Superman has taken
a solemn vow never to kill. Moral issues aside, there's a practical reason for his oath: a demigod who had no issues with killing
would never be trusted, and would be considered a demagogue, not a hero. Several alternate versions of
Superman, whether an What If? story or an alternate dimension of him, have explored a Superman who had no problems with lethal force. From a writing standpoint, keeping Superman an
Actual Pacifist makes it a stunning
Wham Shot should he actually be forced to kill, as mentioned in the very few cases where he had no alternative, and had exhausted
all of the possibilities.
- It's strongly implied — and outright used in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? — that Superman believes that he should give up being Superman if he takes a life. (He cannot kill himself, since his oath applies to himself as well. This was shown in a number of Bronze Age stories, including one where he is caught in a hallucination that supposedly shows the future and realizes that since it shows him killing himself, it must be false.) After he kills Mr. Mxyzptlk with the Phantom Zone Projector - the latter tried to flee to the Fifth Dimension when exposed to the device, tearing him apart between the Phantom Zone and the Fifth Dimension - Superman exposes himself to Gold Kryptonite to permanently rob himself of his powers.
Superman: I broke my oath. I killed him. Nobody has the right to kill. Not Mxyzptlk... not you... not Superman. Especially not Superman.
- Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow also has Bizarro go on a murderous rampage on the basis that he wants to be more closely the opposite of Superman, though he's really being manipulated into thinking that by the Big Bad. He also kills himself.
- Crisis at Hand had the hero face such a situation when an abusive husband, whom Supes gave a deserved thrashing, later murdered his wife. Superman later caught him secretly viewing her funeral and was sorely tempted to kill him right there and then. However, the relatives of both husband and wife began to plead for Superman to spare him and kill him respectively. Superman, holding the murderer while this argument is raging, painfully realized that he was in no position to make such monumental decisions and decided to simply hand the criminal to the police so the justice system can handle the matter.
- The Supergirl Saga saw Superman being called to a parallel Earth where three Kryptonian criminals had just destroyed all life on the planet, Superman only arriving in time to depower the three with gold kryptonite (which had no effect on him) after every other lifeform on the planet had been killed. Seeing no other way to deal with their threat as they vowed to find some way to regain their powers and come after him, Superman executed the three with green kryptonite. Despite the circumstances, which almost anyone else would deem it both just and necessary- as they had committed the act of planetary murder, threatened to find an way to Superman's universe and do it again, and were stronger than he was- the act haunted him for years. After he did it, Superman even developed a split personality and then exiled himself from Earth after he got that under control, feeling that he was too dangerous to remain on Earth. It took a talk with the mysterious Cleric to help Superman accept that there was literally no other way he could have dealt with that threat, as taking them back to his Earth would have left the difficulties of trying to charge the three criminals for crimes without precedent, and just leaving them on that dead world was too risky in case they found some way to regain their powers as they threatened.
- What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? had him forced to deal with the arrival of "The Elite", superheroes with absolutely no qualms about killing villains. Over the course of the issue, he watched them become more and more popular, despite (and indeed, because of) their excessive use of force. In the end, he challenged them to a fight- and proceeded (after giving them a Hope Spot) to subdue them more or less harmlessly. Though it sure dang LOOKED like he killed them, until he revealed that he used painful-looking non-lethal techniques. The story showed not only why does Superman not kill, but just how downright scary he would be if he did. The story eventually got an Adaptation Expansion into the made for DVD movie Superman vs. the Elite.
- This trope is justified in another story where Superman explains to the Ultramarines, a team of superheroes known for their use of lethal force, after the Justice League has pulled them out of a situation they were unable to handle, that their "'no-nonsense' solutions just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and Time Travel," as death apparently held less barriers for them, and in fact was more merciful, than some of the extreme incarceration punishments the League had to devise.
- Superman has shown to be one of the most extreme examples of never killing. In one case he saved Darkseid's life (Darkseid helped him stop the threat that put him near death, granted, but come on, it's freaking Darkseid) and in another instance, he was trapped in a dimension where he was forced to go to war with demons for a thousand years, but still refused to kill them. He even initially objected to Wonder Woman killing them, but didn't have an answer when she asked him what she was supposed to do. That said, even the events of Final Crisis, much like it was for Batman, Barry Allen, and Wally West, was Clark's breaking point for this applying to Darkseid and (again, like Bruce, Barry, and Wally) Clark took steps to kill Darkseid, even dealing the final blow himself.
