Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 19, 2022 14:07:09 GMT -5
If I recall correctly, didn't Night Rider rape her? Or at least I'm remembering it was implied. Or, I've read too many grim and gritty books since then. Not sure it was presented definitively (others may have a different view), but I believe one could bet money that it was implied. It was heavily implied, which I think is the most Englehart could do at Marvel under the code in the mid-80s. It was pretty clear, though. He used a magic potion or something to make her "fall in love" with him, and while she was under the spell, it was implied that they had a physical relationship. After it wore off, she let him fall to his death. Reading it at the time, as a 13-year-old boy from a religious background, I was certainly on Hawkeye's side. Avengers shouldn't kill. As a 49-year-old adult reading it now, I am 100% on Mockingbird's side here. Hawkeye was a pretty terrible husband during this storyline. The Englehart run on WCA gets overlooked, and even slagged, a lot in part because of the Al Milgrom artwork. but given the restrictions of mainstream comics at the time, and under Jim Shooter, this run is filled with some very adult, and very mature, content.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,944
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 19, 2022 14:14:33 GMT -5
As far as the broader point, the question of whether "Avengers shouldn't kill" should be so black and white was the main point of Operation: Galactic Storm, where the team ended up rupturing, splitting in two down moral lines, with Cap on the strict do not kill side, and Iron Man on the other side.
The two had previously butted heads before over questions of morality and personal responsibility, particularly during Armor Wars, but this was the major divide that eventually laid the foundation 15 years later for Civil War.
Iron Man had previously had a similar debate with Black Panther during one of the greatest Avengers stories ever, the Bride of Ultron arc in #161-162, where they only defeated Ultron because he threatened to execute the helpless (and innocent) Jocasta if Ultron didn't surrender.
This debate is also where Bendis immediately lost me in the first New Avengers arc, where the justification for bringing Wolverine on the team is that Cap suddenly decides they need to have someone on the Avengers who will kill the bad guys if necessary. A sentiment Cap would never have had at any point since coming out of the ice in Avengers #4. Just completely stupid.
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Post by impulse on Aug 19, 2022 14:33:40 GMT -5
Well, Bendis is known for many things, but a consistent and respectful adherence to previous characterizations by other writers is not on the list.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2022 15:06:20 GMT -5
This debate is also where Bendis immediately lost me in the first New Avengers arc, where the justification for bringing Wolverine on the team is that Cap suddenly decides they need to have someone on the Avengers who will kill the bad guys if necessary. A sentiment Cap would never have had at any point since coming out of the ice in Avengers #4. Just completely stupid. True, but I agree with what he did. Sort of. I don’t think it makes sense to bring a killer onto the team for the reasons Cap expressed. But I could get behind the idea of an Avengers off-shoot team, a black ops team if you will. I suppose the fictional comparison would be the Impossible Missions Force, doing the stuff that the CIA can’t or won’t do, due to the need to be “under the radar” and disavowed if necessary. So I could get support a comic or arc where Wolverine joins the “IMF equivalent” of the Avengers. Of course, would the Avengers be on board with the whole plausible deniability thing?
