No real argument for Thou Shalt Not Kill?

Or Supes could just not rescue Lex next time he's in danger...

Deliberately not preventing a death you could have is just murder with mental gymnastics.

No, your friends just made the mistake of assuming everyone in comics has the same information as the viewers.

Plus, you know, deliberately breaking into someone's house and killing them is murder. Whatever about the laws in comics, murder is still illegal.

Whatever your feelings about the death penalty, it's not the same as murder. If someone is given the death penalty, they are found guilt of a crime which warrants the death penalty by a judge and jury in a trial during which evidence is presented and argued, and are then executed by someone officially, legally licensed, permitted, and ordered by the state to do the killing. Superman breaking into Luthor's house and killing him is none of these - it's a single private citizen deciding for himself, based n his own interpretation of evidence, that another private citizen needs to die. This isn't even the same as if, for example, Luthor was menacing Metropolis in a giant robot - in that case, if Superman happened to kill him, it could be excused as self-defence or an accident, and whatever punishment was meted out would be less severe, if any penalty was awarded.

You know, people often criticise the Code of Hammurabi for the whole "eye for an eye" thing; as Gandhi and many others quipped, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". What these people overlook is that the phrase can be emphasised in two different ways. Sure, you can say it as "An eye for an eye", but it can also be "And eye for an eye" - in other words, the only time someone should lose their own eye is when they themselves have illegally put out someone else's eye. Thus, the punishment should fit the crime, and should not be more severe than the damage the perpetrator has already done. (Hammurabi did encourage the use of torture on defendants, and mandated that peasants be punished more harshly than aristocrats for the same crimes, but we're supposed to be a more just society than ancient Babylonia).

The true brilliance of the Code of Hammurabi was that it a) established that crimes should have specific, proportional, consistent penalties, meted out by a legal officer, and b) those penalties should only be administered by a legal officer after the perpetrator had been found guilty by evidence in a trial. This ran counter to the prevailing view at the time, which was that the friends and family of the aggrieved would track down and punish the (alleged) perpetrator themselves, using whatever means and to whatever degree they felt.

I find it disturbing that people honestly feel that we should go back to a pre-Hammurabi system whereby it's legal for someone to simply break into someone else's home and kill them for whatever offences they like. If that's the case, what's to stop me from killing a bank president for stealing millions of euros from working people? What's to stop Captain Cold from killing the Flash and claiming he was acting on the side of good?

When Judge Dredd has a more nuanced and subtle view of crime and punishment than real people, there's a problem.

edited 19th Sep '14 11:04:20 PM by VampireBuddha

Ukrainian Red Cross

Again, there's some significant leeway between a staunch no-kill code, and execution-style antics. Killing in self defense or the defense of others is permissible even for civilians, without being labelled as murder. Thus, punching a hole in Luthor's sternum along with his armor the next time they tussle won't be legally worse than getting involved in the fight in the first place. Back in JLU, Deadman once bodyjacked Batman himself in order to shoot a sniping mook - while clearly disturbing, it wasn't portrayed as him going over the line. Unwholesome situations call for unwholesome solutions, is all.

Pretty much, yeah. From both an internal and a dramatic standpoint, you have one thoroughly and gleefully irredeemable person that the hero of the story simply doesn't deal with, instead opting to wangst in impotent indignation. Now that's a cake you just can't have and eat too, because it summons another genie - that any criminal willing to call the hero's next attempt at intimidation would be right. That there are people he simply can't beat. If anything, it's these stories that regularly exploit death-related melodrama, only of the opposite variety - now that the villain's killed this ally or that innocent bystander, will the hero finally break the one rule. And since the answer is contractually obligated to be negative, the story loses all dramatic potential.

