When Is It Okay For A Super Hero To Kill?

Super Heroes do not kill. Since Superman’s first appearance in 1938, and the flood of all the heroes who came after him, it has been established that heroes do not take the lives of those they fight. No matter how vile a villain, the heroes try to find a way to not take a life. But to every rule, there are always exceptions.

In Superman #22, Superman travels to a parallel Earth where three Kryptonian criminals survived the destruction of Krypton. After they murder all the people of Earth, Superman finds himself the only one left to carry out punishment. Using this world’s version of Kryptonite (which has no effect on Superman) he exposes the three criminals until they die. So it would seem that genocide is one instance where a hero is allowed to kill.

Not to be outdone, Wonder Woman also took a life during The OMAC Project. In this storyline, Maxwell Lord, a former ally of the Justice League and the man who financially backed the League for many years, had helped to found a secret organization called Checkmate. This organization was hatching a plan to eliminate all meta-humans (the DC Universe term for people with extraordinary abilities). As part of his plan, Maxwell had killed Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, and had also psychically taken control of Superman. Refusing to tell her how to free Superman from his control, Wonder Woman felt she was left with one option. She snapped his neck 180 degrees. So freeing a valued friend, colleague and powerful weapon could be another reason a hero is allowed to kill.

Warren Ellis’s super team, The Authority, appears to have much less hesitance to the need to kill. For them it seems like the simplest solution to a problem. If someone is a big enough bastard (a term they enjoy using quite a bit) then that person should be eliminated. This super team does not regulate themselves to only fighting alien threats or mad super villains but actively seek out brutal dictators and war criminals. In essence, The Authority does what super heroes would really do in the real world. After saving the day they throw lavish parties in their orbital headquarters and appear on talk shows. In the case of the Authority, nothing really allows them to kill, it’s just no one is willing to stop them.

But even the Authority draws some lines when it comes to killing. While they do kill, it is usually people who would receive a death sentence anyway were they to be brought to trial. Which puts them lengths ahead in the morality department when compared to The Punisher. The Punisher is the ultimate indiscriminant killer in comic books. There are despotic super villains who don’t have the same body count as Frank Castle. And yet the Punisher still gets to enjoy the status of “hero”.

Now there are many who would argue that Frank Castle is in fact an “anti-hero” but I find that more of an excuse. The very fact that Frank Castle has teamed up with characters like Daredevil, Spider-Man and even Captain America, shows that Frank Castle is clearly on the side of the Angels (and no, I am not referencing that BS storyline where Frank Castle actually WAS an angel and had to send demons back to hell, I hated that run of the book). Frank Castle seems to only get a pass because the targets of his fury are mostly criminals. The only time the other heroes seem to have a problem with his methods is more out of a sense of territoriality (Punisher tries to kill a Spider-Man villain for example) far more than an objection to the actual killing.

So why is killing still such a taboo among super heroes? If the Authority can kill and the Punisher can kill, and even Superman and Wonder Woman can kill, why is killing not an acceptable practice among super heroes? Why doesn’t Batman do himself a huge favor and snap the Joker’s neck? I’m sure the citizens of Gotham City wouldn’t complain, they might even throw a parade.

But then we need to take a look at the motivations of super heroes. Beyond just being endowed with amazing powers and abilities, most heroes are motivated to do what they do because of a death close to them. Batman lost his parents, Spider-Man lost his uncle, Daredevil lost his father, and each of those losses was due to a criminal act. So not only is their fury towards criminals justified but also their appreciation of the sanctity of life. Criminals have families as well and it is not the job of heroes to rob those families of their loved ones, regardless of their crime. Plus there is the argument that once you start killing, where do you stop?