No real argument for Thou Shalt Not Kill?

It seems to me whenever they have a hero/anti-hero who defies the one rule, they always have to make them cross a line that no one on the side of good would cross to make them in the wrong. Other times, they'll just turn them into psychos so almost nobody can sympathize with them. Take the new Red Hood. In his original (re)appearance, he was bad enough, dealing drugs, pimping, and even considering killing Batman on several occasions.(though, to be fair, he showed standards by forbidding the guys under him from dealing to kids, so presumably he had standards in other areas of his "controlled" crime enterprise.) Eventually, the later writers threw what good he had out the window, first making him lose it and try to kill Tim Drake, and then turning him into a casual cop-killer. Kingdom Come was the same, making the antiheroes practically monsters, and only being good in the sense that they fight for it. Even Punisher, pretty much the most sympathetic case was changed from an honorable man defined by wanting to prevent the innocent from suffering the same tragedy he'd been through to a sociopathic serial killer defined by his hatred of criminals. It's like they don't have an argument that holds up, so they try to make characters like these as close to villains as they can.

There's alot of characters who WILL kill, if they feel that's the only option. Wonder Woman, Wolverine, even Superman. But there is a difference between "last resort" and "first choice".

Two reasons. In-universe, NO ONE has a right to kill someone without due process. Even the military has rules. Someone, like the Punisher, who decides "I'm going to kill every criminal" has crossed a line for most people.

Out of Universe, you wouldn't have any super-villains left if the heroes killed them whenever they won.

I also consider it somewhat unfair to blame Heroes for observing Thou Shalt Not Kill when the universe itself enforces Cardboard Prison

Of course if the universe, or the editors, say that Villain X cannot be in prison for the rest of his live for popularity reasons then it seems "obvious" that the only other option is lethal, but this is again, prohibited by the universe/editors.

Its not "X is being stupid for not killing Y"

Its "Thanks to the narrative X cannot win this scenario."

Also, if you accept that villains will always escape, then you also have to accept the most dangerous villains will always come back from the dead.

I meant in the latter case, without due process, but I believe for cases like killers of innocents, torturers, and rapists, the worst of the worst, there'd be more support for the kind who'd put 'em down than you think. Hell, most books usually have the people supporting them at first until the writer turns them into full-blown psychos willing to kill innocents or other such acts of evil up to and including killing the hero just for trying to stop them.. I've always felt that to be one of the non-arguments, personally. Like with Morrison's Rocket ape/time travel speech, it's less about morals, and more about meta knowledge. If anything, since the villains can come back with magic/time travel/etc. that'd be less reason for heroes to take issue since death isn't a permanent solution, and thus isn't equivalent to murder in our world, which, as far as I know can't be taken back. From a Oneruledefier's perspective, the answer's simple: take control of those loopholes so villains wouldn't abuse 'em.

But that goes goes the other way. If heroes know that everyone comes back from the dead and heaven and other afterlives exists, why would villains being murderers mean as much to them ? I mean, the Joker kills Jason Todd. Jason gets better. So what, exactly, did the Joker do to warrant being killed himself ? Besides, that still an out-of-universe excuse. Most villains (or heroes) in universe don't dead and come back, they're in comas, or escaped at the last minute or it was a robot duplicate.

As for the other point, popular support does not equal legal. The law says you can't go out and shoot someone in the head. There's no "Unless it's the Joker" clause. Heroes, normally, try to stay as much as possible on the right side of the law and no-one should have the right to decide who lives and dies, answerable to no-one. There IS a legal system. If it's crap, work to change it.

Let's say the Red Hood kills the Joker. Can Deathstroke then kill Red Hood ? He's killing a killer. To most heroes, it's a line. Hell, to most PEOPLE, it's a line. Killing anyone, in real life, is hard. Check out "On Killing"

Then let's stop sending the Joker to Arkham. Lord knows he's proven a hundred times over that nobody's gonna cure him.

Pretty sure that if he was sent to court for his countless homicides, he'd end up on death row.

