You can kill, and not be corrupted

If anything surely in real life capturing and forcing them to pay for their crimes is probably even better then in the comics.

In the comics the crooks always escape and start killing again.

In real life its VERY rare for people to do such things and people with enough "power" in real life to commit such atrocities that deserve death do get "put down." However in real life and in the comic books criminals are "put down" by the state if the country demands it.

The main message Superman and Batman try to give out is that its so easy to sink to a criminals level and murder them. It is MUCH harder to rise above them.

Proof would be people that have gone after criminals that killed their family members, friends and such in real life. Most of the time the individual who kills the criminal usually ends up committing suicide unable to live with what they've done/how society sees them now.

Overall just because 1 (obviously more) individual thinks they have the right to take a persons life, dreams, hopes and everything they could or would have been away from them does not instantly give you the right to do the same to them. If everyone started thinking like this, our world would descend into pure chaos.

It's one thing to kill in self defense. It's another to murder in cold blood. Superman has killed in self defense before. When at war or a battle he cannot possibly win (Doomsday), he kills as an absolute last resort. But when he's able to defeat the villain and they're lying at his feet at his mercy, he doesn't execute.

He has executed before and he though he felt it was justified, the guilt was hard to get rid of (the incident where he executed Zod, Zaora and Quex-Ul with kryptonite).

How does it feel to be deconstructed?

The Punisher is a psycho. I love Frank Castle, but he is not a hero. He is nuts.

if Batman had killed some of his more violent and sadistic villians (Joker, Riddler, Szazz) it would have saved countless lives. Instead Batman locks them up, they escape, kidnap and murder people...rinse and repeat. If he just killed them problem would be solved. Then maybe he could retire without issue but then again there would be no more stories lol

wanna get laid? crawl up a chicken's butt and wait

I disliked superman for its naivety from the get go. I agree with you, you can kill without being corrupted. The thing that corrupts is not killing. Its the power. Superman has the power regardless.
As for the paying for his crimes argument. That works in comings. In reality, we pay for his crimes, because we have to keep him fed and so on. Most criminals in jail live better than average free citizen. So a person who has, say, started a shooting in a school, will live the rest of his life better off than many parents of the children he shot. heck, they even let the criminals use internet not. so its not isolation either any more.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

Here's my take on a stable moral code that allows for killing:

There's 3 kinds of people:

Innocents who never deliberately kill anyone.
Monsters who deliberately kill innocents.
Punishers who deliberately monsters but never kill innocents or other punishers.


Superman never kills anyone, so he is an innocent. The Elite originally only killed monsters, which makes them punishers. The Elite turned into monsters the moment they tried to kill Superman, who is an innocent. If they hadn't done that, they would still be the good guys (punishers).

I don't think Wolverine or Punisher are good examples. Wolverine has traditionally had a problem with his rage, and his penchant for killing made those rages even more dangerous. And as someone said earlier, Punisher is nuts.

All glory to the Hypnotoad

The killing of a sentient lifeform can never be morally justified, although it may sometimes be a practical necessity.

There are times when the use of deadly force to prevent imminent loss of life or crippling harm is the only viable option. A hostage taker with a gun to the head of his captive, or a supervillain with a finger on the activation trigger of his planet-destroying superweapon are prime examples of this.

Killing said villain after his apprehension to prevent presumed future mayhem, however, or executing a murderer after a trial are acts of not-provably-necessary violence.

Such acts may be motivated by noble sentiments - protect the innocent, fit the punishment to the crime etc - or baser desires such as a lust for vengeance. They cannot be justified in any moral sense, though, if one claims to have any respect for the value of a life.

The argument that some wrongdoers should be killed as they are too powerful to contain is specious. Build a better prison. The idea that some criminals are monsters undeserving of the same kind of civilised treatment afforded to the rest of us is merely an attempt rationalize their dehumanising to permit their subsequent execution – sidestepping the whole enormous moral quagmire by making them non-human (They may actually BE non-human, in the sense that they may me sentient aliens, or talking fish-men, or thinking radioactive sludge, or whatever. I’m using “human” in the sense one uses it when talking about human rights.).

Nobody deserves to be subjected to violence or killed. It’s wrong when the criminals do it. It’s wrong when the state does it. You think it’s acceptable or even necessary for the heroes to? I don’t like your world. It’s a little too wet and red, with the stink of the abattoir.