Heroes Kill

@kristjanfrosti.80020: I’d forgotten about that line. That’s very odd, since other important stories from around the same time (The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, etc.) have him specifically refraining from killing even in situations where it would clearly be reasonable (like the SWAT attack in Year One). It’s also never referenced again afterwards. Plus, it makes his mistrust of Huntress (who has a pretty low body count) and anger at AzBats (who only pulled the “I don’t have to save you” trick) make no sense at all. And if he has taken lives, why is killing the Joker such a big line for him not to cross in stories like Under the Hood? It just doesn’t make any logical sense.

@BatWatch: I suppose he did try to kill Darkseid, so I’ll concede the point even though I think that was a terrible decision. I didn’t read Son of the Demon, so I don’t know what the situation was with that.

Refusing to kill in a world where indefinite incarceration isn’t feasible is just silly. Sending someone right back to the same asylum they’ve escaped dozens of times before makes no sense whatsoever.

With that said, I have no desire to watch Batman, or really any comic book hero, execute defeated enemies. That’s gross.

The current run of Daredevil has a pretty interesting take on the issue, with DD inadvertently causing someone’s death. I’ve always thought it strained credibility to believe that no one would ever have, say, a heart attack while Batman is scaring the snot out of them.

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BatJamags,

Guess I’m crazy. Darkside didn’t straight up die from Bruce’s gun though that did critically wound him and allow for his death and I have no idea where I got the Raj thing from. It wasn’t Son of the Demon, it seems, because I just flipped through it on the app. I could have sworn they were doing something in a space station and Batman burned him and let his ashes out into space. Perhaps that was elseworlds or I’ve just gone mad.

I might do some research and come back to this because I have this really clear vision of this.

Ah, Batman Annual 8. Bats says, did I really kill him, but yeah, Bruce. Incinerating him and putting the ashes into space should be pretty fatal. Whichever member of the League of Assassins had to pick him up granule by granule in orbit deserves a major promotion.

@kristjanfrosti.80020: Batman says that he will kill the Joker in Batman '89, yes…but he also says that he will kill the Joker in the final issue of “A Death in the Family,” which came out in 1989. Batman even leaps into a helicopter with the intention of killing the Joker, but he has to bail out before finishing the job because it is crashing. The movie was actually a pretty fair representation of the Joker’s most recent fate in the comics.

@BatJamags: You listed a few examples of late 1980s comics where Batman strictly avoids killing, but both Mike Barr and Jim Starlin wrote stories around that same period where Batman certainly did kill people (generally in self-defense). The rule was up in the air in the early post-Crisis period.

@BatWatch: Batman Annual #8 and Son of the Demon are two 1980s Mike Barr stories featuring a confrontation between Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul, so it’s an easy mistake to make.

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I read both Barr and Starlin’s runs recently. He certainly intended to kill the Joker, and his way of dealing with the KGBeast was admittedly pretty final, but there didn’t seem to be any direct, explicit kills and the Beast turned up alive again, so I’m not sure if that was a retcon or I misread the issue.

KGBeast’s death was retconned by Marv Wolfman in Batman: Year Three. In the present-day section of that story, Batman reveals that he couldn’t go through with killing the Beast, so he went back and let the him out.

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^And by “the him,” I mean that I really need an edit button, DCU! :stuck_out_tongue:

I honestly never thought “A hero can’t killl because they are good and it’s not good to kill”. There are certain situations where killing is going to be a more positive choice than letting live. It has nothing to do with morals but rather a bigger picture - what’s best for everyone.

So yeah, gonna agree with the OP and say that the no killing thing is crap. I mean, in a perfect world heroes would have no need to kill but what world is perfect anyway?

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In terms of morality, one of the Ten Commandment is

Do Not Murder not Do Not Kill.

Killing in self defense or as a soldier is not murder

Philosophy wise There is the Trolley Problem: Can you deliberately kill one person to save many more?

In practical terms great villains are hard to find so they can’t be killed off.

On story world terms vigilantes will kill subdued foes will be hunted down by the police. Beating them up and leaving them tied up for the police is okay.

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If Batman kills Joker or Mr. Freeze, or Bane, is he justified in playing judge, jury and executioner? If he crosses the line of deliberately killing, what makes him any different than those villains he has killed?

Same for Superman killing Luthor or Parasite, GL killing Sinestro or Atrocitous, and the list goes on.

