Originally published May 20, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1070
One of the questions you hear a lot these days is “When did it become ‘all right’ for heroes to kill?”
The answer, of course, is… well… always.
People look at the comic book heroes who are homicidal, and they point quivering and angry fingers, and declare that we are witnessing the downslide of our society because good guys are killing the bad guys. It’s certainly regarded as something new.
The notion is preposterous, of course.
In Greek myth, heroes did not hesitate to kill opponents… sometimes monsters, sometimes warriors from the opposing side. In the Bible, Samson slew the Philistines. David didn’t exactly wound Goliath and then give him a chance to surrender. In more recent fiction, Sherlock Holmes battled to the death with Professor Moriarty, and Lord Greystoke had been known to commit a few murders in his time, guarded by the law of the jungle. Stakes for humanity’s bigger-than-life heroes have been nothing short of life and death for centuries.
So why should comic book heroes be held to a higher standard than heroes of the Bible or ancient myth? Why should they be holier-than-thou?
The general perception of comic book heroes and the genesis of their relative bloodthirstiness seems to be as follows: No comic book hero ever killed anyone until Wolverine turned a Savage Land guard into chopped meat in an issue of X-Men. The act was surprising enough. But the casualness and blunt feeling of necessity that Wolverine displayed caught many readers off guard. And from there, for those short-hand historians, it seemed but a short jump to heroes leaving bodies piled like cordwood. Thus had the heroes inexplicably become more vicious, more bloodthirsty than the villains they ostensibly oppose.
Is it as cut and dried as that, though?
Let’s figure this out.
The squeamishness of costumed superheroes to take a life might be traceable to Superman’s direct pulp ancestor, Doctor Clark Savage, Junior. Although the Fabulous Five who accompanied Doc didn’t exactly shrink from the idea of putting paid to some of Doc’s nastier opponents (Monk Mayfair, as I recall, was particularly liable to do so), Doc himself shot to wound, or used mercy bullets. True, his grasp of constitutional rights was somewhat tenuous (performing brain surgery to blot out criminal instincts, which was Doc’s habit, would hardly make him a candidate to be the ACLU poster boy) but his moral sense was in the right place.
So it may have been that this merciful aspect of Doc’s make-up became a part of Superman canon, along with Doc’s Fortress of Solitude and his first name. Oh, Superman wasn’t exactly a nice guy in the beginning. He thought nothing of coercing information by sending crooks plummeting downward to their possible (albeit adroitly avoided) deaths. Nor did he hesitate to indulge in such crimes as kidnapping (heads of state, as I recall) if it suited his purposes. Nevertheless, one got more of a sense of cavalier adolescent wish fulfillment rather than any sort of mean-spiritedness or viciousness on his part.
The Batman, however, had his direct predecessor being the Phantom and the Shadow. Both of whom packed guns, and–in the Shadow’s case, at least–didn’t hesitate to use them. As a result, Batman had a much rougher, nastier edge to him, and was eagerly hunted by the police. It was only subsequently that he began working hand-in-glove with the police, and developed a loathing of firearms (the rationale being that he despised guns because a gun was used to kill his parents. I dunno. If I were Batman, I could just as easily argue that it would be poetic justice to use guns against criminals. Guns are used to commit crimes. Why not to stop them as well?)
Then there was the Spectre. He literally scared people to death, but the Spectre was practically God’s triggerman, so that made it okay somehow. If God wanted to punch someone’s ticket, who were we to say no?
As World War II rolled along, Nazis could be killed, and Japanese soldiers. No big deal there.
(Although not Italians so much, it seems to me. Maybe that’s because pizza has much broader appeal than sushi or liverwurst. In fact, have you noticed that this country’s political affiliations seem tied to cuisine? For example, I tend to think that Americans were ready for Nixon to open ties with China because they’d already been devouring shrimp lo mein and fried rice for years. It wasn’t so much that he was reestablishing political ties. He was just going out for Chinese on an international scale. Nor do I think that Clinton could have pushed NAFTA through if they didn’t have tortillas at the salad bar at Wendy’s.)
Anyone who was an enemy of the United States was fair game. But once the Axis powers disintegrated, somehow the bloodlust of the heroes went with it. Heroes shunned terminal solutions, shunned guns. Perhaps America had simply had enough war, enough killing. It was time to put away the weapons of fatal play and make the comic book world of hero vs. villain into a game.
That was the perception, at any rate. Unfortunately the relative silliness of superheroes weren’t enough to support them in the marketplace, as interest in them fell away.
What replaced them?
Crime comics. Horror comics. Comics featuring death, death and more death (this was before Neil Gaiman, when Death became a trademark).