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 19, 2022 16:53:10 GMT -5
I’ve been reading early issues of West Coast Avengers. Spoilers ahead, but Mockingbird lets a character die (justifiably) in one story. It seems to have hit her hard, but if you know the story, she simply let an immoral character die by inaction. Why is that so bad? I’m not sure I’d hold out my hand and save a terrorist if he was falling off a cliff. This makes me think about the lack of nuance pertaining to superheroes taking lives, specifically the seemingly binary choice of “it’s justifiable” or “it’s not justifiable” (with seemingly nothing in between). When it comes to characters who don’t routinely take lives, it seems they either point blank refuse to take a life - even when justifiable - or, if they do, they spend an age fretting over it. Again, in West Coast Avengers, there was discussion, by Tigra, about whether certain opponents should be killed, but all we get from the Avengers is, “We don’t kill.” What, never? Even when justified? In real life, the likes of the armed forces and police forces have to use lethal force. If I was a soldier or police officer, I would not wake up with a desire to kill anyone, but in all honesty, if the sniper atop a building is shooting at some civilians, I’m not gonna lose sleep if I have to take him out with lethal force. I’m not gonna fret about it. If lethal force prevents that sniper taking out 5 or 6 civilians, so be it. I don’t lose sleep when the armed forces take out terrorists. I’m proud that people like my grandfather fought the Nazis in WWII. I don’t feel I’m making my point particularly well. I just want more nuance. It seems to be about extremes with nothing in between. We either get Scenario A (“I will not kill, and I will not even let a character die by inaction”) or Scenario B (“I took out an enemy combatant/terrorist, and now I can’t look in the mirror”). Where’s something in between, with a little more nuance? What do you think? Fascinating topic. With superhero comics, it depends on the era (and the generation within that era) and how beliefs about killing criminals changed. For example, some Superman-as-Santa-Claus fans never want to believe it, but early on, Superman killed criminals (I've posted a few panels illustrating this some time ago), but that Superman was written to represent not this Pollyanna/Santa-like crossing guard idea that (frankly) torpedoed the character during the worst of the Wesinger period, but the no-tolerance (fed-up) feeling many Americans held about criminals. Contrary to too many "documentaries" claiming all 1920s-30s Americans celebrated the false notion of outlaws such as John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde or the Barker-Karpis gang were "sticking it to the system" on behalf of the "little guy", they were murderers who also victimized the "little guy" and caused as much tragedy and economic chaos to them as some "fat cat" banker. Early Superman served as the people's resentment of thugs and murderers of this kind, which is why he did--on occasion--kill some criminals. We already know how many a costumed hero dealt with members of the Axis powers, and next to no one complained about the lives the heroes took. In the Comics Code period, superheroes rarely caused the death of a villain, even if the villain deserved it. In The Avengers #15 ( "Now, By My Hand, Shall Die a Villain!", from April of 1965), the original Baron Zemo (at the time, believed to have caused Bucky Barnes' death) died in battle against Captain America. Instead of Lee writing Cap actually doing the deed himself, thus granting him some sense of vengeance and closure, it was delivered in a way that Zemo caused an avalanche to crush himself after Cap reflected sunlight (off of his shield) into Zemo's eyes, leading the fearful villain to kill himself. Cap had some measure of "revenge," but in 1965, he was not going to get that with his own hands. Perhaps the most famous "almost" where a superhero wanted to kill the villain was in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July, 1973), where Spider-Man--after the Green Goblin mocked the value of Gwen Stacy's life (which he recently took) savagely beat the Goblin literally within an inch of his life, but was shocked that he almost came close to murdering the Goblin. Yet, even after the Goblin seemingly dies after being impaled by his glider, Spider-Man was not really remorseful, noting that it did not make him feel better about Gwen's death. Being 1973, one could theorize that those responsible for this legendary arc (inc. Conway, Romita, et al.) were trying to make Marvel's biggest character more of a pacifist (or believed he will never make that irreversible decision), even when the most tragic blow had been dealt to him. That resistance to killing the Goblin was rationalizing--for the readers--how that oft-quoted "great responsibility" line actually meant something to Peter Parker--that he was not embracing the then-renewed, real world call for crushing action against a particularly violent period for crime in American history. That makes the ultimate contrast in the form of The Punisher--also born in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man only seven issues later--a potent, era-relevant revelation that Marvel was willing to show that someone was going to be pushed too far and would waste no time moralizing about the elimination of those who only destroy society. The Punisher was the mirror of many early 1970s Americans' feeling about how criminals should be dealt with, but one must step back and see that the Punisher may have worn a superhero-like costume, but Marvel did not intend for him to be one of the recognized, "good guys", so he could address questions such as yours about the idea of killing in the superhero world. Essentially, Marvel had their cake and was allowed to eat it too, thanks to The Punisher appearing to be a costumed crusader, but his origin gave Marvel an "out" if anyone found his existence in the superhero genre objectionable. So, where superheroes are concerned, if or when they kill depends greatly on era and the world the readers lived in whenever a life was--or was not--taken.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 19, 2022 20:14:09 GMT -5
