hellboy who insists they find another way. By the end, Director Manning comes around to HB's point of view, but Hellboy is so ticked by the entire incident (and a few other factors) that he quits the BPRD.
  • The same story also contains the phrase:
    To be other than human does not necessarily mean to be less.
• Completely and utterly defied in the Invincible spin-off Guarding the Globe. When Japandroid sacrifices herself to stop a global parasite infection, her death is treated exactly the same as if she was human. No one even mentions that she was a robot.
• In Iron Man
  • In "Fatal Frontier", Tony starts thinking this way when it comes to robots and clones. He is eventually called out on it by a reporter. It turns out that this is a symptom of phlogistone poisoning, which corrupts a person's very soul.
  • A major theme in the Dan Slott run, with Jocasta employed by Stark Industries as an AI ethics advisor, and Tony taking her many concerns on board. And then in Iron Man 2020 (Event), Arno Stark's whole position is based on an insiste\\nce that AIs aren't people.
• JLA:Year One: This is deconstructed with the Martian Manhunter. Before joining the League, he observes how quick the heroes of Earth are to kill alien villains while sparing human ones. This results in him gathering data on the heroes to protect himself in the even they prove hostile to him.
• Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: In a comic, Mickey, Goofy, and Pluto encounter a sapient race of giant ants. Furry Confusion is in full effect as they wear clothes and communicate in Morse code. The ants try to make slaves out of the trio, who then sic a giant anteater on them and calmly sit around as the critter eats a good portion of the colony alive.
• Parademons in New Gods serve as Darkseid's evil minions bred as modified clones from Apokoliptian citizens or recruited among the planet's most sociopathic denizens. Their sentience depends on the writer, as most are unquestionably loyal to Darkseid and do as they told, though there are exceptions like Mike and 3G4 who develop minds of their own. Most of the time, they are mowed down by superheroes without impunity (such as the DCAU, where even Superman vaporizes them without a second thought). That said, there are times where the opposite happens when in Injustice: Gods Among Us, Superman unleashes his full power to eliminate Parademons all around the world at once and he is chewed out by Batman for taking so many lives, though in turn he gets called out by his own allies for criticizing Superman for doing what needed to be done.
• When Red Sonja rescues the chef Gribaldi from a cannibal tribe he explains he's been releasing the human captives and cooking foraged lizards and eggs instead. Sonja recognizes them as Lizard Folk's offspring immediately before the lizard's attack to seek vengeance. She attempts to negotiate with the lizards but concludes they're Always Chaotic Evil. Gribaldi is nonetheless horrified and apologetic.
• The Red Tornado angsts over this constantly, and when the Justice League of America needs a member to sacrifice himself, he's usually at the top of the list. In the 1980s, however, he was retconned to contain an alien Energy Being called the Tornado Champion.
• In Runaways, during the Civil War (2006) Crossover, the Cape Killer unit is shown to actively rate an enemy's worth based on how much the news-viewing public might object. Minors are treated with non-lethal force, adult humans with moderate force, and with artificial beings like Victor, it is permissible to use full lethal force. Aliens have no legal standing in the US and do not generate any sympathy from news-viewing audiences, so it is considered the same as hunting an animal.
  • In another story, Darkhawk said: "You're not made of flesh, Ultron, which means I don't have to play nice." Of course, Ultron is a complete scumbag who long ago crossed the Moral Event Horizon so this may have more to do with that than this trope.
  • In the last published Runaways arc, Victor raises the question of whether or not Klara's Ambiguously Human status means that they can use force to bring her Power Incontinence under control, earning him a death glare from Molly.
• In The Sandman (1989), Richard Madoc justifies his abuse of Calliope (an imprisoned Muse) to himself because she's not human; however, this is clearly portrayed as absolutely immoral.