- Though it's often overlooked, during his final fight with Doomsday at the end of The Death of Superman storyline, Superman was trying to kill his foe, but only because if he hadn't, Doomsday likely would've destroyed Metropolis and everyone in it (although only in the last bit of the fight when he realized nothing else would even give the monster pause, which shocked Jimmy and Lois). It probably helps that Doomsday's mind was read a couple of times in the story, and was revealed to be nothing but rage and bloodlust. This was followed up in Hunter/Prey, as Superman, after finding out that Doomsday was now far more powerful than himself, and constantly growing in might, could come up with no other available options than letting Waverider exile the beast to the end of the universe, to let entropy consume it. Doomsday was later rescued by Brainiac, keeps coming back after being killed, and heals all other injuries instantly, so breaking his neck has the same effect as knocking a regular villain out, which, in combination with being more than Superman can handle upfront, is the reason why he can be the exception.
- In a mini arc spanning Action Comics #544 to 546, Superman says he's fine with killing Brainiac, and that it wouldn't really be killing since Brainiac is just a computer. This was the same arc where Brainiac ascended massively in both threat level and malice, defeated Superman twice, was so powerful that the entire Justice League and Teen Titans combined had no hope of stopping him, and opened the arc by slaughtering entire planets, so it's pretty justified. Superman ultimately is not strong enough to beat Brainiac, and settles for driving him off after a battle in space ends in a pseudo-draw.
- In Action Comics #805, Superman flat-out kills the supervillain Avruskin (who was going by the name Zod; long story), who was about as strong as him and had killed tons of people just to get at Superman. He tried hard not to, even deliberately making a point of sparing him after beating him in a fight, but Avruskin just got up and kept attacking, giving Clark no option other than to beat him to death. He later visits the man's grave, where Lois assures him that he did the right thing. Superman agrees, but is still saddened by the deed and wonders how Avruskin/Zod would've turned out had he been raised by loving parents like the Kents instead of reduced to a Soviet science experiment. He ultimately concludes that while his death was necessary, he wasn't a monster.
- Kingdom Come revolved around the fact Superman abandoned humanity when he realized the public approved Magog's murder of The Joker. Ross and Waid even broke their backs to make the kill visually parallel JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby, just in case anyone was thinking that maybe killing the guy who had just gassed the entire staff of the Daily Planet might not be such a bad thing. In the same series, Superman is disturbed by Wonder Woman wielding a sword; she snaps back that not everyone has heat vision.
- In the mini-series The Phantom Zone penned by Steve Gerber, Superman confronts General Zod, who laughs that Kal-El won't kill him. He's right. To quote: "I can't take your life, much as I'm tempted. But my code doesn't say a damn thing about not battering you to within an inch of it, murderer!" Once Zod is out cold for a long, long time, Superman, still holding him by the tunic, thinks "And there are times I've considered chucking that code entirely."
- Played with in the Legion Of Super Heroes story Adventure Comics #342: "The Legionnaire Who Killed!" where the Legion decided whether to expel Star Boy for killing. Superman and the other Flying Bricks — Supergirl, Mon-El and Ultra Boy — voted to not expel him. The reason? Because it's easy for him, Superman, to have a code against killing when there aren't a lot of things that can hurt him, but other people may have different circumstances than him and he has no right to hold them to his code.
- Emphasizing Superman's adherence to his code is this: in the few official crossover series that exist, Superman has even refused to kill Xenomorphs! For context, xenomorphs are a highly aggressive species of alien predators with no higher reasoning than basic animal instincts and a parasitic reproductive cycle, which are capable of causing planet-scale extinction events thanks to their voracious and insatiable need for living victims as food and hosts for their young. Even Batman, himself a noted devotee of this rule, is willing to forgo it when xenomorphs are involved, and in the Superman/Batman/Aliens crossover (yes, this exists), actually calls Superman out on his willingness to spare such dangerous animals.
- It's not brought up much, but at the end of Reign of the Superman Superman outright kills Hank Henshaw (AKA Cyborg Superman) after the latter slaughtered Coast City, his reasoning being "You're dangerous, cyborg — I doubt any prison can effectively protect society from you!". Henshaw does say that he will "somehow" survive Superman literally shattering him, but Superman himself doubts this and says "if you do, Henshaw, I'll be waiting", indicating that he's fully expecting to kill Henshaw for good (or at least accepting that as one of two scenarios). Henshaw survives by storing a copy of his consciousness in a device in space and transferring it to Doomsday's body, but it doesn't change that Superman did literally kill him (terminating his vital functions), gave explicit and sound reasoning for why he did so, and was fine with him never coming back. It could be that Superman didn't see Henshaw as actually alive, but a construct of the man he saw die back in his original appearance; the follow-up storyline Hunter/Prey has Superman explicitly state that he knew Henshaw's consciousness would survive his last defeat.