You see? It’s kind of like the conservation of matter and energy: the notion that energy cannot be destroyed. Violence and killing are a sort of negative energy, and the fact that they vanished from superhero comics did not guarantee that the killing would stop. What it did put an end to, for the most part, were superheroes.
With violence and killing excised from the superhero comics, crime and horror comics blossomed. That, of course, was until Wertham et al. put a stop to that.
But all the creators and enforcers of the CCA had to do was look at history to know that they couldn’t make lethal comics go away. All they could do was try and bottle it for as long as possible. Unfortunately, anyone is going to tell you that sooner or later the lid is going to blow off the top, exploding due to the pressure exerted by the capped forces.
Superheroes were fairly benign during their rebirth in the Silver Age. The first stirrings of emotionality came, however, during the advent of the Marvel Age. The Marvel Age heroes weren’t nice. They complained, they crabbed, they seemed rather dyspeptic. There was certainly something on their minds. In retrospect, one presumes they were either feeling homicidal or horny. No one acts that crabby that long for any other reason.
Over at DC, where people had codes against killing and such, it was a much shinier, happier world… until Green Arrow, a second string character, suddenly grew a beard and an attitude virtually overnight. Trick arrows? You gotta be kidding. No more trying to figure out how he managed to stuff one (much less two) of those boxing glove arrows into his quiver. These arrows had points. And, in The Brave and Bold, Green Arrow skewered a guy–although we only saw the guy’s shadow getting nailed–and thought absolutely nothing of it. (Curiously, a much later story had GA killing someone, freaking out over it, shaving his head and becoming a monk or something. So perhaps DC might argue that, in that earlier instance, GA had in fact not killed the guy. Just as some folks tried to argue later that Wolverine had, in fact, not killed the Savage land guard. In both instances, such denials are not nearly as convincing as the first impression the readers got; the impression, I think, that the creators intended to convey before editorial apologists got cold feet.)
Not to mention the Spectre (him again?) who was back with a (naturally) vengeance. The Spectre disposed of evildoers with some of the most gloriously whacked-out methods imaginable. Punishments straight out of EC Comics (remember the guy being turned into a wood statue, and then the Spectre performs tree surgery with a chainsaw?) I would say that the stories were the product of a wonderfully demented mind, but I won’t, because I don’t need a lawsuit on my hands.
Once the cork was out, it was just a matter of time. Suppressed hostility boiled over, and lo, there was Punisher, and Lobo, and Wolverine, and Shadowhawk and… yeah, well, okay… Sachs & Violens.
So you see, it’s not like killer heroes suddenly sprung from nowhere. Manslaughter is part of the human psyche, the fictional gestalt. Throughout our mythic history, someone has always had to die and someone has always had to kill them. It’s never been something that humans have been particularly proud of, but we’ve always understood it.
And yet… yet there’s still a difference somehow. Because death is becoming… well… expected. Amorality is becoming a matter of course.
What makes me think of it is a kid who came up to me at a convention, early on in the run of Spider-Man 2099, who asked when Spider-Man was going to start killing guys.
“He’s not,” I said, not quite understanding the question.
“But… he’s got claws on his fingers,” said the kid.
“True,” I said. “But that’s mostly for climbing walls. He uses them as weapons only as a last resort.”
“I think it would be really cool if he killed lots of guys,” said the kid.
That’s the phrase that sticks most in my mind. “Lots of guys.”
No longer is the shock of one thug getting plunked by GA’s arrow or one guard being hacked, of necessity, by Wolverine, floating the collective boat of the readership. Heroes are expected to kill, not as a last resort, but as a matter of course. Heroes exhibiting restraint is apparently not something to be admired. Readers want their final solution (now there’s a dangerous phrase).
Why is that?
I think I’ve figured it out.
I’ll tell you next column.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, appreciates the knee-jerk human reaction to sanitize the life of Richard Nixon. And, since Nixon was never convicted of a crime, there is no ethical reason to deny him the same sort of burial ceremonies owed any American president. And his accomplishments on the international scene were formidable. Furthermore, he did not (to the best of my knowledge) run around on his wife or have lousy relations with his kids. However, if we make a group effort to expunge the lessons of Watergate from our collective memories, we would be doing all of ourselves a disservice. The consequences of power abused should never, ever, be forgotten… lest subsequent public leaders decide that Americans will tolerate such behavior and follow that path to violation of their Constitutional oaths.)
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So, could sushi and sauerkraut have prevented World War II?
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Other factors that could explain Italy: it was definitely the junior partner, and it did switch to our side during the course of the war. Kind of.
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Seriously… an interesting theory. I might commandeer it for my own blog.
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J.
