What is it about Batman that makes people so divided on whether he should use guns and kill or not...

What is it about Batman that makes people so divided on whether he should use guns and kill or not? Why is there a sizable group of people that want to ignore that no guns and killing is a central part of his character? How come Spider Man never runs into this issue?

>spiderman literally never runs into this issue
ok kid

how many of his sidekicks have died again?

Because it's fits the character.

0

3/4 robins, and Tim is supposed to be dying soon too.

Who are the people advocating for Spider Man to kill and use guns?

Dick never died
>Inb4 he thinks forever evil counts

It comes up a lot more often in Batman stories because of how brutal both he and his villains are.

Just because they got better doesn't mean they didn't die.

There's this perception that of all superheroes in entertainment media, Batman is the "mature" one. The newer Batman movies and some of the newer comics really like to push this angle, I guess because the writers know that this is the Batman people seem to want- dark, humorless and as realistic as possible.

The problem is that the further you push Batman toward realism, the less sense he really makes, and the more obvious it gets that the way he actually operates is completely backwards. The whole "why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker" meme came into existence because Batman and his rogues have gradually been elevated in seriousness and threat level until, yeah, you have to wonder why Batman WOULDN'T take more decisive action.

But at the end of the day, he's still a comic book character. A certain amount of ridiculousness comes with that, and a sizable portion of looney tunes logic is necessary to make it function at all. One of those conceits is that Batman's methods are the most reasonable decision a civic-minded billionaire could make, and that, yes, killing his opponents is a step too far.

So I guess the problem we have here is that we have a sizable portion of people that want Batman to exercise logic in a genre that really only requires soft application of any kind of real-world reasoning, when it applies it at all. You have people that want a cartoon character to start acting like a real person would. I guess this is because of how he's marketed, and how people tend to confuse "dark" with "mature".

it isn't an issue for spiderman or even superman. they both avoid killing unless its literally the only option. Superman was more than prepared to kill Doomsday because he knew what an enormous threat he was, and that killing him was the only way to stop him.

Batman's code is usually "no killing, EVER!" which seems like a cop-out

It does count. He died, just because he got revived again doesn't mean he wasn't dead.

They really aren't anything special in the DCU.

Why doesn't Tweety just kill Sylvester?

He wasn't revived, he faked his death

luthor revived him user
then he faked his death later

I feel like the fact that so many kids think "just kill 'em already" is the "sensible" solution is more of an indictment of society than it is of the way Batman is written.

Spidey has never killed anyone on purpose.

He ACCIDENTALLY killed someone who basically ran themselves into his fist as an elaborate suicide once. That's the only canonical occasion I'm aware of.

It's a FAR more cynical time thanks to the internet. You can spend all day watching people die in tragedies and war if you want.

It's part that, part that thanks to massive news media, all kinds of bad news from all over the world are spread all over the internet and sometimes even shoved to your face.

The youth grew up exposed to this, so their perception of the world is that everything is terrible and the only way to fix it is taking extreme action.

This.

In the Joker's case it absolutely is, tho.

I know, I'm just bored and exhausted by it anymore. That's the form my own cynicism takes. I'm cynical about how cynical everything around me is.

>kids think "just kill 'em already" is the "sensible" solution

It is sometimes.

I don't know you user, but you seem like you need novelty in your life. Have you considered some LSD?

Killing the Joker is the only "sensible" solution. No prison can hold him, no rehabilitation is possible, and he will continue to kill until DC comics folds and the character fades from memory. A fictional character like Batman can take liberties with realism in order to tell an interesting story.

If anything, the idea that an absolute "no killing" policy is viable is an aberration produced by modern society.

The problem with the Joker is that he's barely a character. Just a dumb monster that causes trouble. There's no real reason to not put him down. At least many other villains have capacity to do good under normal conditions or at the very least not terrorize people. There's pretty much no reason to not kill him.

I tried LSD once, I genuinely wasn't impressed.

Colors got a little rainbow-y and the ceiling texture looked like it was writhing around. Other than that, it felt the fucking same as being drunk.

I hear that a lot of tripping is what you bring to it, people who have these personality-altering religious experiences you hear about or who see spiders crawling up their arms were basically getting what they expected to get.