It might have been addressed already but Nightrider drugged and had her living like his wife. She was shown as getting dressed in one scene , so I have to believe he had sex with her while she was under the spell. Also, she didn't feel bad about his death at all. She was stressed out because she knew Hawkeye wouldn't be okay with her letting him die. And he wasn't, which I find to be crazy he was written that way.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 19, 2022 20:41:56 GMT -5
This honestly made me laugh out loud. They know them, they simply choose to ignore them. And really, this is more an American thing. In other countries police isn't so keen to shoot anything that moves. Before we go down nationalist pathways, I can provide multiple examples of such behavior in police forces across Europe and Asia, without even going into Latin America or Africa. I will agree that America is disproportionate, compared to other countries; but that also needs to take the US gun laws into account and relative levels of violent crime. That said, law enforcement and the military have to be held to the highest standards. They are peacekeepers and have been given official sanction by the population of the country, within a democracy. Therefore, they are beholding to the population to uphold the laws to the utmost of their ability. They have to be accountable for their actions. As a Naval officer, I expected to be held to that standard and accepted that responsibility. We take an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic." That is a sacred trust to protect the very foundation of our democracy. Vigilantes, by definition, have placed themselves outside the law. As such, they cannot have official sanction or else they are government representatives, with the same rules and procedures and accountability as any other law enforcement or other government agent. That's what sanctioning means. Leaving aside the legal status of a superhero, a point that is being missed in this discussion is the psychological toll that taking a life can bring to bear on an individual, justified or not. Comics rarely get into that because they either evolved under the Comics Code, which forbade the outright killing of criminals, by heroes or actions depicting the hero as breaking the law. That is part of why Batman supposedly was a deputized agent of the Gotham Police. Also, comics were traditionally aimed at pre-teen readers and kept things pretty basic and moralistic, apart from the earliest pulp-influenced stories and those that took place during the war, involving enemy agents and soldiers. Getting back to the psychological effect, most would say that killing an enemy soldier, on the battlefield, in a legally constituted war and justifiably moral battle, like World War 2, was not a crime nor was it immoral. It is still killing and even taking the life of someone to defend the innocent takes its toll. Audie Murphy was barely a legal adult when he first became a non-commissioned officer and then a lieutenant. He led his men into battle and helped safeguard them. He won the Medal of Honor for holding off an enemy advancement with a single .50 cal machine gun, on a damaged tank, while keeping them from advancing on his men and inflicting further wounds. He did this despite his own wounds. He was proclaimed a hero and became the most decorated soldier in the US Army. After the war, he suffered from what later became known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He slept with a pistol under his pillow, when he slept at all. He suffered from an addiction to sleeping pills and locked himself in a hotel room to go cold turkey off of them. His generation was not known to speak of their traumatic experiences. He did. He made numerous public speeches and gave interviews where he outlined the personal cost of taking a life. There are many religious denominations where the taking of a life is considered the ultimate sin and they refuse to participate in professions where that can occur (Amish, Quakers, some Buddhist and Hindu sects). There are many where one of the basic tenets is that taking a life is a sin, yet wars are justified within those same beliefs, especially against unbelievers. In the grand scheme of things, it is not hard to imagine a body of super beings who have decided that they must be held to the standards of sanctioned law enforcement; but, that then begs the question of why they don't offer their services directly to government agencies? It's not hard to imagine a hero feeling justified in not helping a vicious killer when they are in trouble. It is not as easy to ignore the cost of such actions, in a thoughtful story. Nuance is always going to depend on the creators involved and the restrictions placed on them. Some will write simple black and white situations and others will wallow in the grey areas. Some are just going to write an action yarn and damn the moral consequences or psychological implications, just like your average action movie. You just have to patronize the ones that give you what you are seeking in your stories.