Based on this theory, it seems like we should have been waging war against Britain instead Germany and Japan. I mean, come on–haggis, kidneys, bread pudding?! These are the real weapons of mass destruction!
If that’s the case, then we can end anti-Semitism by having everyone over to a Passover seder.
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I once read that every single Jewish holiday can be condensed into nine words: “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat!”
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J.
(Who’s had far more Jewish holiday meals than an agnostic WASP is entitled to…)
I always just saw it as creators being worried about the CCA and a repeat of the witchhunt for so long that it just became the norm. And characters like Superman, Batman, and Captain America were permanently changed by it.
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I find it sad that the wish was for the hero to “kill lots of guys,” not even “lots of BAD guys” (which in itself also has many moral questions).
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I found the 90s Deathlok refreshing in that he was a killing machine that refused to kill, too bad a lot of the readers didn’t get the point the writers were making.
The change came a lot earlier than the CCA, though. It’s pretty striking if you read the first “Batman Chronicles” volume; within six months it goes from Batman clearly killing people to an editor’s note saying something like “Note: Batman and Robin are careful to never kill anyone.”
Thanks Doug, I wasn’t aware that it was that early. None of the books on the history of comics that I’ve read have gone into that. And I admitedly have trouble reading any DC that was before Crisis on Infinite Earths. Silver and even Golden Age Marvel I can handle, DC not so much. It just hurts my head.
To be fair, a lot of Doc’s opponents met their doom at the hands of their own fiendish devices. Hoisted on their own petard, as it were. But, yeah, Monk and sometimes Renny weren’t adverse to killing crooks when it seemed called for.
I recall an essay entitled “My Heroes Have Always Been Killers” in an issue of AMAZING HEROES back in the mid to late eighties. I forget who wrote it, but I believe it was a creator. It was in response to then Marvel EiC Jim Shooter’s statement that no Marvel hero had ever killed anybody. I seem to remember Chris Claremont having to re-introduce a Hellfire Club mook that previously had seemed to have been killed by Wolverine, but turns out only to have been injured.
Boy, was that last graph prophetic, or what?
There was an issue of THE ELEMENTALS that consisted of the Elementals sitting around and debating whether they should capture their enemies (and risk them getting loose and killing more people) or just killing them (and ending the threat once and for all — but turning the group into killers). I forget what they decided.
As for the killing-not killing-killing heroes, I think it’s largely a reflection of the society in which the books were written. Superheroes could kill bad guys during WW2 because, well, American soldiers were doing just that. And the resurgence of the homicidal hero came about in the 1980s — when taking the law into one’s hands was “the right thing to do.” Rambo killed police officers and destroyed a town — but because “they drew first blood.” NYC was so full of crime, Bernard Goetz carried a gun on the subway and shot some black teens who threatened him with screwdrivers. Even Reagan secretly funded the Contras (called “Freedom Fighters” — a good name for superheroes) because he knew it was “right” and didn’t care about breaking the law to do so. And the Punisher went from a Spider-Man villain to one of the most popular heroes of the decade.
I remember several years ago on PAD’s old AOL board, I had a discussion with Kurt Busiek about the Punisher and my view that he’s a mass murderer. His victims being equally vile doesn’t mitigate that. If anything, it simply places him into the spectrum of a serial killer, as he has a particular type of victim that he targets.
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My reasoning is simple: Frank Castle gets up in the morning, puts on his kewl skull-logo shirt, packs as much firepower as he can, and sets out to end someone’s life. He doesn’t kill in self defense. He doesn’t kill as a last resort. The beginning and end of his chosen method of “fighting crime” is the pre-meditated death of his target.
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He may be the protagonist of his stories, but I sure can’t bring myself to call him a “hero.”
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–Daryl
I remember a Peter David column where he wrote that the Punisher “was what he fought.” While the Punisher was never close to my favorite character, he kills people who hurt the innocent (granted, there were stories where he was hit with crazy gas and shot jaywalkers, and I don’t think killing people who *use* drugs is a good idea) but part of his mission, besides his primary goal of revenge, is to save innocent people the way he coudln’t save his family. Again, not my favorite character, and I like due process a lot, but there is some heroism there.
Sorry, Jonathan, but I can’t reconcile cold-blooded, premeditated murder with heroism. Maybe I’ve missed it, what with – frankly – being repulsed by the character, but I’d at least have a modicum of respect for the character if the wrongness of his tactics were acknowledged. Kinda like The Operative in Serenity having no illusions of being a good person: “I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.”. I still doubt I’d find anything redeeming about the character, but at least the whole “righteous holy war on crime” hogwash would be put in a finer perspective.
