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DC's recent fridging in "Cry for Justice" is really reminding me of something that bugs me in DC comics.
So Prometheus destroyed a city and tons of people and one of them was Lian Harper, Roy's daughter and Ollie's granddaughter. Which has led Ollie to go and kill Prometheus. Which naturally leads to the rest of the JLA having to yell at him about how killing is wrong etc., all leading back to what seems to be DC's favorite Central Question for Superheroes: Do heroes kill?
Most rants that I read on this subject are basically anti-JLA: the guy killed a city full of people. Nobody in their right mind would care if the grandfather of one of them blew his head off. And btw, Batman needs to kill the Joker and drop all this selfish posturing about how heroes don't kill because the guy must have killed twice the population of Delaware so far. At this point their deaths are as much on the heroes' heads as the villains.
This argument makes perfect sense to me. And yet? I really hate it. The problem isn't, imo, that it's stupid that superheroes don't kill, it's that comic writers need to tone the villains the fuck down!!!
Seriously. If I were in charge of comics, I would challenge all writers--well, okay, my first challenge would be that they had to stop killing people for cheap drama and an excuse to have them go out and act like the villains. Also, stop creating kids since their only use is going to be as fridge filler or instantly-aged legacy characters, and if you're going to age them up, that's a clue you didn't really want the character to have a kid. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. The ethically question of killing.
Here's the thing. The real origin of the whole killing dilemma is a meta problem. Take the Joker, since he's far more famous. The Joker is a popular villain. Therefore there's a lot of stories where the Batman fights the Joker. In the Silver Age, Joker was mostly a crook. But then things got dark and the Joker had to get violent. Crazy violent. Like a serial killer with multiple personalities and they're all sadistic murderers.
Now, this is fine when you're just reading the stories and not fretting over the idea of how they fit together. But comics also got a lot more post-modern, is maybe the word. Not only did continuity becoming more important but people within the comic would comment on the comic itself. For instance, by noticing that the Joker is always breaking out of Arkham. It's like the walls are made of paper and yet Batman just keeps putting him in there as if he doesn't remember that he'll get out next week and kill more people. Which leads to the idea that Batman has a personal aversion to killing that's really strong. So strong that that aversion then becomes the true crime in the universe because nobody else really matters.
I just think that this is the type of thing that sounds like Important Adult Ethical Conflict in a comic? But to me it often seems like a really shallow argument that's really a strawman excuse to toss out the law in favor of vigilante murder. If you make the law completely powerless and pretend that Batman is the only guy standing between us and sadistic torture and murder then Batman's a selfish stick in the mud for not strapping on the guns and blowing his head off. And if Prometheus is a guy who can destroy an entire city no, killing him probably would be seen as defending the city from future harm.
Sometimes, frankly, I find myself wondering if people just find the good guy role tiresome and can't wait to push him "beyond the limit" to where he's got an excuse to break the rules. It just bugs me how often, thanks to these stories, conversations about superheroes center around the idea that believing that it actually makes sense for murder for vengeance to be as against the law as other murder can only be a sign of selfishness, naivite, and an inability to live in the real world. I can't even remember the last time a hero took the side of what would be the law or considered the rights of a villain without being labelled a pompous ass. It's like the hero's moral code has become his biggest flaw: Yeah, the Batfamily is really cool but they have this dumb rule about not killing people that they can't even defend the rule or understand it themselves because whatever reason they come up with will be contradicted in the next story so they can be pushed to the same limit again.
Yes, the law doesn't work unless there's some power behind it. That's what gets so taken away in comics so that the villains or the superheroes can shine, I guess. And that doesn't make for an interesting dilemma. It's like humans are just standing there watching the gods of good and evil fight each other and instead of just saying "they're immortal so they can't die" you pretend the gods of evil keep hurting people because the gods of good have a social taboo against killing that means a lot to them but is irrelevent to us.
It's just a pet peeve of mine, the idea that evil is more efficient, more fun, more intelligent and even more human while good is a bizarre set of rules that people only follow because they want to be seen as "good" according to the same useless set of world.
So Prometheus destroyed a city and tons of people and one of them was Lian Harper, Roy's daughter and Ollie's granddaughter. Which has led Ollie to go and kill Prometheus. Which naturally leads to the rest of the JLA having to yell at him about how killing is wrong etc., all leading back to what seems to be DC's favorite Central Question for Superheroes: Do heroes kill?
Most rants that I read on this subject are basically anti-JLA: the guy killed a city full of people. Nobody in their right mind would care if the grandfather of one of them blew his head off. And btw, Batman needs to kill the Joker and drop all this selfish posturing about how heroes don't kill because the guy must have killed twice the population of Delaware so far. At this point their deaths are as much on the heroes' heads as the villains.
This argument makes perfect sense to me. And yet? I really hate it. The problem isn't, imo, that it's stupid that superheroes don't kill, it's that comic writers need to tone the villains the fuck down!!!
