Should heroes ever kill? If so, should they only kill in self defense, only in defense of others...

Should heroes ever kill? If so, should they only kill in self defense, only in defense of others, or simply when a villain is bad enough to deserve it?

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Are you fucking kidding? Do you know how many problems would be solved if heroes started killing murderous villains? gtfo

yes please, i want joker dead

It should be a last resort, especially when you remember how many heroes used to be supervillains (Hawkeye, Rogue, ect).
But when you've got fuckers like the Joker? Fuck it, kill his ass.

true heroes windrape the villains into being good guys. who will mindrape other villains into being good guys

I don't know about in every situation, but in the op pic definitely.

No, they should leave it to the government, and the justice system should be written as actually capable of doing its job.

But readers like their favorite villains coming back, so you'll never see them killed permanently or locked away for good so we'll never have either

Hell yeah. Not usually executions, but simply in the heat of battle or when someone is simply to malignant to let live. When you're fighting Omnipotus Deathfuck the Gigagod, killing him is just common sense.

As often as these bad guys are in the process of trying to kill thousands of people, it's more than justifiable.

Some asshole runs into a drug store with a shotgun and asks for all the starburst he can carry. You, assuming you have a piece, can spread his brains all over the candy isle.

Meanwhile the Joker is running around with a detonator trying to blow up boats containing hundreds of people and these fucking heroes can't muster up the intestinal fortitude to snuff his lights out.

Here,
Solid point, so I'll add: heroes should use lethal force when necessary, but only when necessary. Snapping Zoe's neck (lol) is reasonable when there's no other way to stop him from hurting anyone. Throwing Joker off a roof because he's a bad guy shouldn't be ok.

Depends on the villain, I'd say. Does Catwoman deserve it as much as Joker?

Zod* god dammit phone

>It should be a last resort
Yeah for the average hero I think killing a villain should be a big dramatic moment like Colossus killing Riptide or Superman killing The Negative Zone criminals in Byrne's run

Punisher and Wolverine can tear through mooks all day, but that's why the're antiheroes

>antiheroes

Wolverine has always been an unrepentant murderer. Killing people is his *first* solution to any problem. It's also his other solutions too.

Yeah and he's still a protagonist

yeah, joker should have gotten the death sentence.... 1000 times over. but no they keep trying to send him to rehab after he kills a hundred people and is captured by batman.

Yes, only if they've done something heinous enough worth killing, or if they are an imminent threat.

Go to bed Jason.

The problem is that villains kill, other than intentionally being assholes to people, casually resorting to murder and indiscriminate killing is what makes a villain a villain.
There's only a few dividing lines between superheroes and supervillains as is and almost all of those lines get blurred at one time or another.
Punisher's a killer.
Guy Gardner's a jerk to everyone.
Deadpool's a mercenary gun for hire.
Gambit's a thief.
Batman's paranoid and manipulative.
Elektra's an assassin.

Sometimes it only comes down to a difference of motivations, but even there it's hard to find the line between good and evil.

Magneto fights for mutant rights, Poison Ivy is an environmentalist, Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom just want to prove their own value.

Killing is a pretty bad thing to do, it's not actually the worst thing you can do to people, but it's bad enough to be that dividing line.
Anyone who doesn't understand how wrong a thing it is, they're the villain.

Letting people continue to kill when you could easily stop it is just as bad as killing people

this
you have to consider the meta implications of killing villains

Killing is an inherently un-heroic act, but the world of comics often leave characters with no other choice. Yeah, putting a villain through the justice system rather than your own judgement is the right thing to do, but prisons in comics have revolving doors, open windows, and paper walls. And that's not even getting into dealing with beings that have superpowers. Incapacitating, imprisoning, or depowering villains often isn't an option.

No. If the heroes killed regularly than writers would have to keep making new characters up.

No it's not. The presumption that you can predict with 100% accuracy that another human being is going to go out, in the future, and kill someone, is a facile basis for your shitty argument.

Try again when you turn 17.

>Killing is an inherently un-heroic act
Patently, empirically, and annotatively false statement. You could not be more literally incorrectly. Nothing in the definition of heroic or heroism mentions anything with regard to taking the lives of others.

Also, you fail to distinguish "killing" from "murder", which goes to show how poorly thought-out your viewpoint is.

Depends on the hero and the tone of the story.
Or resurrecting them.

All memes aside, I have always agreed with V's stance. It's short and simple:

>violence *can* be used for good

He elaborates no further on the specifics. Just that it simply can be used for good. And I think that is the truth. World War II couldn't have been solved by trying to calm Hitler with a hippie circle singing Kumbaya. Violence was necessary.

This is ridiculous, IMO.