If these heroes start willfully killing, aren’t they doing the one thing people are afraid they might do, and “playing god”? They now have put themselves above the law. The very thing that someone like G. Gordon Godfrey has railed as a risk. Do we really want G. Gordon to be able to say, “I told you so.”

Do we want the “Justice Lords” to supplant the Justice League?

And the “no-kill” rule is really defined as knowingly, willingly and explicitly trying and succeeding to kill.

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@DeSade: The thing that makes him different in those cases is utilitarianism. Batman would be killing one mass murderer to save countless lives. You’re right that he would be acting above the law in doing so, but he’s already acting above the law. I’m not saying that Batman or anyone else would be right in doing these things, but it’s not quite the same as murdering David Letterman’s entire studio audience with toxic gas or freezing an entire city.

@alex as has been stated, even with that justification, no one appointed the hero judge, jury and executioner. They would and should be hunted and prosecuted as severely as their victim. We are a society of laws and morals; heroes endeavor to enforce them and protect those who need their help. Those that cross that line and murder, may be many things but hero isn’t one of them.

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No one appointed the heroes as law enforcement agents, either.* Superheroes have no right to enforce the law. If they are permitted to play police officer up to a certain point, why wouldn’t they be allowed to use lethal force? It’s an arbitrary distinction.

*Notable exception: Batman from 1941 to 1986.

@alexanderknox You can qualify it however you want he killed humans whether you like it or not. I haven’t even given an opinion on this issue. I’m just stating the fact of what I read in response to something someone else said, that Batman doesn’t kill. Clearly he has and may in the future. As for my opinion sometimes…they gotta go! Sometimes when somebody’s got to go wonder woman spends their head around.

Spins not spends, sorry voice text geheh

@alex really you are unaware of all citizens’ right of a citizens arrest; the evidence would have to be more compelling for conviction. There is no right for a citizen to kill except in self defense.

Utilitarianism is a feeble foundation to build on. Even police use is lethal force exists (or is at least supposed to) be the action of last resort in self-defense. Not as a mechanism to justify deliberate murder.

If Batman or any other hero stands upon the willful killing argument of utilitarianism, they are also shredding the constitution and manga carta as they do so.

Everyone, even the most vile, still has the right to due process of law. If not, than we have no legal system. We have no law except “if you can kill someone you deem worthy of death, have at it.”

To side with this is to embrace dystopia.

You have created The Justice Lords, but worse. Is that the world heroes should help us build? Because as soon as they cross the willful killing line, that is what we will have.

Show of hands all those that want an earth prime dystopia?

I’ll pass.

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That’s not consistent across the states. Not every state allows for citizen’s arrests, and not every state bars citizens from using lethal force in a citizen’s arrest. The usual guideline is that the citizen may use reasonable force, but Batman has been known to exceed that force. Furthermore, he goes beyond arresting people: he often uses terroristic threatening against them.

And Batman’s entire mission is inconsistent with utilitarian principles. If he’s out to make society better on the broad scale, Bruce Wayne is infinitely better equipped to do that. Batman saves one person at a time. That’s far more consistent with the values system of a Kantian individualist who believes that every life is worth saving.

And fine. He briefly, in one continuity, under two writers who weren’t on the book that long, claimed to have killed people and locked one guy in a closet for a while before changing his mind. I think the reason that was walked back is because it’s not consistent with Batman’s individualist ethics. Individualists believe in personal responsibility. If the Joker decides to kill someone, that’s on the Joker because he’s a conscious entity capable of making his own decisions. And then you’ve got Batman, motivated entirely by the trauma of witnessing a murder. While I grant that it doesn’t mean that he’d be “no better” than the Joker or somebody, it seems clear to me that he thinks killing is an unacceptable measure to begin with.

Plus, if he doesn’t kill, why doesn’t he use guns? He’s clearly not afraid of them, since he faces opponents who use them all the time. So, you can attribute it to some mysterious compulsion with some vague Freudian relation to his parents’ death, or you can say it’s because guns can’t be reliably used non-lethally. And if it’s because they make too much noise or the aforementioned compulsion, why wouldn’t he use knives or crossbows like the Huntress? He has a very oddly limited arsenal for someone who’s willing to take a life. And if it’s only in self-defense, I’d say he has to defend himself pretty regularly.

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