Checking on some Golden Age superhero comics, I've been impressed on how dark and merciless they could be. Check the Golden Age section of this page and tell me if those things aren't as bad as the average Current Dark Age stuff, just more crudely drawn and so less 'realistic'.
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I wouldn't say Batman became "campy" per se after the intro of Robin (in 1940), but they did become more typically super-heroic. The campy science fiction stories started in the 50's, because it was felt those sorts of stories would be non-imitable (at least Grant Morrison liked 'em). And the camp went out the window around 1970, not the early 80's. The 70's saw the introduction of Ra's Al Ghul and the introduction or re-introduction of much of Batman's non-Joker Rogue's Gallery.
I feel like mentioning Archie's Sonic The Hedgehog series here. In particular, Eggman's mental breakdown after one too many defeats. It pretty much does the opposite of what the OP's talking about. Sonic feels incredibly sorry for his arch-enemy for quite a while afterwards, from what I've read.
Re: Giving villains A Fate Worse Than Death:
It occurs to me that, if you're a Super Villain going up against a superhero with a Thou Shalt Not Kill code, then being immortal is actually a weakness rather than a strength, since it frees the hero up to use violent methods they'd never use on a mortal adversary. Has there ever been a comic where someone brings this up?
The closest thing I can think of is Deadpool taking out Mr. Immortal of The Great Lakes Avengers by decapitating him and sticking his head in a toilet, knowing that he'll recover from it.
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It sure seems to backfire a lot.
That reminds me, thank Jebus that Frank Miller's "Holy Terror" didn't end up as a Batman story, canonical or otherwise.
And as for the Golden Age, Napoleon, yeah, it doesn't look like very many people had "no-kill" rules back then. Zatanna's pop and Dr. Fate sure didn't.note
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I'll give Tom Strong a look. Of all Alan Moore's work I've only read Watchmen, but it definitely didn't disappoint me. Speaking of that book, I guess it's relevant to this conversation in that it contains people whom that world considers heroes being ruthless, but Moore is on the record as saying that he expected people to have a negative reaction to those characters rather than thinking they were the shit. I don't think many people would tell you that the Comedian was cool, but a lot of people think Rorschach is.
Anyway, the work's page on here says that he regretted helping to launch The Dark Age Of Comic Books, and if Tom Strong is his way of trying to steer things in the other direction then more power to him.
I guess the subconscious logic of somebody like that might go "If I write stuff that's suitable for kids, then I won't be taken seriously. If I write stuff that's considered too unsettling for kids, but not so much for mature adults, then that means that the story is mature and that I'll be taken a lot more seriously."
Maybe the audience is partly to blame for this kind of thinking, because I know that back in the day I used to decide whether to watch somethings or not by whether it was a "kids' show" or not; I felt that I'd outgrown kid stuff. And I probably wasn't the only one who was judging works of fiction by that criteria. So maybe writers of various kinds of fiction were just giving us all what we wanted by, say, graphically killing somebody right out of the gate to say "Hey, look, death! People die in this, and we're not sanitizing it like Disney would! That proves it's not for kids, and that you should buy it!" If a lot of people bought it as a result, then of course they would've decided to do it again in the future.
I think for me it'd be a question of degrees, of just how violent Supes got or threatened to get, as well as how much death and suffering the arms dealer was responsible for.
In Superman IV, you've got Superman telling the U.N. that nuclear weapons are bad and that everybody should disarm. I think that's a good idea, never mind the ridiculous improbability of what happens in that movie after he makes the request, which is that every single member nation agrees that he's right and happily disposes of their nuclear arsenal.
However, what if instead of a story where Superman addressed the world and pleaded his anti-nuke case to them, he said "Listen, I'm ordering every nation on Earth to disarm. If you don't, I'll pay you a visit, and I'll be very angry."
Noble ends or not, everybody on Earth would be at the mercy of one guy who thought that might made right. A guy who wouldn't necessarily be qualified to rule the Earth, and who might abuse that power later on, as superheroes are sometimes wont to do in the name of Utopia Justifies the Means. (See Stark, Anthony.)
edited 7th Sep '12 4:10:08 AM by KilgoreTrout
This is a common problem for people who like to RP as Lawful Good characters and Ideal Heroes in a tabletop roleplaying game.