• Speaking of Skrulls in Secret Invasion (2008), every hero kills Skrulls by the truckloads without blinking, even when they're beaten and on the run, even POWs eating for their lives (okay, the only ones who kill those are HAMMER). It makes you feel really sorry for the Skrulls (even if these ones are religious fanatics who, odds are, would have wiped out the human race if it wasn't for their Queen). A particular example of Hawkeye and Mockingskrull stands out among the killed Skrulls. This Skrull is a Tomato in the Mirror who is a perfect copy of Mockingbird (Hawkeye's late wife) in every way, including memories and personality, and very honestly believes it when she professes to be her. At first, Hawkeye believes her, too, since she thinks and acts exactly like her. But when he finds out that she is Not Even Human, he kills her in a fit of rage — Even though she had done nothing villainous whatever until then, and did not appear about to. In fact, she died confused and pleading with him, never understanding why her Clint would want to murder her.
• There was a series called Sentinel, which as the name implied, was about a boy named Juston Seyfert and his "pal," a reprogrammed Sentinel. In Avengers Academy, Emma Frost argued that the Sentinel's programming and memories should be wiped to make it less dangerous, which Juston claimed was essentially murder. Then after the Sentinel was destroyed while protecting Juston during Avengers Arena, he fell into a Heroic BSoD moment and stated that he no longer had any reason to live, since his best friend was now dead.
• In Shaman's Tears, Pending and Patoff are able to justify their actions by claiming that the Blood is not human—merely a higher form of animal—and therefore do not have human rights. This forces Joshua to come up with a Justice by Other Legal Means solution.
• Subverted in the original Fawcett Comics and DC pre-Crisis Shazam! Captain Marvel stories. One of the odder characters is Mr. Talky Tawny, a talking tiger who is taught English and chooses to live with Humanity. He's well dressed and has excellent manners. Captain Marvel made sure that Mr. Tawny is treated as nothing less than a full citizen of the society he chooses to live in, which comes into play when Tawny is on trial for... mauling someone. (Incidentally, the pre-Flashpoint version of Mr. Tawny in the regular continuity is a magic stuffed toy brought to life and the Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil version is a shapeshifter whose favorite form is a tiger.)
• Spider-Man nearly did this in an issue of Ghost Rider. He was facing the vampire queen, Lilith, and a host of the undead. He attempted to use Johnny Blaze's gun on them, explaining that "They're already dead". In team-ups with Blade, he has also not seemed to care much about vampires getting killed. This is the same guy who will box your ears if you try to kill Carnage, a super-powered serial killer.
  • Ironically, Spidey is later on depicted as caring very little for the life of Klyntar Symbiotes. Even in the early days, it's repeatedly clarified that Peter mostly cares about Eddie Brock and Cletus Kasady, and has no real care for wether their Symbiotes survive.
  • In Spider-Man: Life Story, after Harry Osborn blows up the clones of Norman Osborn, Peter Parker, and Gwen Stacy, Peter shrugs his shoulders, but is convinced by Gwen to go save them anyway. He can only rescue his clone. Sadly, Miles Warren, who made the clones, revealed that the Gwen Stacy inside the tubes wasn't the clone, but the real one. That portion of the story ends with Gwen leaving with Peter's clone and leaving the real Peter alone.
• In Venom (and all Marvel comics with the symbiote) where the alien nature of the symbiote is used to justify every atrocity done to any symbiote. Including but not limited to: Brainwashing, drugged into a coma, forced "pregnancy", slavery...
• Subverted in an issue of the Superfriends comics (70's version): the heroes rescue a beautiful woman from what appears to be a collection of movie monsters (including a werewolf and a mummy!) It turned out, however, that she was actually a space criminal, and the monsters were- alien superheroes that just happened to look like our movie monsters!
• Superman:
  • During The Death of Superman and many other storylines after it, Superman agonized over the fact that he might have to stoop down to Doomsday's level and personally take the monster's life. In both that story and Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey, he's actually forced to, but he finds other ways to put him down after that. However, in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Themiscrya is invaded by an army of Doomsday clones and Superman ends the fight by firing a full force heat vision blast after it is noted that they're much weaker than the normal Doomsday.