>A fictional character like Batman can take liberties with realism in order to tell an interesting story.

But when you take liberties, you lose what the character is ABOUT.

The core of almost all superheroes, the classical ones, not the edgy antiheroes designed to be a subversion like Punisher, is that they just want to supplement or improve the system of laws that already exist for society. They want to make CATCHING criminals more efficient or successful, so they go out and they do a larger scale version of "a cop is chasing a purse snatcher, I put my foot out and trip him so the cop can catch up"

Sentencing is what courts do. It's not a hero's job. They shouldn't even be TOUCHING the idea of passing judgment about what to do WITH the criminal once he's caught.

Bruce Wayne inherently believes in the system, he believes the law CAN work. He has no problem with the judges, it's just that the cops in Gotham are corrupt or inept and need to be supplemented so there's less muggers in the alleys.

not really guns but more about breaking the no-kill rule.

and to answer your quesiton, it's because the writers have beat this two ideas into our heads with each issue
>muh dead parents
>muh no-kill rule
they reference this so often that it kinda became status quo, and it adds up to the idea that bruce is the perfect human, that can overcome everything through sheer willpower and brains.

now we're left with a character that doesn't want to kill, and with writers who write him as a bad ass that doesn't need to kill

Beating up criminals one at a time is going to change jack shit.

It's not a story that holds up under heavy scrutiny. They're kids books.

I think it's unpopular to have a "no killing" policy. A vocal minority.

>once

have you ever considered you just got ripped off and took shitty lsd?

Calling it a policy or rule is probably what bothers me more than their mentality. Like it shouldn't be some struggle or a hard choice. They can just not kill.

the opposite fits the character?

no, Robin faked LUTHERS death
Batman was revived

yes, it fits the character

instead of using the martial arts he spent years trajnING for....he shoots guns.

Instead of sneaking up behind people...he shoots them.

instead of using the shadows...he shoots the shadows.

instead of dressing up like a bat....he dresses up like a gun.....

wait when did damian come into play

was he secretly batman the whole time

Doesn't help when you have writers who care more about controversy and making their mark on the character rather than telling a good story. Slott, Snyder, list goes on.

>annoyingly stick to the status quo for 70 years
>capefags blame everyone else but DC

I really want to know what's going through the minds of people like to think that making a profit isn't the main reason the big 2 do the same things over and over again.

Wow that batman sounds really boring.

Bad LSD, bad attitude, bad trip

/thread

>batman
His name would be Randy Magnum.

this answer is so good I'm wondering if you wrote it in advance.

still awesome tho. not judging. I mean, I've given this thought too...

Paladin

>How come Spider Man never runs into this issue?
mostly because the majority of his rouge gallery are not serial killers while most of Batman's are insane killers

As for the gun issue it's because he is just a man.
Spider-man can if he so chooses punch with the force of a gun. He can climb walls and sense danger. He has a lot of power.
But Bat-man is just a human with toys

OK, am I seriously the first person in this thread to bring this up?

People pester Batman about the killing and guns thing because he absolutely used guns and killed folks in his first appearances. Then they mellowed him for kids.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you like the no-killing Batman you are a fucking pussy and a literal child.

For all their faults, the JL8 fan strips actually recently sold me (after 20 years) on Bruce Wayne being relatable to a poor working class slob like myself. It was this one and the next...

Sure, his never has any financial or existential worries that doesn't put before himself. But everyone (sane) loves their family... and this is the closest he will ever get to having his parents back. His butler. Sure, he sees him as a father, but he isn't his real dad.

>Then they mellowed him for kids.

They mellowed him out because proto-HUAC gutted the comic book industry, not because of soccer moms. 50's-60's Batman went campy because it was politically dangerous to do anything else.

No, he went soft before the CCA shitshow.

he trying to say that they struggle with the question of killing spidey has gone into fights with the intention to kill but something ends up changing his tactic

>I've cookies
I've never heard someone contract "I have" in that context, and I've been to 'tucky where they use more contractions than full words in any given sentence.

Superheroes aren't agents of change, they're agents of stability and restoring a peaceful status quo in cities that are fictionally overrun with more crime than is normal (outside of Detroit) or with super-crime. Like how Superman doesn't waste his time with bank robbers unless they have jetpacks and lasers. He doesn't need to, the cops can handle that shit. What they can't handle is giant robots and alien invasions and THAT is what he's there for.