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Post by zaku on Aug 20, 2022 3:49:51 GMT -5
Another thing to consider is how rarely people actually die in comics (although everyone complains about how grim and dark they have become). In real life, even a healthy adult can die from slipping and hitting his head. In the comics? Hawkeye happily goes to fight Galactus and nothing happens to him. If you think about it, only a minority of superheroes are truly invulnerable, you could take out 90% of them with a bullet. A clash between a group of superheroes and one of supervillains, where among them perhaps there is someone who can destroy mountains with a thought, should leave the ground covered with corpses of both sides and instead nothing, a bar fight probably has more deadly consequences. And just talking about bar fights, how many times do we read in the newspapers that a punch (given without the intent to kill) has actually killed the opponent? Maybe he had an unknown medical problem, maybe the fist had made him slipping him and he hit his head. Well, Daredevil and Batman beat dozens of criminals every night, and the latter are always fine. Statistically it is simply impossible.
And speaking of Daredevil and Batman (or in any case of superheroes who do not have "enhanced" physiques), we often read the consequences of repeated blows received on boxers or football players, right? Well, what a boxer goes through in matches that happen months apart happens to these superheroes pretty much every night. By now they should be in an wheelchair, but nothing, a few patches and they are as good as new!!!
My point is that the writers have created a world in comics where it is virtually impossible to accidentally kill someone. The "good guys" don't even care if their actions will have deadly consequences. Instead, realistically, it should be their concern. A clash of super-beings is comparable to a firefight between police and criminals where they are all armed with RPGs with infinite ammo. That not even an innocent bystander can be a victim is simply ridiculous.
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Post by zaku on Aug 20, 2022 3:59:38 GMT -5
Probably one of the few times a clash between superheroes and supervillains was "realistically" depicted in one of the Big Two comics was in issue 12 of the original Supreme Squadron miniseries. At the end of the fight 7 between heroes and villains are dead, and it also seems understandable to me.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 20, 2022 4:25:50 GMT -5
My point is that the writers have created a world in comics where it is virtually impossible to accidentally kill someone. The "good guys" don't even care if their actions will have deadly consequences. Instead, realistically, it should be their concern. A clash of super-beings is comparable to a firefight between police and criminals where they are all armed with RPGs with infinite ammo. That not even an innocent bystander can be a victim is simply ridiculous. I believe that's more of a "collateral damage" analysis than the moral issue surrounding killing a villain. Its an accepted, default position that superheroes do not want innocent bystanders to be harmed due to their battles, but when its face-to-face, and the hero has a chance to end the life of someone who will kill without a moment's hesitation, therein sits the issue--what is morally correct when weighing the harm the villain causes to even one innocent life? Should the hero have regrets for his moral code? In yet another classic Spider-Man story, "And Death Shall Come!" (November 1970's The Amazing Spider-Man #90) Captain Stacy died saving a child from the rubble sent falling to the street by Spider-Man's battle with Doctor Octopus, and while Parker would always blame himself for George Stacy's death, one notes that the true vigilante position is never allowed to enter his mind. He never really considers how history would have been different if he went to the battle to end Doc Ock, instead of fight / attempt to apprehend him. That was not going to happen, because Lee, et al., took the moral stand for the character (and the readers) by having Parker be so principled--even when it repeatedly cost him the lives of those closest to him.
Risking Marvel's marketing concerns of their biggest IP aside, would anyone see Spider-Man through a different lens if he chose to kill? Or was it simply never an an option, because comic creators tended to lean toward the side of the "heroes don't consciously kill" argument, even if it rarely made sense to readers living in a violent world?
The entire matter has contradictory positions; earlier, I noted how 1965 Captain America was not going to deliberately kill Zemo--that appeared to be the image intended for him at the time, yet only four years later in Captain America #113 (May, 1969), he believed he killed Madame Hydra and several of her minions outright--it was not even a question, but a matter of survival. One wonders why that very violent killing was acceptable, at no risk to the "moral high ground" standing of Captain America (and Rick Jones, who was as much a killer in that action as his leader)? Was it due to Hydra being patterned after Nazis, so they were always a "good kill" (an idea heavily promoted in all American media for decades) and not someone worth "saving" through capture/arrest? I'm not certain, but the fact Captain America was not criticized for a mass killing says something about the moving-the-goal-posts-nature of arguments about when its right to kill.