It's clear as day that killing the worst villains -- the ones who represent a clear danger to humanity -- is perfectly acceptable, especially if the law isn't able to do it. I mean, for fuck's sake, doing things that law-abiding cops can't do is why 99.9% of all heroes start out as vigilantes in the first place.

The only -- let me repeat -- ONLY reason why no-kill rules are a thing in the Big 2 is because you need to keep (super)villains alive so that 1) they can be re-used and 2) you don't have to do a big hoopla of death and then resurrection/replacements/etc.

You can argue the merits of killing -- whether it makes someone good or bad, what exactly does one need to do to deserve being killed -- but the fact of the matter is, if continually giving an evil person second chances means more and more people die, then they should be executed. Period.

Put simply, see .

You know, I could talk about how situations often have alternatives to having to take a person's life that are rarely considered and go into my personal philosophy about the matter, but I have a feeling your responses will be focused entirely on dictionary definitions of "heroism" and "murder" and explained with overly complex vocabulary in a vain attempt to pass for intellectualism.

Nah I think you can definitely argue some heroes just don't have it in their morality to kill. There's no real reason why it should be up to them to kill either. You bring up the whole idea that they take up vigilantism to do what cops can't, but since they chose to do this they can choose not to compromise their morals.
Besides it's not like they'd stay dead anyways.

Not true, but it is a passive devaluing of life.
Batman takes no personal responsibility for the life he choses to save time and time again: The Joker's life.
He thinks that it's a question of absolutes, that you either kill or don't kill, and that somehow that's the dividing line between right and wrong, he isn't ever willing to compromise that belief, even when the greater good would be served by stopping The Joker's killing sprees once and for all.
But that's different from ignoring the bloodshed and not trying to stop the killing altogether.
He's still trying to do good and save lives, he's just compromised by his obsessive nature.

You can rationalize your lack of a response with whatever assumptions you care to cherry pick. It isn't gonna stop your original post from being wrong.

He said "continue" killing hence you have evidence of what said person is willing & capable of doing.

>There's no real reason why it should be up to them to kill either
People will fucking die if they don't.
That is like saying I don't gave the right to choose to save someone hanging off a cliff begging for help.

I think there are situations where it's reasonable. To my knowledge, there have been a few villains where no one really complained whenever a hero broke their no-kill rule on them:

>Superman killing Darkseid any number of times
>Earth 2 Superman killing The Anti-Monitor
>Nova killing Annihilus (only Marvel example I can think of, but I'm sure there's more)
>Superman killing Zod and the other Phantom Zone criminals
>Superman "killing" Doomsday
>Superman killing Imperiex (Superman kills a lot of people)

I don't really understand what you're trying to say. Are you saying because he chooses not to stop Joker doesn't make him guilty for the lives that Joker took, when he could have easily put an end to this?

Despite all the problems Man of Steel had, Supes killing of Zod was one of the best ways to deal with the killing dilemma.

Reading old adventure books, people used to be absolutely fine with shooting and killing armies of criminal thugs, bloodthirsty natives, treasonous spies and more.

Killing is in no way inherently un-heroic.
It's not because the concept of heroic changes in different cultural contexts.
The wounded soldier that rushes the machine-gun nest and single-handedly saves his squad by killing the enemy has completed an act of heroism in the battlefield.
War is bloody hell full of death, in that context killing isn't a disqualifier for being heroic.
However, if the Punisher walks up to Lex Luthor on the street and blows his brains out with a .45, he may be in just as much danger of being killed by Lex but it's an unprovoked act of violence in a non-hostile environment.
It doesn't matter if Lex Luthor is an unstoppable killer who gets away with monsterous behavior, or that if the bullet misses that means certain death for Frank.
In THAT context it's unheroic.

I don't know. Am I going to let psychopaths alive so they can continue on to kill people just because of a self-proclaimed moral code I've made up to justify myself running around in tights across the urban landscape?

In that context, the heroism comes from the fact he's willing to put himself at risk from society in order to do what has to be done, but it also runs the risk of saying he's moving beyond society, above it, essentially and is contemptuous of it's rules.

It's a thin line.

On street level here is I understand, but what about the more cosmic and magical villains? Like ones who just can't into the legal system and the hero has to be judge and jury with.

I just consider a lot of situations where a heroic character is using a gun and I think, "what if they had rubber bullets?"

Superhumans notwithstanding, you are going to incapacitate somebody with that. Rubber bullets still hit really fucking hard. You don't get up from a good shot. And that's not the only thing you could do. People almost never even consider the possibilities of nonlethal means of dealing with hostiles. They can resolve a lot of situations just fine.

