So...is this wrong? Do we want heroes in fiction that don't pull punches and do what has to be done (i.e. "frick around and find out" heroes rather than "have you learned your lesson for the 47th time?")? Have the old ways died?
So...is this wrong? Do we want heroes in fiction that don't pull punches and do what has to be done (i.e.
Both extremes are dumb. A hero should be willing to kill, but he should also hope he doesn't have to. Someone like the Joker needs to get got, but supervillains aren't Pringles.
Blame the comic industry.
Villians die = less comic
Villians live = more comic
Pretty much this, but it's a result of comics attempting to emulate pulp books without understanding why pulp books worked.
Pulp books like The Shadow worked because there were very few recurring bad guys. They were the few that survived encounters with the hero because they were that tough or that big of a threat. And they survive by re-using the old trope of "the bad guy surely must have died in that crash/explosion/fall", only to pop up again later on as a surprise. They became major villains since they recurred, and comic writers thought the key to good villains was to keep them alive because of this.
Maybe so but that was then. Comic books and superheroes are seen differently now, in no small part to mainstream moving pictures media reinterpreting the expectations of heroes to be less restrained (look at Iron Man blowing a hole in that dude in IM3 — looked him dead in the eye and didn't flinch).
This is why manga is superior. Villains die.
Seems frickin' brutal.
Oh yes and they never come back
Is it just me or is that guys arm super short?
Why the frick are Japs so bad at art?
JJK has always had kinda shit art.
This scratchy bullshit is in vogue now, just like poser is in with capeshit.
I always liked Batman Begins' stance. "I'm not going to kill you...but I don't have to save you."
The hero protects the city from you, he's got no obligation to protect you from yourself. No sense in the hero putting themselves at risk to save someone who made their own bed if the mission to save the people from them is complete.
I don't see anything wrong with Superman justfricking ripping apart Doomsday or going 100% all out against Darkseid but losers like.... Toyman and... Parasite... nah go a little easy on them, but yeah Joker living is pretty damn controversial, don't have the IQ points to argue for or against it
The Joker still being alive could be justified for a few reasons:
1) He's Booster Gold's ancestor, and Batman needs to wait until he has a kid to take him out.
2) The Joker is aware that he is a fictional character, and kills people to make sure readers keep buying the comics.
3) We go the Scott Snyder route, and Joker is basically 'IT' from Stephen King's novel.
4) The Joker is a Lovecraftian god in human form, causing insanity to spread wherever he is around.
No. The real reason is that Batman doesn't want to kill him because Batman doesn't want to stop playing with his favorite toy.
Which then goes into "does Batman want a better world or to satisfy an psychotic obsession with fighting crime," thing.
I just want Batman to admit that he cares more about his playtime than the lives of innocent people. Just drop all pretense.
Then go read Punisher.
Why is "go read something else" your best retort over "maybe the story should be fixed", I can't comprehend why you should hate having an audience
Batman doesn’t want anything. He’s ink on paper.
To me, joker is simply a victim of mental illness. You cant blame someone with actual insanity, their brain chemistry is fricked, and he need meds or whatever. You can see the extent of how horrified joker is of himself every so often. Its easy to blame him, but thats lazy, he needs help.
Mental "illnesses" aren't real diseases, it can't excuse his actions. He should just get executed
The Snyder route was that Joker's 'immortality' was all a ruse to mess with Batman
Hell, Logan dragged the already-defeated Silver Samurai to the cliff's edge and threw him over in The Wolverine even though the fight was already over, although I guess Logan making sure the job is finished is in-character regardless.
Once again Batman has the correct take
It's not a problem that some heroes choose not to kill as a personal choice (though we shouldn't propagate the moral lesson that it's wrong to kill anyone and "muh slippery slope" bc it would be moral to kill murderers and, for comic books, certainly moral to kill mass murderers like Joker, or the execution of Zod at the end of the Byrne run, not that I defend every or even most heroes should be willing to get their hands dirty bc taking lives does have a psychological impact on a person, especially if done with your own hands), but worse is the modern morality of forcing every hero to not only not kill but actively work to save villains in jeopardy, which has reached its zenith of ridiculousness in the character of Batman in the 21st century, willing to cut his wards throat to protect his clown boyfriend. I'd be perfectly satisfied with Mr. A becoming the new model, not going out of his way to kill people but will not save those are evil and criminals (saving bad people is acceptable for a few characters as an exception based on their character traits, like most versions of Superman and Perez's Wonder Woman for example, for whom compassion and the protection of all life is at the core of their character)
Kingdom Come is more about showing how 90s style XTREME! superheroes didn't really make any sense in the context of shared universes.
I get that but it poses a larger quandary of what values are we willing to accept. The citizens of Kingdom Come liked that Magog "had a spine" even though the interest was more about bloodlust than heroism. It's the old "how the sausage gets made," situation. Heroes with a fatal streak keeping supervillains out of my affairs is a-ok. I think that mentality has also trickled down to the audience itself, since it removes the ambiguity about the heroes' resolve.
If anything, it's a commentary on the state of the industry at the time.
Mark Waid is a literal manchild who cries in his office.
Masked vigilante comics were inspired by the kkk and birth of a nation. That's the roots.
Why do people take these cartoons so seriously?
Unlike a cop or something, superheroes are powerful enough to subdue criminals without killing them. Once they’ve hauled them into jail it’s really the state’s responsibility for what to do with them. Someone should make a comic where Gotham votes to enact the death penalty and someone like Joker escapes to Batman for protection
The best way is kill when the stackes are dire. Be forgiving when you see hope.
>when the stackes are dire
The problem with KC is that when it was originally pitched by Alex Ross (he was both the writer and artist initially) Superman's abandoning of the world was treated as explicitly the wrong thing for him to do. When DC put Mark Waid on the project the entire story had to be rewritten because Waid believes that Superman has to be infallible, flying space Jesus, which completely gutted the moral underpinning of the story.