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Post by zaku on Aug 20, 2022 5:02:57 GMT -5
My point is that the writers have created a world in comics where it is virtually impossible to accidentally kill someone. The "good guys" don't even care if their actions will have deadly consequences. Instead, realistically, it should be their concern. A clash of super-beings is comparable to a firefight between police and criminals where they are all armed with RPGs with infinite ammo. That not even an innocent bystander can be a victim is simply ridiculous. I believe that's more of a "collateral damage" analysis than the moral issue surrounding killing a villain. Its an accepted, default position that superheroes do not want innocent bystanders to be harmed due to their battles, but when its face-to-face, and the hero has a chance to end the life of someone who will kill without a moment's hesitation, therein sits the issue--what is morally correct when weighing the harm the villain causes to even one innocent life? Should the hero have regrets for his moral code? In yet another classic Spider-Man story, "And Death Shall Come!" (November 1970's The Amazing Spider-Man #90) Captain Stacy died saving a child from the rubble sent falling to the street by Spider-Man's battle with Doctor Octopus, and while Parker would always blame himself for George Stacy's death, one notes that the true vigilante position is never allowed to enter his mind. He never really considers how history would have been different if he went to the battle to end Doc Ock, instead of fight / attempt to apprehend him. That was not going to happen, because Lee, et al., took the moral stand for the character (and the readers) by having Parker be so principled--even when it repeatedly cost him the lives of those closest to him. Risking Marvel's marketing concerns of their biggest IP aside, would anyone see Spider-Man through a different lens if he chose to kill? Or was it simply never an an option, because comic creators tended to lean toward the side of the "heroes don't consciously kill" argument, even it rarely made sense to readers living in a violent world?
The entire matter has contradictory positions; earlier, I noted how 1965 Captain America was not going to deliberately kill Zemo--that appeared to be the image intended for him at the time, yet only four years later in Captain America #113 (May, 1969), he believed he killed Madame Hydra and several of her minions outright--it was not even a question, but a matter of survival. One wonders why that very violent killing was acceptable, at no risk to the "moral high ground" standing of Captain America (and Rick Jones, who was as much a killer in that action as his leader)? Was it due to Hydra being patterned after Nazis, so they were always a "good kill" (an idea heavily promoted in all American media for decades) and not someone worth "saving" through capture/arrest? I'm not certain, but the fact Captain America was not criticized for a mass killing says something about the moving-the-goal-posts-nature of arguments about when its right to kill.
Well, here we have two different points. In real life it is not a policeman who has to decide whether a criminal lives or dies (let's obviously imagine a situation where the criminal has already been neutralized). There is a whole structure that will take care of this. Judges (who have chosen to do this job), juries, prisons (or the death penalty if you like that kind of thing ...). So the burden of choice should not fall on those who are responsible for maintaining public order. Unfortunately we always fall back into the same problem, that the authors have created a completely unrealistic world where prisons or the death penalty cannot stop criminals from committing new crimes. This is anarchy, it is not a civil society. And in my opinion this leads to another problem, that the world of superheroes comics is unrealistically too similar to ours. And it is not about super-science or magic or the like, but about the attitude of the people in general towards the law and the management of justice. If a citizen risks his life every week because a supervillain who is supposed to be in prison is on the loose, well, I assure you that after a while the aforementioned citizen would happily embrace the most fascist of governments if he promised him safety. Regarding Captain America, where he places himself morally about killing an opponent has always been a topic treated in a schizophrenic way by the various authors. It goes without saying that during World War II he saw his fair share of violent deaths and probably caused some (unless we want to believe that he was simply leaving behind a trail of unconscious Nazis). Still we had stories like this one where they say he NEVER carried a gun and NEVER took a life now. In the following issues they show him deeply traumatized by that. But in the following years they showed him killing people during WW2. So my point is, what version of Captain America we are talking about? Edit: this a piece of Brian Cronin about Captain America and killing www.cbr.com/the-abandoned-an-forsaked-so-did-captain-america-kill-people-during-world-war-ii-or-what/