But that's the thing. DC doesn't want to send the Joker to death row either. It's a meta problem; even if Batman started killing his villains, they'd still keep coming back from the dead, so absolutely nothing would be accomplished. Punisher can get away with that since his rogues gallery is made of one-shots and Jigsaw, but the second he blew up a funeral full of established Marvel bad guys and killed them, the next second they were retconned into only being wounded.

To DC's credit, they are doing a much better job at keeping Joker away post-Death of the Family than they usually do in these cases. True, we have to endure Joker's Daughter in his absence, but that's a relatively small price to pay for his much needed sabbatical. They only need to keep that up for a while.

edited 3rd Sep '14 10:28:06 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

The way I see it, there are only two reasons some superheroes get stuffed with a no-killing rule - easier marketing for the more child-friendly iterations of the franchise, and for cheap Sword over Head melodrama whenever the hero's got the villain cornered. The whole "due process" thing has never been an obstacle for the likes of Cable, Wolverine, sometimes even Wonder Woman, all without them turning into utterly reprehensible mass murderers. It's just that their regular opponents are a lot tougher than the Joker or Lex Luthor, so they don't need a moral excuse to hold back in order to have a fight scene longer than three seconds.

In effect, the issue isn't even about killing per se, given the average reliability of comic book death. It's about abusing what is probably the one superhero cliche that's even more tiresome than the Two-Person Love Triangle. Cardboard prisons and miraculous survivals are among the necessary weasels of the genre - so long as writers don't try and make plots about them, or have villains point out and exploit them, or build ham-fisted moral quandries around them, things actually work out just fine.

Well, first, I was saying the opposite with that "world of nonsense" logic. That very argument destroys the moral angle, which is why I'm against it. Oh, and for the others, I'm not saying what should or shouldn't happen in comics right now, that'd be the death of the industry. I'm saying when it comes to this, they don't have an argument that makes sense and/or holds up. As for Joker and Jason: perspective. He's not prophetic and even if he were, he's clearly enjoying the pain he's causing both Jason and Batman. Evil is about much more than simply the results of the action, it's about perspective, justification, the goal in the first place. He loves causing suffering, and knows what he's doing is unjustifiably evil. As for legality, true, popular support doesn't mean legal, though I wasn't saying it was, but by that logic, legal doesn't equate to being right. Many unjust laws have existed and still exist, and probably still will. With those laws, I feel exceptions should be made, instead of waiting while damage is done from them. Who says no one should have that right? Why shouldn't people be able to to simply end those who do truly evil actions to stop them for good? All you seem to be saying is "because it's against the law". Why should law be absolute when certain laws fail to protect the innocent and undeserving, sometimes even harms them, and allows evil to go free? What would really be the harm in defying the laws that in these instance would only cause/allow injustice to put down a murderer of the innocent, or a rapist? Someone guilty of a truly disgusting act? As for your last point, several problems: 1.Joker's insane, and several stories have shown there is a good person beneath what he is now. Ideally, the advanced technology of the DCU would be used to cure him. In the real world, sadly, he'd probably have to be locked away forever or executed. 2.Again, perspective. Deathstroke may or may not know what Jason did, and most likely wouldn't care if he did, he's an assassin, he'd just do it to prove he could, or for $. 3.Ties into perspective. Joker is a killer of innocents. His acts technically counting as murder, and Jason's acts technically counting as murder do not make them equal. That's another of the non-arguments in my opinion. If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him! throws perspective out the window. It ignores the motives of the individual, ignores that Punisher's type would take a bullet for an innocent where his prey would cut them to ribbons without a shred of remorse, ignoring that his type goes after the evil primarily because they are evil, to punish them for their crimes, and stop them from committing them again. Factually, there's only one similarity to the Punishers and the evildoers, that legally, both commit murder. Again, I could use that same brand of logic to say there's no difference between The Punisher and Captain America because they both save innocent people. People finding an act shocking and brutal doesn't necessarily make it wrong, that's simply opinion. To truly be morally wrong, an action would have to be unjustifiable. True, but I'm speaking from a moral'n'messages angle. Basically just pointing out how always turning the antihero to a villain, or make them unfeeling and unsympathetic makes it seem like they don't have a moral argument to say why they're wrong, instead using the IYKHYWBJLH shtick over and over in addition the above strategies.

