This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Just want to let you know that the Post-Crisis version of Wonder Woman is perfectly willing to kill an enemy when she deems necessary. Furthermore, that was established in her first reboot story arc when she decapitated the god, Deimos and lost no sleep over it.
The Nifty Edited to remove part about the Hulk never killing. Don't know where that came from, the Hulk's killed craploads of people. Off the top of my head: Trauma, Fialan, Visus and the Red King.
smith:2000
About this story: "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way." where Superman fights the Authority. They spend the entire story mentioning again and again that the Elite utterly outclass Superman in terms of raw power. They completely disregard him and dismiss him. He has to take a stand against them knowing that there is no way at all for him to succeed, but because his morals demand it. That's a good set-up for a Superman story, but the resolution is that he suddenly remembers that he's dozens of times more powerful than they are after all and makes short work of them after taking the best they could throw at him. I disliked the story since it seemed like a cop-out and another example of Superman just out-Supering his problems.
Dalantia: Pulled this line from the City of Heroes entry:
Rumors filtering down from the developers have indicated that a planned "Going Rogue" mission (which would allow heroes to cross into the City Of Villains game) will involve a particularly cruel villain who will tempt the hero to commit murder — thus crossing the line and instantly becoming a full-on villain himself.
This is pretty much Making Stuff Up - yes, crossover has been rumored for a very, very long time (and also has been confirmed as no, for now, by Word of God), but it has never included the notion of the character crossing the line by killing. Word of God re this trope has always been defeat so that players can decide what defeat entails.
Seven Seals: Took out this:
- Actually it's more than just symbolic when you think about it. During that time, regular bullets were made out of lead. The Lone Ranger said he would shoot if he had to, but only to wound, not to kill. By using silver bullets, he made sure his target didn't die of lead poisoning.
All in all this seems a pretty unlikely scenario, and the chance that the Lone Ranger did it for that reason seems even less likely. "Lead poisoning" is sometimes used as a synonym for "getting shot", but that's meant as a joke.
Austin: While the issue of Wonder Woman killing Maxwell Lord is worth debating, the main page is not the place for it so I'm moving the arguments here.
- Given that simply rendering Max unconscious and letting him wake up locked in a psi-screened cell would have kept him from reaching Superman with the control codes long enough for even the lengthy deprogramming required to remove them from Superman's head, this troper sides with the authorities (and Batman) in this instance.
- This troper strongly dissents; Wonder Woman had the Lasso of Truth around Max. It was absolutely impossible for Max to tell a lie. Wonder Woman asked Max how to break his control over Superman and Max answered with "kill me". If there were non-lethal methods that would have also worked, he surely would have brought them up.
- This troper needs to point out that Wonder Woman carries the Lasso of Truth, not the Lasso of Omniscience. For instance, wrap Jimmy Olsen in the Lasso and ask him Batman's secret identity, and Jimmy will respond truthfully by replying, "I don't know." There's a reason you have to tell the truth and the whole truth in a court of law, as the two things are not the same. Killing Max would have stopped him, no doubt. So too would've locking him in the Phantom Zone (a place that held 70 Martians for thousands of years would certainly have held one telepath), or trapping him in a teleporter loop (like Doomsday), or having his speed stolen (which most Flashes could do), or locking him in a telepath-proof prison cell (like Hector Hammond), or asking Zatanna or Dr Fate to remove his metagene — at that point in continuity, Diana had Athena (the goddess of Wisdom) on magical speed-dial, at that. Heck, if Superman is being used as a weapon, send Superman to Jupiter for half an hour until they deal with Max using one of these methods. Funnily enough, this troper too sides with Batman and the authorities on the issue. The whole point to being a Justice Leaguer is that there never is a situation where you only have one option, and that option is lethal force.
- This troper had thought this issue was more just not having time to find another solution. Send Superman to Jupiter how?
Austin: I don't know if it really matters, but I wanted to point out that in the Bible, the original line is really "Thou shalt not murder". I've looked it up, and the definition of murder is "unlawful killing", and the law doesn't consider every form of killing murder, hence why we have Justifiable Homicide.
Austin: I disagree with this part
"The DA's office and court system of Gotham City is way ahead of Batman in the line re: culpability here. They could execute that stupid clown any one of the umpteen times Batman drags him in, except the one time they ever bothered actually indicting the Joker and seeking the death penalty, it was for a murder he didn't actually commit. Morons. "
Because in real life, the Joker would've been executed dozens of times over. The only reason he hasn't been is because of Joker Immunity, and while we've heard Batman's reasons for not killing, the justice system of Gotham has, to my knowledge, never been given a chance to explain why they don't, and as such it seems more fair to focus on Batman.
Madrugada 3/05/09: I deleted the whole Batman section and moved it to Technical Pacifist. He won't kill directly, but he has no problem letting someone die indirectly because of his actions or directly because of his inaction (witness the quote: "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."