The first problem is what worldview the game is centered around. For example, Batman stories are usually centered around the idea that the world is dark, twisted and unforgiving, but one man can make a difference. In this morality, good is more powerful than evil, but good is an exception rather than the rule. Left to its own devices, evil will destroy good, but so long as a spark of good remains, the darkness can be temporarily driven back.
Superman, on the other hand, is built around the assumption that good is the norm and evil is the exception. Superman's entire story is based on escalating acts of love. Superman's loving parents saved him from certain death, and his loving adoptive parents raised him with strong moral values. Superman, as a result, has high esteem for the value of goodness in people.
Now, imagine trying to role-play these characters in the opposite setting. Superman in Gotham just looks like a tool, because between the corrupt cops, psychopathic criminals, apathetic citizens, and general Nightmare Fuel that Gotham entails, Superman's belief in the goodness of the human spirit doesn't mean a thing when Joker goes on a killing spree and bribes his way out of Arkham on a technicality, and then rapes and tortures Supes's friends and family.
On the other hand, Batman would simply be a massive dick in the average Superman setting. Batman would only sow his own breed of mistrust and fear in Metropolis, because that's how he wants it. While Superman created his persona with the mantra of "I want to help people", Batman created his with the attitude "I want to scare them". People who would trust Superman and vice-versa wouldn't trust Batman, and may even be openly hostile toward him.
Granted, much of this is Depending on the Writer, but the general problem is the same; different people have a different idea on where the moral axis of the universe is. Some believe the world is inherently good. Some believe the world is inherently bad. Some believe the world is completely random and thus any form of "good" is fleeting and subjective. And some believe that BECAUSE the world is random, we need to do as much good as we can for as many people as possible.
There was a Superman story once in which Superman and Batman teamed up to track some villain down. When in Metropolis, they were questioning underworld types and Batman went into full-on Batman mode, ready to break fingers and scare hell out the informants. It completely knocks Batman on his ass when Superman gets the information they need by simply asking for it nicely. The whole story was about Batman's perceptions of Superman, and the different way both heroes were perceived in their respective stomping grounds. It sort of drew a fireman vs cop dichotomy, in that even the underworld types realized that Superman was there to help people, while they saw Batman as a guy who, while his goals might be just, was pretty much there to beat the hell out of them.
Darker and Edgier gets old fast.
Perhaps strangely, I find it easier to understand heroes who are willing to kill (given the frequency of Cardboard Prison in comics) than heroes who get satisfaction and thrills out of beating up villains and administering cruel and unusual punishments. There's some kind of rationale behind the idea that some villains need to be killed in order to prevent them from killing more people. There's no rationale behind making a villain suffer as much as you possibly can - regardless of what they've done. If the hero concludes they're an unacceptable threat and chooses to give them a clean death, that actually seems less problematic to me than using mind control or thinking up new and innovative tortures to dish out to them. For a lot of the punishments given out by comic book "heroes", it seems like a Mercy Kill would be the humane option. Anything that involves a "hero" dishing out more pain or suffering than is necessary to make a villain stop being a threat is creepy.
I'm more able to deal with the idea of heroes - or at least anti-heroes - being ruthlessly pragmatic than with them being sadists. In the real world, killing in war is accepted and torture is a Moral Event Horizon. In comic books, it seems to be the other way around.
edited 8th Sep '12 7:26:09 PM by WarriorEowyn
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While I can understand Batman saving the Joker at the end of The Dark Knight, it gets a little weird when Joker Immunity is allowed to run rampant in the comics. After all this time, you're telling me Batman hasn't said, "eh, screw it," and "made it look like an accident"? You're telling me the Joker keeps getting off on insanity pleas no matter how many times he breaks out of prison and kills everyone? You're telling me a random cop pushed too far hasn't taken a lucky potshot at the Joker? Come on. You want to know the real reason the Joker wasn't in The Dark Knight Rises? They gave him the electric chair a week after the events of the second movie.
As I said in another thread, I'm pretty sure that during the tenure of any given continuity it's safe to assume that not every Batman story can be said to be valid and canonical. With that in mind, it's also safe to assume that the Joker hasn't been quite the persistent threat to the citizens of Gotham that 70+ years of stories would lead us to presume. Batman hasn't, at any given time, faced the Joker nearly as often as we've read about him facing the Joker.

I suggest Tom Strong.