To contrast, I've noticed stone cold killers like Wolverine simply don't have to deal with that particular kind of baggage, which is why their stories have to rely on more inventive means to keep both him and the villains alive. Not to mention that, just like Man of Steel and Iron Man had an honest approach to the matter instead of The Dark Knight Rises's tired old chicken way of disposing of the villain, they don't need plotline crutches to get by whenever the going gets tough. If a hero can't make these kinds of choices, if the story itself has to handle them with kiddie gloves in order for their morality to even seem stable, then they have no business donning the cape to begin with.

edited 22nd Sep '14 2:11:24 PM by indiana404

Eh, not really, not when a situation comes up through no fault of your own and especially not if it puts you in the same situation that requires someone else to rescue you.

If Lex Luthor gets radiation poisoning from Kryptonite, Superman trying to save him will only be putting himself in the same danger, thus letting him die would not be the same as murdering him. He could maybe call someone else who could arrive in time to save Luthor but at the same time Luthor would only have kryptonite to harm Superman, so he has no obligation to call help for him. That might not even be morally right to you but its not the same as murder.

Now, if Superman broke a bridge without realizing Luthor's car was going to be passing over it and then decided not to save him, if Superman and Luthor were fighting underwater and Luthor accidentally broke his helmet trying to hit Superman, then you could argue legal gymnastics but you can't just generalize that every situation would be as such.

As for Doom, killing him isn't really the Fantastic Four's job but when he come onto USA soil trying to kill them or kidnaps their children, its perfectly within their rights to use whatever force necessary and considering Doom's tried to wipe out the nation itself at least twice, Marvel United States should have declared war on Latveria back in the 1970s. In fact, SHIELD once waged an "illegal" war on Latveria and my response was "pray tell how?". SHIELD is an international organization, which means the rest of the world decided Doom wasn't worth the trouble, yet somehow, he remains...wait Doom bots, of course.

edited 20th Sep '14 11:19:31 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

The thing is, going to war with Latveria just isn't going to end up well for either part. Imagine Kim Jong-Un but a bit less of a manchild, with a superpowered armor, hundreds of killer robots, and black magic. So yeah, if the USA would attack Kim only as an absolute last resource, it makes even more sense humoring Doom and leaving him alone as long as he isn't trying to murder your world leaders this week.

The Dark Knight Rises is actually a pretty bad example, because Nolan's Batman manages to directly kill someone in every film (R'as, Harvey, and Talia, respectively). Bane was a case where Batman just never had means, motive, and opportunity all at the same time and Catwoman did.

edited 22nd Sep '14 5:14:06 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

That's precisely the point - the rule is simply too inconsistently applied to be believable. It could be argued that Ra's was Hoist by His Own Petard, while Dent's death was accidental, but I've yet to encounter a case where Hellfire missiles were used with non-lethal intent. What really shills the inconsistency, however, is Selina's one-liner about not being a stickler for non-lethality as much as Batman - that's where I drew the conclusion that Batman was at least meant to not be an intentional killer... which, as you pointed out, was still botched in the end.

edited 23rd Sep '14 1:35:48 AM by indiana404

Well, there's Joker, Zsasz and Scarecrow, and since Word of God says Batman Gotham Knight is set in the same universe, there's also Deadshot and Killer Croc. Nolanverse's villains actually have a decent survival rate against Batman.

edited 23rd Sep '14 10:20:20 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

I see it as a kind of character growth away from his comic counterpart. At the end of the first film, he basically decides to accept that people he's fighting could die as a result, and never really looks back on that. His approach seems to be "subdue my opponent with minimal lethal force, and if it turns out to have been too much... too bad it had to happen that way, but I'm not going to angst about it". (He has Rachel's death and Harvey's betrayal for that, after all...) It's a rather more nuanced philosophy than he receives in the comics, and similarly his mental health issues in the film don't include a risk of "snapping" and jumping off the slippery slope.

Catwoman's experience with this, on the other hand, is pretty much limited to their fight early in the film where, in her opinion, Batman pointlessly handicaps them in their escape (when her guns weren't necessary). You'll notice he doesn't admonish Catwoman for killing Bane, either, when it turned necessary.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

A thought I've had a few times, and which I thought I might throw into the conversation: with comic book continuity being as blurry as it is, does anybody ever wonder how many of the villains' escapes are actually canonical?