edited 3rd Sep '14 5:52:02 PM by GhostofMuramasa

Ironically, the initial iterations of Batman and even Superman were meant as a reaction precisely to these same cardboard prisons and other legal injustices in real life. They could and did take the law into their own hands, sometimes with lethal results, without being played as immoral psychopaths. Unsurprisingly, this was axed soon after, eventually leading to them becoming the glorified neighborhood watch of today - essentially what they were supposed to fight against. If anything, it's the Punisher who's probably closest to what superheroes looked and felt like at the time of their conception.

Ah... I'd forgotten that. People seem to have gotten so accustomed to heroes never killing these days that practically every vigilante who does is pretty much a psycho. Even Punisher now, who seems to be the most decent of the bunch has gotten cold to the point where he nearly shot through Eddie's sort-of daughter, Jenna Cole to waste some gangster.

edited 3rd Sep '14 2:09:57 PM by GhostofMuramasa

Now you're out of comics and into morality. My point is no one should be allowed absolute power over life and death. If that's not self-evident, then there's human error. Humans make mistakes. There have been many cases of wrongful convictions, including people on death row due to error and that's WITH defence attorneys and a legal system that is supposed to assume innocence. That's why the law says due process, that's why there's a jury to decide and weigh the evidence. Alot more people have to be wrong than Joe Bloggs with his handgun. But the Joker, is a cackling lunatic. Still entitled to due process, where he SHOULD be found obviously guilty and locked up forever/executed. Why that doesn't happen is an out-of-universe reason which is pointless to argue.

If you decide the law should make an exception for Joker, then where do you draw the line ? Can you kill Two-Face ? Killed a lot of people. Killer Croc ? Cannibal. Harley ? Aided and abetted the Joker, did nothing to stop him. Detective Flass and Commissioner Loeb ? Let crime families do what they want. How much blood is on their hands ? Joe Chill ? Someone who kills in a crime of passion ? You have to draw a line. Someone has to decide. And they do. They elect politicians who create laws and then they sit on juries and decide where these laws should apply. What is justifiable homicide and what's murder.

If the hero is operating under any legal system, then yes, they should avoid killing, just as much as a cop should. Some heroes, like Doctor Strange for example, CAN'T bring their villains in so they are operating under a different rule-set.

As for motive, who can decide another persons motive ? In police investigations, they don't look for motive, just evidence of the crime. If they find an nice obvious motive, great. But if Alice shoots Bob for no reason you understand, he's still shot. In the example I gave, Deathstroke kills Jason Todd for killing the Joker. You say he's an assassin so he wouldn't/couldn't be acting out of personal morality, but you can only say that because he's a comic character. From an in-universe perspective, there would be no difference between that action and what the Punisher does. They both shot a murderer and say it's due to personal conviction that these people shouldn't live after that crime.

This too. It's a comic convention. Real world doesn't apply.

edited 3rd Sep '14 4:07:48 PM by Anteres

The problem is tied into the fundamental essence of what is a "superhero".

What is a superhero? They are a person who fights battles that we cannot or will not, for any number of reasons. There's complexities to it of course, but that's the core trope: a person who can take care of problems beyond the ability of society and/or its laws. The more extreme this becomes, the more you fall into the trap of a character that cannot and should not be controlled. Almost every superhero has had a story where they have either gone rogue or people THOUGHT they went rogue, and that's because comics want to address how scary the idea is, without actually resolving it. Superheroes have to remain free from consequences that real life people do not. So, if Wolverine or The Punisher or whoever decide to kill someone, we never see their bullets ricochet and kill an innocent, or have an innocent killed by them in a berserker rage. Unless it's a plot point, of course.