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–Daryl
–Daryl
What makes the Punisher interesting as a character is that he’s very much an anti-hero rather than a hero per se or even (at least in his own title) a villain. Because he’s such an extreme character he makes for a nice gauge of superheroes: the more that a superhero sympathizes with the Punisher the shakier ground they are morally. I think characters like him are great because they make readers think of what it means to really be a hero, moreso than, says, Spider-Man who despite his foibles is undeniably a hero.
Frank Castle’s not a hero in any sense that I can see.
He’s The Executioner in a spiffy costume, Remo Williams with big-ášš guns. He may only go after those that he thinks deserve it, but he’s still a murderer and is no better than the people he kills. To my mind he’s a walking example of Joe Straczynski’s statement that when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy.
I don’t think the Punisher is a hero, but I fully understand the appeal of the character (and similar characters).
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In my country (Brazil), anyone under 18-years old can’t go to prison, period. That can lead to situations where a 16-year old rapes, tortures, and murders a couple (that actually happened) and then is sent for 3 or 4 years to a relatively pleasant psychiatric institution.
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And that is only the most extreme case in a country with such a lax legal system that ordinary people many times applaud policemen that brutally kill criminals.
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The Punisher is an answer to the fear many of us have that our loved ones could be senselessly killed by some scumbag, and the system could fail to punish them.
Nytwyng, the Punisher knows to his core that he’s going to hëll when he dies and has no illusions about seeing his family in the afterlife. His family went where good people go, and that’s not going to be his fate. So, yeah, he knows he’s monster, he just doesn’t waste time angsting over it.
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But Castle actually has made variants of the Operative’s speech on more than a couple of occasions. Even back into the eighties, if I recall.
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I don’t call him a hero, but good writers can do good stories with him. As long as the writer doesn’t lose sight of the fact that he has gone too far.
Again, if the Punisher existed in the real world, I’d want him put in jail because I think due process is necessary to keep innocent people safe; there is always the possibility of innocent people who *look* guilty due to bad circumstances, and morally I think we all deserve our day in court.
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Thank being said, I can’t say that the Punisher is as bad as the people he kills (except maybe for the Garth Ennis story where he kills vigilantes who are inspired by his example.) To me, there is a difference between the villains, obviously horrible people who prey on and kill the innocent, and those who kill those who prey on and kill the innocent. If you look at a lot of the early Batman stories, they aren’t that different from what the Punisher does; the early Batman killed criminals left and right (hëll, sometimes people who weren’t even evil, just “nuts” who were mutated into a threat.) We accept that Batman was mostly doing this to protect the innocent, although “revenge on criminals” was/is a huge part of his theme as well. Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” brought back a lot of this, and remember the first Batman movie had a gun-toting Batmobile and a Batman that *blew up an entire factory full of criminals* in an attempt to get the Joker.
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Again, I’m more on the side of Superman, Spider-Man, Starman, the more moral versions of Batman etc, but I think that the Punisher’s m.o. of “take these guys out so they stop hurting others” has some merit, at least story wise.
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(I always wondered what would happen if Frank Castle killed an innocent person who appeared to be guilty and later realized it. Marvel wouldn’t retire the character, but he would/should consider wheter his goal of protecting others (partially) was compromised, and whether he had a right to keep breathing if he took that right away from an innocent person. A friend and I agreed he’d probably end up chalking it up to “the casualties of war” and angst about it, but keep going. Again, that makes sense commercially for Marvel. I’ve read that he had a storyline where he killed an undercover cop posing as a criminal, but what I read of it didn’t sound too interesting.)
(I always wondered what would happen if Frank Castle killed an innocent person who appeared to be guilty and later realized it. Marvel wouldn’t retire the character, but he would/should consider wheter his goal of protecting others (partially) was compromised, and whether he had a right to keep breathing if he took that right away from an innocent person. A friend and I agreed he’d probably end up chalking it up to “the casualties of war” and angst about it, but keep going. Again, that makes sense commercially for Marvel. I’ve read that he had a storyline where he killed an undercover cop posing as a criminal, but what I read of it didn’t sound too interesting.)
There was a two issue mini-series called “Punisher: Ghosts of Innocents” where Frank chasing a group of crooks on interstate and somehow he accidentally kills some kids on a bus and the kids’ ghosts start haunting him. It does show his remorse, guilt, and anger over his actions.
Stories where the Punisher kills an innocent are a bit like stories where someone takes a look at Clark Kent and realizes that that is just Superman with glasses.
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There are things that should happen a lot more often, but they don’t, because otherwise they’d undermine the very basis of the character.
hi peter,
i’m an huge fan of your work onto x-factor, i’d like to know if there’s a chance to see a story about the team dealing with a lost sex-tape of Ka-Zar and Shanna ?
friendly yours,
Actually, I’d kinda like to see the tape! 😉
I had planned to do exactly that as a six part epic, but now that you suggested it, I have to kill the story so it doesn’t seem like I ripped someone off.