I bring this up because the Cardboard Prison is, of course, one of the arguments that people most like to bring up when discussing whether or not superheroes should kill. Yet, when you get down to it, most of the superhero comics I've read, Marvel and DC alike, treat a villain being sent to prison as a defeat. The in-universe assumption always seems to be that they won't break out this time, which leaves me wondering how many times they are supposed to have broken out before.

Now this isn't always enforced. Most heroes have at some point remarked on the trope, and there are specific characters, like The Joker, who exist solely to mock it. Personally, I've always felt that acknowledging in-universe that Cardboard Prisons exist was a mistake. Back in the days before The Joker's entire schtick was "I'm going to break out of prison and kill more people", you didn't see this sort of conversation. Not because he didn't kill people—he's being do that for a while now—but because he didn't spend every issue mocking Batman's refusal to kill him.

In any case, what I'm driving at is that given how blurry an event's continuity gets the further we move away from it, some of the villains may not be supposed to have the bodycounts we know they have, which goes a ways towards explaining why Thou Shalt Not Kill is in practice.

The way I've come to view it, comicbook continuity is like an indefinitely long soap opera where things have only happened if they're explicitly mentioned in the current story.

Which of course brings me back to my original point - both the Darker and Edgier superhero stylistics, and the recognition of the existence of cardboard prisons, were codified by Alan Moore. Thing is, he invoked them only in order to deconstruct them, and ultimately avert them, in stories outside traditional continuity. The points themselves being that grim and gritty superheroes aren't superheroes anymore, and that if there's a cardboard prison in town, the hero really would do something about it.

This is what current imitations miss, and then resort to all sorts of cop-outs to prop up. The way things are now, the argument itself is so overplayed in-universe, that it serves only to fill five pages of angsty posturing that ultimately goes nowhere. With so many extra-curricular ways for the villains to be violently disposed of without blemishing the hero's reputation, the notion itself has become meaningless. Unless it sets up a direct aversion, as in Man of Steel, I think it's best for that plot point to be avoided altogether.

edited 24th Oct '14 1:17:15 AM by indiana404

I can't speak for DC, but on Marvel's end, editorial has gotten pretty good at remembering who's supposed to be in prison and who isn't - and showing us how those characters who are supposed to be in jail got out, usually with the assistance of an outside third party. It's gotten to be less "Doc Ock escaped from prison by being awesome," and more "Electro and Sandman launch a surprise attack on the prison and manage to get Scorpion and Chameleon out."

But then, Marvel's also a lot more lax about Thou Shalt Not Kill, with most - not all, but most - heroes refining it to Thou Shalt Not Murder In Cold Blood; if your opponent's incapacitated, great, fight's done, but if he dies as a consequence of the necessary violence to make him stop doing whatever it was he was doing, no skin off your back.

edited 24th Oct '14 9:24:41 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

You know what might be able to fix this?

Bank robbers.

It may surprise the sort of person who thinks the Adam West Batman series was an anomaly, but at one time, superheroes primarily fought bank robbers and Mafia goons. These weren't big epic supervillains, so there was no need to bring them back after their initial appearances.

I you ket the villains be bank robbers and drug dealers with no connection to established supervillains, it allows for a longer gap between appearances from individual franchiseable supervillains, which in turn reduces the predominance of cardboard prisons.

Ukrainian Red Cross

I agree. Superheroes fighting crime in general would help with that, not just bank robbers. Fighting crime is something that's been largely relegated to the background. Long-term arc villains weren't exactly a non-entity back in the day, but they did tend to happen in the background while other stories were going on. With the advent of decompressed storytelling, there's no time for superheroes to fight crime anymore; they're too busy fighting whatever the current 24-issue epic battle that will redefine their entire story forever is.