Because batman wears a lot of dark colors, and that appeals to angry 13 year olds.

>bank robbers
They've had stories in Metropolis with some sorta mundane crime like this and I never understand why anyone would ever do that in the middle of the day with Superman being a thing.

>They can just not kill

Except this is the Big 2. You're not the only writer who'll ever work on the character, and you have fans asking things and demanding things all the time. So if you don't make your character's choices and personality traits into hardline stances and say so outloud, then the next guy who comes on the book is destined to write a completely different, out-of-character guy...and if you have a guy who the audience percieves as being irredeemable and "needing" to be put down, like the Joker, you're going to get a million "why doesn't he just kill him"s and "it's his fault the guy keeps getting away with it, only he has the power to stop him, so what's his problem"s.

I think that his unwavering moral code is a huge appeal to a lot of people. The whole point is that he's supposed to be better than the criminals who treat life as less valuable than he does. But it is kinda silly and unreasonable at points, i mean how many people has he killed through inaction by now?

It's a lot more common in origin-era stories, but when you have a long-established Supes, every time I ever see a writer do a seemingly mundane crime, it lasts for like two or three pages and then the motherfuckers go "Surprise! We're actually Intergang! Out come the jetpacks and lasers!"

I wouldn't put it completely on Batman or anyone at this point. Somehow the entire system is so corrupt, inept and just flat out awful that criminals keep going to Arkham instead of prison and inmates just walk outta both.

I've seen loads of arguing about whether or not he should kill people, but I've seen virtually no-one say whether or not he should use guns

Who can stop prep time batman?

This page made me hate Spider-Man for a while, it just gets to the point where you're washing your hands of actually dealing with the problem.

Literally every time he's used guns in comics - non canon or canon - the point is to show this is Batman doing something normally out of character for him, that he's at some extreme and willing to cross a line.

He also mellowed out because the writers thought it wouldn't make sense for the character to use guns. It's in one of the history of Batman books, long after they'd need to hide the fact.

You're the first person to bring it up because you're crying about something that happened in the year 1940.

Crossing his line IS what's fits character, my actual point.

If Batman was reasonable and totally effective he would be Green Hornet.

No, he can't. Spider-Man is lifter, not puncher.

I can buy Batman not killing the Joker out of sheer willpower, but the fact that Joker hasn't died yet or some random ass cop hasn't shot him is completely loony toons batshit that doesn't fit at all in the modern DC. He's a looney tunes character taken out of the past and plopped into present day to become painted as a monster.

Guns for cunts.

He went no guns, but not no-kill.

Captain America killed only in 40s too (with exceptions), but nobody bitching about it when he kills in movies.

Is that fucking Wolverine over there
Wolverine should be gungho about killing for a good cause. What the fuck

Quality post.

The "why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker?" thing has always bugged me though. Sure, his escape is always written into canon, but the only reason he does is specifically have Batman fight him again and sell comics. The issue inherently has this weird meta quality to it that contributes to this illogical comic book world.

Because let's face it, if this were real and there weren't omnipotent writers breaking Joker out of Arkham every day, it wouldn't be hard for Batman to find a nonlethal solution to this. I mean, maybe the Joker would get one breakout on his own, but after that? No. The extra security would be too tight or Batman could help design a better containment facility or a JLA member could help design one or they could use pre-existing otherworldly prisons or some shit.

There reaches a point where you gotta go, "it's just a comic."

No, they got rid of the guns because Robin showed up and having him be a serial killer while raising him would've looked bad.

You mean he used guns in the early comics that arent even canon anymore? No killing and no using guns became a central part of his character. It's called character development.

Captain America didn't throw his shield at first amd Superman couldnt fly but we dont see people clamoring for those traits to return.
>85111044
Marvel characters are just plain less known that DC characters so Marvel is able to take more liberties with the source material. Everyone and their mother knows Batman has a strong moral code that would be out-character for him if he violated it.

Also Cap and Batman are just in different positions in life. Cap is a super soldier who fights in large scale war-like battles. Batman is a street vigilante.

Gee, it's almost as if those are two separate continuities altogether.