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Darn
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PAD
So say we all!
In fact, have you noticed that this country’s political affiliations seem tied to cuisine?
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There’s a joke here somewhere about freedom fries…
freedom fries are a joke
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wait, you mean those people weren’t kidding?
The comment from the kid about wanting to see Spider-Man kill a lot of guys reminds me of an observation made in a Discworld novel. Terry Pratchett noted how blood had been excised from all the fairy tales to make them suitable for kids, though children did favour blood shed in their stories, as long as it was done by the deserving.
I’ve now come to think it is unbelievably selfish of the Batman in the comics to never kill the Joker after all the damage he’s caused and lives he’s destroyed. Basically putting his own sense of moral superiority above the safety of the public. The real reason he doesn’t is because DC doesn’t want to kill off the character.
I always just assumed it was accepted as fact that the one and only reason DC introduced Batman’s code against killing was to justify recurring villains.
I don’t think it was the one and only reason; they were probably a bit afriad that a lot of parents wouldn’t let their kids buy and read the comics otherwise.
I think the killing thing goes in cycles. When I was a kid, the biggest action shows were like the A-Team, where an infinite number of bullets could be fired without anyone ever getting hit. I think there were something like 2 on screen deaths in the entire run of the show.
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That kind of show isn’t around much anymore. Burn Notice is kind of like that in that the main character never kills anyone. However, other characters will kill and even the main character will let other people kill the bad guys.
The main character or Burn Notice has killed at least one guy that I can recall. I can think of few other bad guys that he decided to kill but missed the opportunity for. However, on the whole, the character is more reluctant to kill people than his girlfriend Fiona. He usually justifies it with an argument of why murder will only make matters worse in that particular situation. Even when he’s set up bad guys to be offed by other bad guys, I’ve often gotten the impression he considered that a solution of last resort.
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I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Michael Weston just dislikes killing people and will go to extra effort to avoid it. He will tend to argue to his friends that it’s sub-optimal or messy or counter-productive, but his narration makes it clear (to me at least) that he just doesn’t want to do it for simple moral reasons.
Right, I forgot about the one guy he killed. I think they did a pretty good job of showing that he was in a situation where there was no other way to save the lives of people he cared about. Like you say, it’s a matter of last resort for him.
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I think the key with Micheal Westin is that his reluctance to kill is character based. He’s a spy and he likes to believe he’s the kind of amoral person who really belongs in that world, but he isn’t exactly. They’ve shown many times that he’s a lot more moral than many of the other people who do the kind of work he does. That basically fits with the whole show, where he’s struggling to get back in the spy game, but he’ll always delay that to help someone.
That’s kind of the point with “Burn Notice,” though. That although Michael has routinely set up bad guys to be killed by other bad guys (a technique that was particularly favored by the pulp hero “The Avenger”) the number of times he has actually killed someone…I really can only think of the one time. And it wasn’t to save himself; it was to save Fiona. And, if I recall correctly, there was an immediate cost to it in that the guy he killed was the one guy who could actually get the burn notice removed. So it was the only way out in order to save the woman he loved (even though she was, as I remember, on the outs with him at the time) and even then he had to sacrifice his overarcing goal as a result.
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This is as opposed to the Punisher who simply blows people away because it’s expedient.
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PAD
Jason, I don’t remember any on-screen death during the entire run of The A-Team. There was one episode where BA got winged by a fifty-cal round, and was limping a bit, which I thought was absolutely idiotic; getting clipped by a fifty is tantamount to getting a limb amputated unless it just grazes you, and I think he got shot through the leg. A 9mm through the leg will lay you flat, a fifty-cal will take the leg off. And even the mighty Mr. T would have a bit of trouble getting about on a destroyed leg. But again, we’re talking Hollywood Logic, which is the same thing as cartoon physics.
I don’t remember any on screen deaths either, but I read that there was one or two. If not, that only strengthens what I was saying.
It was extremely rare, but a few characters did die on the show, starting with the 6th episode (The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas) in which someone was thrown out a window. The most significant death was recurring (but more misguided than bad) nemesis General Fulbright, who dies at the end of season 4.
A 9mm through the leg will lay you flat, a fifty-cal will take the leg off. And even the mighty Mr. T would have a bit of trouble getting about on a destroyed leg.
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It could have been the “A-Team’s” Monty Python moment:.
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“B.A.! Your leg’s blown clean off!”
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“It’s just a flesh wound, fool!”