Bank robbers, muggers, cutpurses, drug dealers, etc. are all things that we just assume our hero deals with when we're not looking, and we might see it in the Cold Open from time to time, but it's never considered noteworthy to actually show in detail.

edited 24th Oct '14 4:11:49 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

It's also for this reason that Capes like Superman eventually start to wane in effectiveness. Superman cleaning up Metropolis (and the larger world) by defeating day-to-day crime is actually a plausible thing. But writers try too hard to push the "Superman's too busy fighting REAL threats to deal with this other stuff" angle. Like I said before, the more powerful and virtuous a hero is, the more writers feel compelled to turn them into a keystone instead of an actor of change. Instead of making the world better (and upsetting the status quo), they instead become the one thing keeping it normal.

Well, superheroes are very limited in their capacity to enact actual change, by virtue of their modus operandi. Very few of the causes that result in crime can be punched into submission. You can't beat desperation with a crowbar, smash a car into poverty, or dropkick prejudice, for example.

At the end of the day, superheroes are amateur cops. They don't make laws, they just enforce them, except when they don't and enforce their own moral code instead. Either way, they don't become relevant until a crime has been committed, and as a consequence, can never function as a preventative measure. Superman can apprehend all the criminals he wants, there will always be more.

When superheroes DO function as a preventative measure, it's typically by creating a totalitarian regime, because that's about the only avenue they have to stop crime as a whole from ever happening again. Threat of force is their hammer, and if they make the abstract concept of crime itself into a nail, then...well....

edited 27th Oct '14 3:08:34 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I kind of disagree, because there's a lot of things a guy like Superman can accomplish by virtue of not having the same needs or limitations as the rest of us. For the most part, Superman is free of "microaggressions". One of the problems of fixing oppression in Real Life is that the vast majority of us are, in some way, oppressed. For example, he doesn't have to deal with crippling student loans, hospital bills, or car payments, since (in some continuities) he went to college on a football scholarship, can't get sick or injured, and can fly/run anywhere he needs to go. Even fitting in as Clark Kent is just an option for him.

By virtue of who and what he is, Superman has lots of time and resources on his hands to fix things that other people can't. He could, for example, go to a university like the one I work at and take their leftover food (because there's a ton) and give it to a starving community on the other side of the country within seconds. He doesn't have to worry about shipping costs, refrigeration, labor, etc.

I'm using very basic example, but there's just no way that our Real Life status quo would still exist if even one person with the abilities and morality of Superman existed. Sure, new problems would pop up (people like Lex Luthor, for example, who would try to limit or exploit Superman's actions), but the world would still transform fundamentally.

The existence of superheroes on that scale (even one) would change the human condition forever, for good or for ill.

Ever heard the comment that Silver Age Batman was the most effective? Though that might be because those stories were intended for children and had their own problems, it's funny that the crime rate's a lot lower in those stories...

The major crimes rate, sure, but robberies were just as recurring as murders are in today's stories if not more.

Actually, punching people could solve a lot of the world's problems, so long as the superhero has both the supersenses to monitor every person on the planet and the superspeed to respond to any incident of violence as soon as/before it occurs.

And, you know, some sort of oversight to ensure they don't abuse their position.

Ukrainian Red Cross

The problem with superheroes is that there's no way to ever have any true overhead. I'm not saying that people shouldn't try, but it amuses me every time they have a Fugitive Arc, because that arc is flat out telling you that if the law turned against the Hero, the law would lose. (Or, at least, it would be slow in resolving the situation.) Even the Bigger Stick solution of Cape Busters doesn't work, because the next question is Who Busts the Cape Busters?

Unless you have a world where powers can be given and taken away by some sort of collectivist decision, the entire point to a superhero is that they're one person dispensing justice as they see fit.

edited 30th Oct '14 6:53:57 AM by KingZeal

Vigilantism is evil horrible concept thingy already, only reason why superheroes don't feel horrible is that most of them don't beat someone to coma/death which makes it less of vigilantism and more of helping the society by helping police :P If they did kill people, they'd be just as horrible things

edited 30th Oct '14 8:32:23 AM by SpookyMask

only reason why superheroes don't feel horrible is that most of them don't beat someone to coma/death which makes it less of vigilantism and more of helping the society by helping police

That, and really, the proper authorities generally just can't hope to cope with the scale of supervillains and cosmic threats.