Seriously. If I were in charge of comics, I would challenge all writers--well, okay, my first challenge would be that they had to stop killing people for cheap drama and an excuse to have them go out and act like the villains. Also, stop creating kids since their only use is going to be as fridge filler or instantly-aged legacy characters, and if you're going to age them up, that's a clue you didn't really want the character to have a kid. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. The ethically question of killing.
Here's the thing. The real origin of the whole killing dilemma is a meta problem. Take the Joker, since he's far more famous. The Joker is a popular villain. Therefore there's a lot of stories where the Batman fights the Joker. In the Silver Age, Joker was mostly a crook. But then things got dark and the Joker had to get violent. Crazy violent. Like a serial killer with multiple personalities and they're all sadistic murderers.
Now, this is fine when you're just reading the stories and not fretting over the idea of how they fit together. But comics also got a lot more post-modern, is maybe the word. Not only did continuity becoming more important but people within the comic would comment on the comic itself. For instance, by noticing that the Joker is always breaking out of Arkham. It's like the walls are made of paper and yet Batman just keeps putting him in there as if he doesn't remember that he'll get out next week and kill more people. Which leads to the idea that Batman has a personal aversion to killing that's really strong. So strong that that aversion then becomes the true crime in the universe because nobody else really matters.
I just think that this is the type of thing that sounds like Important Adult Ethical Conflict in a comic? But to me it often seems like a really shallow argument that's really a strawman excuse to toss out the law in favor of vigilante murder. If you make the law completely powerless and pretend that Batman is the only guy standing between us and sadistic torture and murder then Batman's a selfish stick in the mud for not strapping on the guns and blowing his head off. And if Prometheus is a guy who can destroy an entire city no, killing him probably would be seen as defending the city from future harm.
Sometimes, frankly, I find myself wondering if people just find the good guy role tiresome and can't wait to push him "beyond the limit" to where he's got an excuse to break the rules. It just bugs me how often, thanks to these stories, conversations about superheroes center around the idea that believing that it actually makes sense for murder for vengeance to be as against the law as other murder can only be a sign of selfishness, naivite, and an inability to live in the real world. I can't even remember the last time a hero took the side of what would be the law or considered the rights of a villain without being labelled a pompous ass. It's like the hero's moral code has become his biggest flaw: Yeah, the Batfamily is really cool but they have this dumb rule about not killing people that they can't even defend the rule or understand it themselves because whatever reason they come up with will be contradicted in the next story so they can be pushed to the same limit again.
Yes, the law doesn't work unless there's some power behind it. That's what gets so taken away in comics so that the villains or the superheroes can shine, I guess. And that doesn't make for an interesting dilemma. It's like humans are just standing there watching the gods of good and evil fight each other and instead of just saying "they're immortal so they can't die" you pretend the gods of evil keep hurting people because the gods of good have a social taboo against killing that means a lot to them but is irrelevent to us.
It's just a pet peeve of mine, the idea that evil is more efficient, more fun, more intelligent and even more human while good is a bizarre set of rules that people only follow because they want to be seen as "good" according to the same useless set of world.
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The non-killing stuff is new to me, though. I thought the current Batman was supposed to be "dark" enough to kill. Guess I got that wrong!
The only comics I've ever followed religiously were Prince Valiant when I was a kid (the one my mother would buy, probably because it was cheap), and Sandman as an adult, which I loved and which had me shadowing the doorstep of the comic shop before every issue. I'm curious: have you ever posted about what appeals to you in the Bat stories?
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That's a good question about my posting what appeals to me...I think I've done some posts about some aspects I really like or what's going on. Mostly I'm more in it for Robin.:-) He was just always my favorite and even now my favorite thing about the series is the Batfamily more than Batman himself.
I think my mom was a big Prince Valiant fan. I remember reading it in the Sunday comics as a kid--and I like Sandman a lot.
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How can Batman hold to an ideal in a world where the law itself makes no sense? In any reasonable world the Joker would be long dead by now. It's not just Batman who's an idiot for continually putting him back in Arkham, it's the judges and juries and lawyers who don't find a way to give him the death penalty. Once Batman turns the Joker over to The Law, it's up to The Law to find a way to either hold the Joker or kill him. Instead it's like they throw up their hands and turn on the batsignal and say, "Oops! Sorry Batman! He got out again. Guess you'd better go catch him!" Nobody takes responsibility for anything in the comics world, except Batman, who takes responsibility for *everything*.
One comic series I really liked was the Batman Adventures/Batman and Robin Adventures/Gotham Adventures series, which was based on the excellent 1992 Batman: The Animated Series. The art is consistent and the storytelling is top-notch. Since it's billed as an all-ages comic, the villains can't be the horrible psychotic mass-murderers that they're portrayed as elsewhere. It makes the dilemmas Batman faces much more reasonable and poignant, and his rules are far more understandable. The stories are mostly episodic, but the art and characterizations are very consistent.
Anyway, in sum, THIS: it's that comic writers need to tone the villains the fuck down!!!
YES.
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