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PAD
I’d say the Monty Python moment was when a helicopter crashed into the side of a mountain, plunged straight down, crashed hard on the ground, and then the pilot and passenger got out and ran away before it exploded. Even as a little kid who didn’t mind all the shooting without anyone ever getting hit, I watched that and laughed.
Lately it seems that dead heroes and villains are coming back. Death, it seems, doesn’t mean what it used to.
Lately? I can’t name a single hero/villain who has EVER stayed dead in comics.
Ok, I’m sure I could if I really tried, but that’s not the point. Fact is, comicbook characters coming back to life is NOT a new trend by ANY stretch.
Yes, but it used to be that certain character were considered dead and really gone forever. I remember people referring to the condition as “Bucky-dead” as opposed to its polar opposite “Jean Grey-dead.”.
As anyone reading Captain American can tell you, “Bucky-dead” isn’t a viable name for the condition anymore.
Back on Grant Morrison’s run on JLA, at the funeral for one character (Tomorrow Woman, I think her name was; a robot who sacrificed herself for the team), Superman and the priest are standing by her grave and the priest says something like, “Of course she’ll be back. You people never stay dead. We’re wondering when Metamorpho will return.” It’s kinda a tacky thing to say over the grave of someone who was just buried — but pretty accurate.
“I remember people referring to the condition as “Bucky-dead” as opposed to its polar opposite “Jean Grey-dead.”.”
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I never heard that. What I always heard was that Uncle Ben and Bucky were the *only* characters who could stay dead.
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I think Marvel was very reluctant to bring back characters in the early years. When Gwenn Stacy died and the fans were literally sending death threats to Marvel, they created a clone Gwen to try to appease them. They didn’t want to just bring her back from the dead and the clone was an attempt at a compromise.
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That works fine for a young company, but any company that’s been around for decades is probably going to eventually bring somebody back. Once you’ve brought one character back, then the floodgates are open.
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Even in those early days, villains don’t count. Everybody knows that if you don’t see a villain’s corpse, he’s definitely not really dead.
“Early days?” By then, Marvel had been publishing comics (under one name or another) for about 35 years, and the “Marvel Universe” as we know it had been extant for about 15.
I’d basically consider that a different era for Marvel. Once Spider-Man and Fantastic Four were launched, they were pretty much starting over. They incorporated stuff from the past, but what’s considered the Marvel style of comics wasn’t around for those early decades when the company was known as Timely, Atlas, and several other names.
Just because fans perceived some characters as “deader” than others, or “Bucky-dead” as you put it, still doesn’t make it a new trend.
It’s one thing to say “This guy’s DEFINITELY dead and never coming back,” but the fact is, just because it’s company policy for decades not to resurrect ONE specific character, they still do it for dozens of other characters in the interim, and eventually management WILL change and want to shake things up a bit. How to do it? Why, change some seemingly sacred status quo that no one ever thinks could change. Some managers might retcon an entire universe’s history to “update” the world. Others might, say, erase a character’s marriage of 30 years (up yours, J.Q.!), and still others instead choose to bring back a “permanently” dead character. Rarely do such shake-ups work quite as well as intended.
I believe it was Dennis O’Neil who said of Jason Todd, “I think it’d be really cheap if they tried to bring him back.” Well guess what! Someone new was running DC in the early 00s, and they wanted to shake things up. And that’s when I realized that no major plot element is too sacred for some editor to screw with. Death in comics has been, is, and always will be for ANY character, a minor and reversible obstacle. And it really loses all significance as a result. Really, who CARES that Batman broke his sacred rule and killed Darkseid? He’ll be back. And Batman probably knew that.
Well, Bucky did remain dead for what, 60 years? At least some serious thought went into his return, unlike most other deaths. The Winter Solider stuff is an ongoing storyline. So many of the returns from death are just plain lazy or never followed up on.
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In recent years, Marvel has not only made the deaths of major characters an event, but they’re killing off tons of lesser known characters as well.
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And, in the end, the event deaths will just be a waste of time for readers.
And, of course, Tomorrow Woman IS back (though as a real flesh and blood human, I think) as is Metamorpho. [Though it took a literal deus ex machina to do that]
While I might have some doubts that a costumed hero such as Batman could stalk through a rotten Gotham prevailing over genetic and moral freaks through non-lethal combat, surviving for decades rather than quickly becoming a terminal casualty, there is no moral imperative that such a paragon must lower himself to murder if he refuses to do so. If a person chooses to view it as such, killing is an absolute wrong. I find greater drama in those characters who are not completely certain they cannot kill, but must accept the moral absolutists who are. Of course, Batman has been written more as one who has not killed than one who absolutely would not: He was willing to kill in the “Death in the Family” storyline, but was prevented; He did not scruple at deicide in “Final Crisis.”