It's more like not having the right to push someone off a cliff.
People will die if you do kill them. Including themselves the likely fallout on top of that is more deaths. Then they'll just come back later anyways.

Not guilty, responsible.
Those people that The Joker has killed, after Bats had his chance to just let him die in one of many innumerable ways, they wouldn't be dead if Batman hadn't saved The Joker from that fall that one time, or that assassin, or that bomb, or etc. etc.
Batman is responsible for saving the Joker's life, and for the consequences of that.
But personal guilt only lies in The Joker because he's making his own choices to maim and murder. It wasn't destiny that The Joker would kill again, he has free will, and because it was his choice and not Batman's those crimes are actions that Batman's not guilty of.

>It's more like not having the right to push someone off a cliff.
No its fucking not, the act of killing someone who is seconds from murdering another person and not doing it is choosing to let the victim die period.
>People will die if you do kill them
A murderers life & a innocent victims life are not equal.

>Should heroes ever kill?
No. Only the mentally ill think so.

That's a commonly held principle, but the question is if that would still be the proper answer when you'e holding the gun and across the room is the madman with his finger on the [LAUNCH] button.
With seconds to act and millions of lives on the line, is it still immoral or unethical to kill?

Absolutism is always a fundamentally invalid philosophy.

>Hero kills gang that's putting drugs on the street
>Another gang swoops in and takes it place

"continue" implies future killings. Which you cannot predict with 100% accuracy. Killing someone because "they will continue killing" is a fallacy; you simply cannot know what they are going to do in the future. You can guess. But then you've killed someone by basically pretending to be a mind reader, which you aren't.

This. You can't kill someone for what they MIGHT do, that's sheer lunacy and the fundamental reason why things like thought crimes are stupid. We have a justice system for a reason.

It IS immoral and unethical, but it's the lesser evil of the two choices given.

>Should heroes ever kill?
Yes.

cnn.com/2016/08/26/us/new-mexico-child-murder-mother-arrested/index.html
Do some people deserve death? Should a proper vigilante give it to them?

That's just misidentifying the target, not an argument against killing as a type of solution.

AS A LAST RESORT yes. but only and I can't stress this enough, AS A LAST RESORT.

No murdering a defeated villain because arkham doesn't work

No going out for blood right out the gate

And this isn't a pass for writers to constantly put the heroes into these situations either and they shouldn't just shrug it off. But I do believe there is a good middle ground between Batman and the Punisher

If it's the lesser of the two evils given as the options it is by definition ethical.

>No, they should leave it to the government, and the justice system should be written as actually capable of doing its job.
But it isn't? Why not portray the authorities and legal system as being as incompetent, corrupt and unfair as they actually are?

As to the OP question, there's room for both kinds of character. Readers as well as writers choose who they consider heroes based on their own moral code. A lot of modern superheroes don't kill because that's been the prevailing morality of the time, especially with the people working in the industry. But it wasn't long ago literature's heroes did kill and they probably will do again, given the darker times we're moving into and what society is starting to consider "necessary" to fight evil.

If the government or justice system actually worked why would Bats go out at night?

>It IS immoral and unethical
To kill someone seconds away from killing millions of innocents? How is that immoral?

>No its fucking not, the act of killing someone who is seconds from murdering another person and not doing it is choosing to let the victim die period

Do you not know how superheroes work? They have powers specifically to avoid that kind of situation to begin with, and even if they are placed in that situation, the majority of heroes have the ability to stop it without killing anyways. You're creating a poor strawman built on our own reality, completely ignoring the simple truth that superheroes don't work on our reality.

Well I think the idea is that you still register it as bad. Yes you did the "right thing" but you shouldn't feel good about it after wards. It doesn't become "RIGHT" because the alternative was worse.

Killing IS bad, it's just that we don't really live in a world that always allows us to be nice.

OP didn't say superheroes, just heroes.

That's really not any type of valid argument.
First off, it ignores the question.
Then there's the fact that comicbooks DO deal with this dilemma all the time.

So you obviously avoided answering the question and casualled your ignorace all over this thread.
You've just wasted a post with this crap.

>Then there's the fact that comicbooks DO deal with this dilemma all the time

Yes, they do, and most of the ones that don't kill managed to do so without resorting to killing, specifically to address this. Again, you're doing nothing but creating a strawman, and a poor one at that.

Batman ALWAYS has some bullshit that lets him save them at the last second, plus he doesn't really have the tools to murder someone to stop an immediate killing.
I was under the impression you were talking about "If Batman doesn't kill Joker, then he'll obviously go to kill someone else eventually" not "If Batman doesn't kill Joker RIGHT NOW, he's killing someone in the next second"
To pitch in?