The idea that these characters have never jumped off the slippery slope and become villains is problematic because the Punisher's FIRST APPEARANCE involved him trying to kill someone who had only been framed (Spider-man) and Wolverine, IIRC, actually has been called out on going too far before. The difference between them and the slippery slope characters, of course, is that they've been Easily Forgiven.

edited 3rd Sep '14 4:05:43 PM by KingZeal

If you consider that a villain should be killed if he commits heinous crimes, then the next question becomes : why not kill him before he commits his heinous crimes ?

So you start killing villains who committed standard crimes. And then villains who committed petty crimes. And then you start killing "villain" who may very well commit a crime someday.

And then Psycho Pass/Minority Report.

Once you break that one rule, there is no difference between "hero" and "villain" anymore. The next time the hero encounters a villain - why would he spare him ? If he does, the villain could commit more and more crimes and end up deserving to die - if he does it right now, then lives would be spared. Plus, what is the line ? Some hero may consider that harming children is unforgivable. Some other would consider hurting women unforgivable. For a third one it would be rape. Or torture. Or hurting animals (hello there Harley). There is no absolute moral line, except Thou Shalt Not Kill.

I think the Punisher was obviously mentioned. The last Batgirl story arc I read featured her fighting a woman (Knightfall iirc) whose parents got tortured and killed in front of her own eyes, and who decided to remove criminals from Gotham by brutal violence - except she did not commit the violence herself, and instead of considering them one by one, she schemed to eradicate criminality on a larger scale. From a moral point of view, she is absolutely no different from the Punisher, but the writers decided she would be a villain, so she is a villain.

Imagine a member of the X-Men had a girl/boyfriend who happened to be a junkie, and who got badly hurt when the Punisher decided to "deal" with his/her dealer - would he really look like a hero ? As it is said above, the writers chose to make the Punisher's victims complete dicks, but he isn't a hero by any means, and it is safe to say he killed quite a few decent, or at least redeemable, human beings during his career.

edited 3rd Sep '14 5:14:40 PM by Julep

While I've never been a fan of his, one thing I do like about the Punisher is the idea that he knows what he is and that if he actually managed to get to the end of his never-ending war, he's keep the last bullet for himself. Kill on more killer.

It's known in-universe that Slade is an assassin and overall evil individual. It's known that Jason Todd is a vigilante that hates The Joker for killing him as a young man, and it's known that Joker has killed thousands of innocents. Anyone looking at the situation in-universe would reasonably deduct that someone, perhaps Harley had paid him, and would regardless see a very big difference between killing someone who's done so much evil and one who executed him in turn. There'd be few, if any who would see the actions as equal. Like I've said before, Joker's insane, so he'd be the exception not to be killed. Well, that's the thing, it doesn't. For a true punisher of evil, that question would never come up, and if ever considered for even a second, promptly dismissed as a last resort for a world experiencing the worst-case scenario, like in that new Dredd movie, or that one with Jodie Foster, whatever it was called. That'd be exactly what the kind of vigilante I describe would never do because that'd be targeting innocents. As for the line, that's simple. Whatever could be said to be both without justification and nothing someone with an ounce of humanity would do would be a killable offense. That is to say, beyond horrible. Let's say this was happening in an authority/justice lords-esque world, it would go beyond mere subjectives, and decide things with a balance of reason, justification, and morality. It wouldn't be about what a handful of people personally feel to be over the line, in fact, it'd be the opposite. Everything potential action would be looked at in advance to decide whether or not it could be justified. As for the cases themselves, they'd be weighed, by the damage intended and/or caused if it couldn't be justified, or if it simply went too far if the individual had noble intentions. Each would be analyzed carefully based on different factors like the situation at hand, and things like drugs, mental illness, judging if the person was in their right mind. So, for example a drunk-off-his-rocker guy who hit a kid once for maybe giving him crap would naturally be given a lighter sentence than the father who'd beat his son daily for the hell of it. Every factor would be looked at. A killer of the evil. The fact that he knows what he is, that is to say, not like the kind he goes after is exactly why he wouldn't use the last bullet on himself, if he somehow managed to win. Well, since lately, he's been willing to target innocents like Jenna, possibly, but not simply because he's technically a killer, but because he's becoming alright with killing innocents, or otherwise undeserving individuals. That's the golden rule of his kind of vigilante, and the rule that will always separate that kind from evildoers, and would be the reason one like him would end it. No offense, but I think this conversation has run it's course. Agree to disagree, and all that.