I always figured that it wasn’t up to Batman to determine who should die… that’s what the courts are for. He’s just there to *catch* ’em. The problem there was that they never kept any of the criminals around long enough to sentence ’em to death. Or if they did, decided they were legally insane and threw ’em in Arkham instead.
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I don’t think Bats would have many problems going ahead and carrying out the sentence if anybody actually made it to Death Row before escaping. (Mind, most of what I know from Batman comes from various TV iterations. Adam West Bats wouldn’t even dream of it, and would probably fire Robin on the spot if *he* suggested it… “Gosh, you’re right, Batman! It *isn’t* our place to carry out the lawfully-proscribed court-ordered execution! I don’t know what I was thinking! I’ll pack up my stuff and leave for Bludhaven tonight!” “You do that, old chum… and I know exactly how much is in my safe, you little brat!” )
Of coureses even corpses can be brought back. Witness how many Scourge victims were revived by the Hood in pages of, ironcially, Punisher.
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Once interesting thing about Gwen Stacy: at a Q&A at this year’s Emerald City ComiCon, Joe Quesada mentioned that he and JMS thought of bringing her back during Brand New Day, but when they brought it up at, IIRC, a writer’s retreat, the others there reacted too negatively (he now agrees she should stay dead).
Peter David: What makes me think of it is a kid who came up to me at a convention, early on in the run of Spider-Man 2099, who asked when Spider-Man was going to start killing guys.
“He’s not,” I said, not quite understanding the question.
Luigi Novi: Well, maybe not with the cold-blooded deliberation or lack of qualms with which the Punisher or Wolverine do so.
But he did instinctively lash out at the Specialist in a fit of anger in issue #5, fatally slashing his throat open.
To my mind, the Specialist wasn’t really dead. I just never got around to bringing him back.
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PAD
Heaven forfend that I should disagree, but slashing a throat open and stopping a heart qualifies as killing.
I don’t think Miguel intended to kill him, since he wasn’t used to the claws yet. However, he definitely used potentially lethal force and he definitely came away from it thinking he’d killed someone. That was kind of a dark, character building moment for the character.
Peter David: To my mind, the Specialist wasn’t really dead. I just never got around to bringing him back.
Luigi Novi: LOL.
I thought there was an issue of Spidey 2099 in which Spidey fought a future Vulture, webbed up his wings, and let him fall to his death. It seemd a major turning point for the character, defining him even further away from Peter Parker. The character seemed more “necessarily vicious” to me from that point on, and reflected that he lived in a dystopian future where he wouldn’t or couldn’t have Peter Parker’s ethics.
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A friend of mine who picked up the title remarked that the letters column seemed evenly split between those who wanted Miguel to be more like Peter and those who wanted him to be more different. I like the balance between the two, but favored being more different for experimentation’s sake, and hey, we already have one Peter, we don’t need a second.
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I was in favor of Jms’s run on AMS, but it bothered me that Spidey got closer to being okay with killing, and never remarked on how different it was for him. First he was okay with battling an undead monster until it ran out of energy and died, with no comment on how clost that was to killing, justified or not. Then he didn’t seem to shaken up by his spiders killing a wasp creature (self-defense and justified, but, to the best of my knowledge, new and unprecedented for him) and he had no problem killing Morlun (who was thoroughly evil and threatening Mary Jane, it was thoroughly justifiable, but Peter never reflected on how much his ethics had changed besides an “I am the spider/animal/predator” monologue” and I never even saw a justification for how Morlun was still alive. Didn’t like the story.)
As I understand the character of the Punisher, his motivations are the same as Batman’s…just taken to a much more extreme degree.
Bruce Wayne became Batman to both avenge his parents’ murders, and to ensure that no one else who is murdered ever goes unavenged again. (A completely unreachable goal when you stop and think about it, but once you start introducing logic, a lot of super-heroes motivations tend to fall apart.) Frank Castle became the Punisher to avenge his family’s murder by the mob…and to wage war on all other mobsters. In his case, perhaps, the emotional hook is more realistic: Castle knows that sooner or later, he’ll be killed while pursuing his vendetta, and he seems to have made his peace with that. He’s just figuring that before that happens, he’s going to take out as many as he can.
Castle’s not only made peace with the fact he’ll suffer a violent death at some point, but also with the fact that he’ll be going to hëll for all that he’s done.
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So I guess, thinking about it, that’s something kind of selfless about the character. He’s not looking for redemption, he knows he’s digging himself deeper. He’s not looking for revenge, he’s well past that. He’s trying to do good in the only way he knows how, and hopefully prevent other people from being victims. In his mind, he’s already dámņëd so he might as well commit more sins in the hope that others will be spared.