Comic writers also tend to have no idea how the actual legal system works.

Strawman arguments are when you cherrypick your scenario so that your previous claims are validated in that specific situation, and then a false argument is made that that unique situation is aplicable to all other scenarios.
Batman is not the only superhero to ever exist.
His example is not the sum total of the comicbook industry.
It is proof of how inconsistent your reasoning is that you have to pretend every comic is written for slow-witted children.

You're aware you're arguing with two different people right?

Hell Yeah, i hate Max Lord so much.

And I only had to make the one point.
Their entire argument collapses when you cite the Superman examples. Zod. Doomsday.

>Guy Gardner's a jerk to everyone.
How is this even an argument? really guy a fraggin hero all the time, yeah he is the jerk but with a golden heart.

It's an example of a classic villain trait.
And there's supervillains with "a heart of gold" out there too. Bizarro only wants to help people.
So what makes Gardner a hero and Bizarro a villain?
The death toll one wracks up.

It depends on the type of hero you're writing. I fully enjoy heroes who won't cross that line and Kenshiro-like merciless heroes alike. It's only fiction, I don't cry for spilt ink.

It's a line I'd prefer not to cross.

Once I started, I wouldn't be able to quit.

>You can't kill someone for what they MIGHT do
Where do you draw the line? Someone has a gun pointed at another person's head and is threatening to pull the trigger, or they claim to have a bomb that they're going to detonate. They might do it, they might not.

Pretty sure the justice system would say it's okay for a cop to shoot that person dead to prevent them from doing so.

>and Bizarro a villain
Dude, bizarro never was and 90% time treated like a villain. Supes like him, lex love him, other people love him and he died like a hero to save lives so many times because he is not a villain. He is like Starman Grundy, not evil but more childHulk. And Guy hero because he always hero, without ring he find meta powers, withoit them he just found gods armor, then sinestro ring, than his fists, etc. He wants to do good so much even cripple not scare him.

Yeah no, morality is not a point system one evil act being preferable to another or good coming from an evil act does not absolve the evil.

>Do you know how many problems would be
solved if heroes started killing murderous villains?

0
the only reason villians keep breaking out of jail is because the audience wants to see them again
if they were killed they'd come back to life somehow anyway

Killing is such a joke in comics that no one cared when Batman killed Joker during Snyder's run

It's one of those things that is better to ignore just like real world physics when reading superhero comics

The line was pretty clearly drawn at at "well, I should kill this guy because he MIGHT escape from jail and he MIGHT kill someone again", not at people actually committing the action.

>Pretty sure the justice system would say it's okay for a cop to shoot that person dead to prevent them from doing so

A ridiculous fallacy, since

1) superheroes (or most heroes anyway) aren't cops

and

2)most have the ability to detain people without the use of lethal methods. Cops don't just shoot people willy nilly user, that's very much a last resort. But heroes have more options then the average cop and therefore have a much further last resort line.

Rubber bullets aren't as accurate and don't travel as far. If the target is wearing thick enough clothing it won't incapacitate them. Also if you're too close and shot them in the wrong place you might even accidentally kill them.

It would be hilarious to see some pussy no kill hero think he's going to stop villians with rubber bullets only to get shot in the face.

So a cop that has the shoot a gunman is evil?

>The line was pretty clearly drawn at at "well, I should kill this guy because he MIGHT escape from jail and he MIGHT kill someone again"
Again? So you don't believe in the death penalty for someone who's already committed murder then? That's fine, but plenty of people do, myself included. I thought you were talking about killing someone who hadn't yet committed murder to stop them doing so.

shit like this is why I can't read cape comics anymore.

The idea that killing is never ok, even when it's concerning existential threats and irredeemable monsters, is a product of the childishness/immaturity of the comic book medium. It's not an accident that staunch non-killers like Batman and Superman kill in their movies.

It's indiscriminate killing which is wrong, and why it's the domain of mentally ill characters like Frank Castle.

if they operate in cooperation with law enforcement they should use the same principles as a police officer
if they work outside law enforcement then it's naturally a grey area innate with vigilantism

> It's not an accident that staunch non-killers like Batman and Superman kill in their movies.

Villains die in comic book movies because death in the only satisfying narrative conclusion for an antagonist when they present a big enough threat.

They have to work as a movies before they work as comic book stories.

>the joker is a mass murdering crime lord
>they keep putting him in a low-security asylum
>he keeps breaking out
>it's clearly batman's fault for not killing the joker

Except nobody itt is saying that. Don't just turn this into another "Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker?" thread.

Besides, the answer to that question is because capeshit stories need to keep going indefinitely and without a conclusive end because that's their business model.