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Post by zaku on Aug 20, 2022 5:39:18 GMT -5
I believe that's more of a "collateral damage" analysis than the moral issue surrounding killing a villain. I think this is also a moral issue. If I have a superpower that is the equivalent of a cruise missile and I decide to take the law into my own hands and go patrolling the streets without a specific warrant or training, yes, I am already responsible for any damage to people and things that I could provoke. I have placed myself beyond the law and social rules a and already this, ethically, is a big problem. We all are focusing on "Is a superhero morally justified by killing a supervillain?", but in reality the real problem is that the hero knowingly chooses to put himself in situations where that choice could happen. The rest is a corollary. We live in a society because we have decided to follow its rules. If we decide not to follow them anymore (even if we are well-intentioned), we are no longer part of this society. This in my opinion is the basic point from which all other questions arise. To take the example of "justified killings", usually a civil society says that you can kill another human being only if a) you are somehow authorized by the government (executioner, soldier, police etc) in certain specific situations b) you or others are in danger of life This last situation is obviously extraordinary and exceptional in normal life, because, in fact, taking another person's life in theory is the most serious thing that can be done. And a normal person, if he lives in a civil society that takes care of him, should find himself in this situation only exceptionally. Otherwise it is not a civil society, it is anarchy. But a superhero is not (usually) in point a) or even in point b), because he LOOKS FOR situations where he or others are in danger, it doesn't happen to him/her by chance. So, if he puts himself in the situation of continually deciding for the life of other human beings, he has already placed himself above men and their rules. Nietzsche at his best. This is the real moral/ethical question in my mind.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2022 5:49:27 GMT -5
Thanks, everyone, for thoughtful, nuanced and thought-provoking points. On the subject of killing not being sanctioned by the state, it is a difficult issue. I wouldn’t condone a vigilante going around killing people (I recently watched an episode of The Streets of San Francisco, where a killer was bumping off people who had gotten off on technicalities, but one person he killed was actually not guilty). But there are scenarios where I could imagine even myself taking a life. Hopefully not, but, unlikely though it is, if I was atop a cliff next to a sniper, and he was about to fire at a family, if kicking him off the cliff to his death stops a family being shot in cold blood, so be it. The chances of that happening are extremely slim, and I certainly would not consider it the first step on the road to being a vigilante, but I could imagine feeling justified in those circumstances. I live in the real world, of course, so Spider-Man could lie there and think, ‘How do I stop him killing that family without killing him?’ But real people wouldn’t have that luxury. (Incidentally, although I am not a fan of Erik Larson, I do like the moment in one Spidey comic during his run, where Solo says to Spidey, “Let me kill your enemies. This is why you have to keep fighting them again and again!”) Mind you, we’re all killers. Look me in the eye (so to speak) and tell me you’ve never killed a spider, hornet or wasp.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 20, 2022 8:01:56 GMT -5
Yeah, Batman letting the Joker continue his rampage is ludicrous on one level. But outside of protecting someone when the Joker is in the act of harming them, what right does Batman have to take a life? He is not a law officer, he has no more right to kill someone because they are "bad" than I do. Same goes for almost every hero. The Punisher is rightfully a criminal al for what he does.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2022 8:22:15 GMT -5
Yeah, Batman letting the Joker continue his rampage is ludicrous on one level. But outside of protecting someone when the Joker is in the act of harming them, what right does Batman have to take a life? He is not a law officer, he has no more right to kill someone because they are "bad" than I do. Same goes for almost every hero. The Punisher is rightfully a criminal al for what he does. In that case, and I know comics have to have different rules, it makes no sense for the Joker not to have been given a lethal injection.
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