  • Except for Bizarro and Bizarrogirl, Silver Age Bizarros were made of "non-living matter", so having them killed off was often a source for comedy; they even made a meteor plunge into one of their cities and kill a lot of Bizarros, on the grounds that Bizarros do things backward so they want to maximize casualties. This was played as a pure joke.
  • In Supergirl/Batgirl story Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Lex Luthor murdered a baby -who in another world would have become Superman- and thinks nothing of it because it was an alien, not a human.
  • In Superman Vol 1 #314: The Plague of the Antibiotic Man (1977), the Man of Steel is faced with a dangerous alien Jevik, who he intends to destroy. When questioned about how he can kill when he has a code against killing, he replies that Jevik is not really alive. When Jevik's heart begins to beat, Superman says that somehow he's come alive, and Superman can't kill him.
  • He made a few exceptions for drastically nonhuman things, like Urko the Terrible; and when Brainiac underwent his first major upgrade (to his Skele Bot form) and became far more ruthless in killing innocents, Supes said he'd be willing to destroy him since he was Just a Machine. On the other hand, the readership revolted when Superboy destroyed the very first Bizarro, and so the character was recreated by Applied Phlebotinum not long after.
  • In The Immortal Superman, Clark intentionally sets a trap which kills a synthetic mindless energy being, and he does not seem remorseful about it at all.
  • Although that backstory has long been retconned out, World of Krypton (1987) established that this sort of thing was the reason for Krypton's cold and sterile world: at one time, Kryptonians grew clones of themselves to extend their lives and, pretty soon, people started to get uppity about it, going into a major war that would lead to the planet's ultimate destruction.
  • In Red Daughter of Krypton, Supergirl destroys Worldkiller-1, an artificially-created parasitic sentient biological weapon, reasoning that it isn't a true living being but a mockery of one.
    Supergirl: I know who I am, and I know what you are— A mockery of life. This is not murder. It is the end of a terrible mistake.
  • In Superman (1939) issue #244 the Galaxy computer develops self-awareness and creates a child of pure energy. Even as Superman's referring to it as the computer's child he declares that it's too dangerous because of the energy the computer made it from and kills the computer leaving the child to perish from no longer having the computer's support. He's not bothered about it for more than a brief moment.
  • In another story Superman discovers that an energy being has taken a business building as it's body and is trying to kill the business owner to prevent him completely automating the business as the being requires the ambient life energy of humans to survive, with no employees he'll starve to death. Rather than make every effort to work out a compromise Superman just destroys the building instantly killing the being without the slightest concern about violating his no-killing policy.
  • In the reviled Superman: At Earth's End, Superman uses "you're just an android, I AM A MAN!!" as justification when he punches Ben Boxer's guts out. There are many things wrong with this, least among them the fact that Ben Boxer is about as close to human as you can be, with emotions, a personality, and brothers. Oh, and intestines. Superman then condescends to him further, claiming that Ben is "only doing what your creators programmed you to do"...even though Ben actually has free will and makes his own decisions.
  • In Superman: Brainiac, Superman and Supergirl show little remorse or concern as obliterating dozens of Brainiac's robots.
  • Superman & Family's code does not seem to include sentient places. In The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, Supergirl mentions she and Superman once faced a hostile living planet -they named it "porcupine planet" due to the gigantic spikes covering its surface-, and they destroyed it because it was too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
  • The Day the Cheering Stopped: When fighting King Kosmos, Superman is worried about hurting his human host, but he does not seem to care about expelling out and dispelling the villain's energy body.
  • In The Death of Luthor, Kara brings Lex Luthor back to life shortly after trashing a trio of robot soldiers without a care.
  • The Other Side of Doomsday: Supergirl, Flash and Atom have strong rules against killing, but they are not bothered by effectively killing a living planet which was being enslaved by a villain.
  • Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: When Supergirl finds an eldritch abomination who used to be a man before being turned into a planet-destroying energy being, she immediately decides he must be destroyed, using another eldritch abomination as a nuke to break its body down. Kara does not seem concerned about both entities being technically alive, or the second creature being destroyed despite having apparently done nothing to deserve it.
  • Supergirl Adventures Girl Of Steel: When fighting Brainiac, Superman and Supergirl tear Brainiac in half. Then Kara heat-blasts the upper half -which is still moving-, and Superman crushes the head to make sure that Brainiac is gone. Neither of them feels at all troubled about killing the world-destroying robot who makes backups of itself constantly.
  • The Legion of Super-Heroes's official rule against killing often excludes AIs. Among other examples, they originally killed Brainy's malevolent AI creation, Computo, without a qualm, and in the next incarnation tried to do it again, although Superman was the one who struck the death blow that time. Then there was a later arc about an invading machine race which raised the issue of the rights of AIs in the Legion's society (namely, that they didn't have any); at the end, the Legion's leader pointed out that they'd been killing the machines all through the storyline, and wondered if this was a violation of their code.
  • The Legion's code rule doesn't appear to apply to twisted clones, either. In The Great Darkness Saga, Wildfire burning a Servant down and Timber Wolf shattering another to rubble elicit no comment from their teammates. Judging by Timber Wolf's statement, the Legion regards the Servants as heaps of inanimate matter.
  • Superboy (New 52): Only "Red" thinks of Superboy Kon-El (who is half-alien and a clone) as a human. (Although Rose may have a soft spot for him, too.)
• In Teen Titans issue 100, Superboy-Prime attacks Titans Tower in an attempt to kill Superboy (Conner) and brings along a handful of Superboy clones grown from Conner's DNA. Conner brings out his emergency Kryptonite and two Titans without a no killing code, Ravager and Robin (Damian), kill the clones by stabbing them through the heart with a Kryptonite spike. Once Prime is taken down (and bearing in mind he's the most powerful and evil of any of the villains present by a mile) the same two suggest finishing him off. They're told "that would be murder" and "we're not killers". But killing the clones was apparently okay. And just to make matters worse, Conner is himself a clone whose own series went to great lengths to show that he considers clones to be people who deserve another chance just like anyone else regardless of what horrible acts they've committed. He even mentions that he started off as a "blank slate" like the other Superboy clones.
• Tech Jacket: Zack shows no remorse for killing hundreds of Kresh (gas-based life forms) but is visibly upset after killing two human-looking aliens in self defense.
• In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, there's an entire test used to determine this, called the Ambus Test. Essentially it tests robots to see if they're actually sentient (in which case they have full rights) or simply highly advanced AI pretending to be sentient (in which case they presumably have no rights). The comic also features an inversion; the Decepticons are shown to have been fairly bigoted during the Great War, believing organic beings like humans to be non-sentient or simply unworthy of life; in other words, robots judged humans as not being equal. Even some of the Autobots are shown struggling with the idea of treating organics as if they're just as alive as "proper" beings made of metal and possessing a Spark.
  • The Transformers (Marvel): Inverted in the first issue, which has the Transformers astonished to discover the existence of non-mechanical life on Earth and struggling a bit to acknowledge the humans as sentient, living beings. The Decepticons, of course, never do concede the worth of human life.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Vision: Dima is an artificial human-made of plastic, created by A.I.M. For Tarleton and all the scientists, she's s just a tool. For Vision, she's a life form, as worthy of her life as any other one.
  • Played With at one point during the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy. Hawkeye has no problem killing several Kree in an ambush, something the Kree Captain Marh-Vell takes personally, even if he's a traitor.
    Hawkeye: They die like people.
    Marh: They are people. I'm one of them.
    Hawkeye: Then you'll die like people too.