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That sounds more poetic than intended. The guy is insane and should not be held up as a role model. But he can be interesting. It comes back to how the stories are told.
Jo Duffy always had what I thought was a great endgame for the Punisher. That eventually he would achieve his goal and wipe out all organized crime, and then would declare, “Only one last criminal to take care of,” and would blow his own brains out.
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PAD
Yeah, that sounds about right, PAD. I think my favorite moment in Garth Enis’ run on The Punisher was when the Punisher found out that a group of other vigilantes had been inspired by his homicidal methods. He didn’t take it as a compliment, he just executed them for being violent nutjobs.
Which is kinda like šhìŧ telling vomit that it smells bad.
Killing is a technical matter: Does one cause cessation of life? That is killing.
Murder is entirely different, involving choice, knowledge and intent. If I had not previously been reminded that PAD is a master writer who chooses his words better than do mere mortals, I would suspect he was talking about murder rather than killing when he suggested that Miguel’s extinguishment of the Specialist was consistent with his fiat that Miguel would never EVER kill.
The test of whether one ever kills is a simple one: If one kills even once, that is one’s answer.
BTW, was anyone else bothered in BATMAN BEGINS (spoiler; though if you haven’t seen it by now…) when Batman and Ra’s are in a train speeding towards destruction and Batman says something like “I’m not going to kill you — but I don’t have to save you” and escapes, leaving Ra’s to die?
Legally, that’s criminally negligent homicide. Morally, I’d say it’s *realy* splitting hairs that allowing someone to die when you could save them isn’t quite the same as killing them. “Sure your neck is in the guillotine, and I *could* pull you out before the executioner releases the blade — but I’ll walk away instead. And hey, it’s not me releasing the blade, so I’m in the clear. Ciao!”
Yeah, I had a problem with it. It’s splitting hairs to let someone die to the point that he might as well admit he’s killing the guy. It kinda worked in that we all wanted Ra’s to die, but the line felt like a stretch.
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I had a bigger problem with the scene where Batman was escaping the police in the Batmobile. When Batman released that spike traps and caused the police cars to crash in spectacular fashion, that seemed like a good way to kill innocent cops to me.
But if you could argue that trying to save the person could put you at risk you have no legal right to do it. I don’t HAVE to run into a burning orphanage to save burning orphans, though I’d like to think I would.
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Of course, Batman COULD have saved Ras without getting hurt–he’s BATMAN!
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Uhm… Actually, most statutes define criminally negligent homicide as situations involving the death of an innocent party as a result of the operation of a motor vehicle by a person who is under the influence of drugs and narcotics or alcohol. It’s more or less the same as the crime of involuntary manslaughter and used as such in some states.
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There is no law that says you have to save someone’s life and you could actually just walk away with no real legal problems. Now, someone may bring a civil case against you, but they would likely lose.
If you’ll all indulge me, this is the phrase that has been floating in my head–“No longer is the shock of one thug getting plunked by GA’s arrow or one guard being hacked, of necessity…”
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Especially the “No longer” part. When someone tells a story, writes a book, makes a movie, does a dance, insert your form of expression HERE, that’s unlike any other, something truly revolutionary, people pay attention. But, rather than appreciate the piece to its entirety, people will want more. Hence, imitations, sequels, knock-offs, rip-offs, late night comedy routines, and the revolutionary becomes the expected, almost the traditional. No one can remember a time when it wasn’t like that, even if the total elapsed time is only roughly thirty-eight seconds or so.
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Think about Wolverine. Mysterious, ill-tempered, plays by his own rules. Dirty Harry? Ill-tempered. Plays by his own rules. Martin Riggs? Silly. Plays by his own rules. Who amongst us hasn’t wanted to change the rules, occasionally? Or even just ignore them all together? But, to borrow from the Faily Odd Parents, Da Rules are what keeps everything together. Chaos is frightening. Even those who fight the idea of Da, sorry, The System rely on it to some extent. Note how many people you see stopped at red lights next time you doubt it.
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I was in a situation a while back where my girlfriend’s father was chewing her out for something that A)was his fault, and B)she could do nothing to prevent. Every fiber of my being wanted to go bananas on him, but I didn’t. I felt awful about that, but when I told her what I’d wanted to do, she said she was glad I’d stopped myself. It would’ve made me feel good, but it would’ve just caused more problems later. Heroes are supposed to help, not make the problem worse
If by “go bananas on him” you mean “defend and support my girlfriend,” that would be a good thing – even if she doesn’t think so. If you mean “deprive him of necessary organs,” it was probably a good idea to stop right there.