edited 3rd Sep '14 6:40:17 PM by GhostofMuramasa

You know, the real major crime in this thread is the text block abuse.

Don't worry, I'm sure The Formatter will be along eventually to kill the ones responsible.

My bad. Meant for me. I got nothing more I can think to add.

Except for this: Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh!

This whole slippery slope thing doesn't really make much sense to me. killing a villain who has commited several heinous crimes already and who is pretty much irredeemable does not mean you are going to go ahead and kill people who haven't even done anything yet. i would not put the average rapist, murderer, or arsonist to death. but someone like the joker? come on. i actually think jason todd at the end of "under the red hood" had a pretty good point.

imo being a hero means you have to make choices and decisions that are gonna weigh on you for the greater good (within reason). it doesn't mean that killing someone is easy or right, but sometimes there isn't really a better choice.

edited 4th Sep '14 1:35:13 AM by wehrmacht

Alright, but what exactly is the difference between "average murderer" and "the Joker" ? What is exactly the line you need to cross in order to go from "you deserve to live" to "you deserve to die" ?

I don't think there is such a thing as an absolute law, which comes down to deciding that everyone deserves to live to avoid "mistakes" costing human lives.

If you take the risk to kill, you are not a hero, you are a vigilante. Which, in Joker's case, would make a vigilante probably fare more useful in the long run than a hero.

By definition, a murderer can be anything from a full-fledged serial killer to a humble cozy mystery perpetrator - the latter is far less likely to earn a legal death sentence in the first place. Nor does it have to be an execution-style context - there's a great deal of difference between "we have the Joker at our mercy, let's decide his fate" and "the Joker is firing at random civilians with a bazooka, someone snipe him already". There's plenty of situations where the niceties of deontological morality can simply be brushed off by all but the most insane absolutists out there. For that matter, the very idea of anonymous vigilantism already precludes a certain disregard for the law - thus, while arguments of personal moral codes remain valid, the notion that heroes shouldn't kill because it's against the law probably shouldn't be banked on. After all, if superheroes were such sticklers for legal authority, they'd be wearing badges, not masks.

Another telltale sign of how the no-kill rule is a plain plot device shill is how quickly it's dropped around non-human opponents, regardless of sentience. Blade, Thor and Wonder Woman can plow through dozens of vampires, giants and monsters per week, all without getting as bad a rap as the Punisher, while the rest of the spandex brigade frequently mows down demons and robots en masse - because marketing rules don't apply to monsters and robots, nor are they needed for the aforementioned sword-over-head moments. In fact, there's a great deal of irony in any moral argument for keeping a villain alive, when put against the actual reason - that people want him to be alive and kicking (and killing), in order to profit from it. Such schizophrenic discrepancy between the story in the book, and the story of the book, is bound to imply some pretty twisted morals itself.

edited 4th Sep '14 6:09:15 AM by indiana404

Recent events in America have demonstrated that the "slippery slope" problem actually DOES have some merit. Police departments have been arming themselves with military-grade armaments and, subsequently, have been more eager to use them. And that's not even getting into problems of not using this equipment properly, such as pointing loaded weapons AT targets, which is a no-no under the rules of engagement.

Superheroes are a particularly worrying variant of this problem, because unlike cops, their powers typically belong to themselves and not a state, and in many cases, their effectiveness depends entirely on their ability to defeat opponents in single combat. That leaves even more room for "cowboy logic".