  • Ultimate X Men: Cyclops and the others found that the Indian lab has created... something, that seems to be alive. Do they have the right to kill this new lifeform? Then the soldiers storm in, and things end in an explosion anyway.
• Invoked in an issue of U.S.Avengers where Colonel Maverick stops fighting Deadpool because he was speaking English. Deadpool appropriately lampshades this.
• The Vision:
  • In the Avengers Assemble Annual, Vision calls out Tony Stark and Hank Pym for leaving his disassembled body in a warehouse after he was ripped in half by She-Hulk. Though they were both preoccupied with various crises (and one of them was a Skrull at the time), that doesn't really change the fact they left one of their teammates ripped up in a warehouse. Even if they thought he was gone forever, didn't he at least warrant a proper burial? What makes this especially odd is that when Jocasta, another android hero, was killed in battle some years earlier, the Avengers at least held a funeral for her.
  • This pops up with the Vision fairly often. Even though he has an advanced artificial mind on par with that of a human and a complete set of synthetic organs, other characters sometimes still just treat him like a robot and act like his romantic relationship with Scarlet Witch is on par with a woman loving a toaster. During Avengers Disassembled, Spider-Man gets into an argument with The Falcon after citing Wanda's marriage to Vision as proof of her insanity.
    Spider-Man: If I was dating a robot, you'd all talk about me behind my back.
  • Note that the Vision was created from the remains of the Golden Age Human Torch, who himself experienced instances of this trope. In the Fantastic Four annual where the original Torch was killed by the Mad Thinker, the team left his body on a table in an abandoned lab, despite the Thing arguing that, as a legendary superhero, he deserved a proper burial.
    Mr. Fantastic: "Dust to dust" doesn't apply to him, old friend. He was born in a lab, so this is a more fitting final resting place.
  • There was also a teenage version of Vision called Jonas who was a member of the Young Avengers. After Stature's death during the finale of Avengers: The Children's Crusade, Jonas was destroyed by an enraged Iron Lad, who argued "You can't kill something that was never alive to begin with." Even though the other Young Avengers clearly disagreed with this assessment, they later decided that it was better to leave him deactivated, reasoning that the futuristic technology that comprised his body was too advanced for them to fix and he wouldn't want to live without Stature anyway. However, while Stature has since been resurrected, there's zero indication the kids have tried to repair Jonas or even asked someone like Tony Stark or Reed Richards to make an effort, despite there no longer being any reason to leave him offline. Though at least the adult Avengers thought Jonas was human enough to warrant a memorial statue at the mansion.
• Something similar has popped up in, of all places, the past few years of Witchblade; Sara Pezzini has read a monster its rights at least twice. The monster responds by attacking and she gets to kill it anyway.
• Vampirella:
  • Discussed in the one-shot "Trial of the Soul". Vampirella is observed and tested by a divine champion named John to determine if she has a soul and is worth keeping alive. Despite witnessing her vanquish numerous monsters and threats to humanity, John is not sure if she does have a soul and his bosses, the Irin Wi Qadishin, determine her to be soulless by default. Despite this, John refuses to kill her and gives her a chance to escape.
  • Vampirella: The Dark Powers: When the Flame argues against Vampirella killing Suppressor, Vampirella points out that he is sanctioned to kill her with his flame powers if she goes rogue. When the Flame stammers that villains are people, Vampirella calls out the hypocrisy of being willing to kill her for not being human while letting a mass murderer live just because he is human.
• Wonder Woman:
  • The Amazons started out with a strict no-killing code, but made exceptions for gods, monsters and the undead. They were also fine with brainwashing villains into being better people, though not executing them. Post-Crisis this code was partly thrown out the window (no more brainwashing), though killing is still a last resort.
  • This double standard was lampshaded when Wonder Woman killed Maxwell Lord. As stated by Julian, a Checkmate spy who was working undercover in Diana's embassy, people were fine with Diana decapitating Medusa on live television because she had snakes for hair but Max "looked like everyone else", so Diana actually had to prove she was justified in killing him. Indeed, Diana had killed numerous people before in front of witnesses, with Superman and Batman being among such witnesses, with no complaint.
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) brings back Diana's refusal to kill even in the middle of battle, but she sees nothing wrong violently ripping the Titan apart as she sees it as an undead abomination as it is powered by the disembodied souls of a dead world whose attempt to survive has driven them to madness.
• The X-Men has issues with this. Most of them are reluctant to kill (with Wolverine the most obvious exception), but will if they think it's the only solution. After they met the Brood, an Always Chaotic Evil alien race with a rather unpleasant reproductive cycle, they rapidly modified their policy.
  • Jubilee was a particularly extreme example. Normally she's so firmly opposed to killing that she once abandoned an escape attempt — effectively giving herself up for another round of torture — in order to perform CPR on a random mook she had injured. Then during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover, she was killing Skrulls without even blinking.
    • It was pointed out in New Warriors that Jubilee's personality had radically shifted. Never got around to why before that one ended though.
  • The X-Men have also been on the receiving end of this. Since they belong to the mutant species Homo superior, they are technically nonhuman (though closely related) hominids... And many of the anti-mutant villains in the setting consider them exactly that, treating them about as considerately as they would human-like but evil and dangerous aliens or vampires.
  • The X-Men deal with this after founding their country, Krakoa. There are protocols in place that allow for the resurrection of any mutant who dies. However, one of their laws prevents cloning or the resurrection of clones. For this reason, mutants who are straight-up clones of other mutants are not allowed to be resurrected if they die. So, while Laura Kinney is allowed because she is an altered clone of Wolverine, her clone, Gabby Kinney, wrestles with what would happen if she were to die. Genesis and Madelyne Pryor, indistinguishable clones of Apocalypse and Jean Grey, respectively, are outright denied resurrection. When Gabby is killed by the Shadow King, a group of mutants decide to revive her without the Five knowing and end up confronting them. As it turns out, that definition was never intended at all — the Five had been lead to believe the resurrection of clones meant the accidental resurrection of someone already active, but someone setting up the laws made it extremely narrow to prevent actual individual people like the aforementioned three clones from being resurrected and demand the laws be changed.
• Yoko Tsuno plays this straight and averts this as the plot demands. The insectoid Titans are generally treated with respect, for instance, since they do appear to have some human-like qualities. The antimatter-eating alien from The Time Spiral is considered to be "gross" though when it turns out to look like a jellyfish—and its fate, therefore, is simply to be killed without mercy.
• Young Avengers:
  • In an issue, Patriot and Hawkeye II teamed up with the Winter Soldier to fight a MODOC squad. Winter Soldier killed several of the cyborgs with his handgun, which prompted Hawkeye to ask if they were human. Winter Soldier explained that the men were essentially turned into "human robots" by AIM and that the process was irreversible. He then argued that he did them a favor by killing them.
  • An interesting case is with Hulkling. He isn't usually treated any differently than any other hero, despite his status as an alien hybrid being well known. However, his own treatment of people of his own race is very much filled with this trope. During the story arc when he first discovers his heritage, he at first reasons that he can't be a Skrull, and that his mother can't be a Skrull, because they're both so ordinary as far as humans go. Later, when he mentions wanting the Kree and Skrull forces to stop fighting, he makes a comment about how the Skrulls are "my people," with Billy, his boyfriend, responding with "They're not your people. They're not even people." Wolverine even gives justification as to why it's okay to use lethal force against Skrulls in this story, claiming that "They're Skrulls. They'll grow back. Eventually." In later storylines, despite having accepted his heritage, it's still obvious that everyone still considers him a human, and that he considers himself a human, and he keeps treating the Skrulls as an alien species that he can't relate to, which sometimes makes him come across like a Boomerang Bigot.

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