- In Our Worlds at War he helps kill both Imperiex and Brainiac 13 by sending them both back in time to the Big Bang; in Final Crisis, he is the one who finishes off Darkseid. In general his code is based on the fact that he is far more powerful than most of the villains he comes across and if he is capable of defeating them without resorting to deadly force, he will; on the flip-side, if you are an enemy who is as strong or stronger and you are sufficiently ruthless or dangerous enough that death is the only thing that will stop you...then yes, Superman will kill you. Helps if you aren't human, too.
- During a Superman/Batman story where an unknown force was turning alien heroes against Earth, Batman was forced to expose himself to the mysterious Blackrock to gain the power necessary to snap Superman out from the unknown influence. Once Superman was returned to normal, he was able to convince the blackrock to separate itself from Batman by making it clear that he was willing to kill Batman to stop him under such circumstances, as he knew that Batman would rather die than be allowed to continue in such a state.
- There were at least two Bronze Age stories in which criminals tricked Superman into believing he had accidentally killed someone, so that he would hang up his cape and stop fighting crime (in one, they tricked him into thinking he had accidentally killed Lana Lang!).
- In The Plague of the Antibiotic Man, Amalak knows he cannot defeat Superman so he tries to destroy him psychologically by forcing him to kill. When his original plan fails, Amalak tries to trick Superman into believing he has killed him.
- This was the central point of the Bronze Age text novel Miracle Monday. A demon called C.W. Saturn possesses a woman and causes havoc, trying to tempt Superman into stopping him by killing her physical form. If it had succeeded, Superman's soul would have been damned. Superman refuses, of course, and defeats the demon by constantly reversing its mischief until its time on Earth runs out.
- Superman was about to kill Mongul in For the Man Who Has Everything, but seeing the statues of his parents stays his hand, and nearly gets him killed by Mongul. Fortunately, he was saved by Jason Todd dropping the Lotus-Eater Machine on Mongul.
- Golden Age Superman, though, subverted this. Although he didn't like killing, he wasn't above threatening criminals with death or letting them die. And during his final fight with the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths, he had to do everything in his power to put an end to the villain's threat once and for all.
- In The Day the Cheering Stopped, Superman needs a legendary sword to fight King Kosmos, who has taken over a human body. Though, he is worried about using the weapon because it might kill Kosmos' host.
- The Leper from Krypton: After getting Superman infected with an incurable disease, and conning one million dollars out of people who were foolish enough to believe he would freely give one cure to his worst enemy, Luthor boasts that he has gotten away with everything to Superman's face. Superman feels incredibly tempted to reach out, touch him and get him infected, but he restrains himself because it would be murder.
Lex Luthor: "See? I conned your friends out of a million bucks! And you're stilll a candidate for a coffin!"
Superman: (thinking) "I could pierce this protective suit...touch Luthor...and he'd get the virus! But— I can't break my code against murder!"
- The Injustice franchise deconstructs this., with Superman being pushed to the breaking point by the Joker and murdering him out of revenge. Superman takes a hard stance against the idea of Thou Shalt Not Kill, believing that criminals should be dealt no mercy and executed as he pleases. He even eventually escalates to killing innocents and children, albeit as "acceptable" collateral damage.
- Superman: Up in the Sky turns this into the basis of a cruel moral dilemma: while on the search for a missing girl lost in space, Superman ends up making a deal with Darkseid, who pledges to help Superman on one condition: he must take an innocent life, breaking his heroic oath. Superman ends up finding an alien hermit who's in immense suffering from a fatal disease and outright begs to be put out of his misery, but this is still brutal for Supes as consensual Mercy Kill or not, he still can't bring himself to kill someone. Nevertheless, he ends up reporting back to Darkseid to confirm that the deed was done, with Darkseid satisfied that Superman had confessed to breaking his vow. Turns out, however, that Supes took an entirely different route, where instead of killing or leaving the alien, he spared him by going the extra mile to find the cure for his disease to save his life (hey, Darkseid didn't ask whose vow Superman broke).
- Played with in the digital-first Adventures of Superman with Superman's first meeting with the Joker, in which he shows an amazing ability to troll the Clown Prince of Crime, which culminates in an Implied Death Threat. When the Joker is taken aback by this, Supes claims that Batman might have vowed never to kill, but he just decided not to, and might decide otherwise if pushed. But again, much of what he said in that story was a deliberate and successful attempt to keep the Joker off-balance.
Spin-offs Comics
She also avoids killing.
- In Who is Superwoman?, Supergirl was horrified when she accidentally killed Superwoman, even though Superwoman had tried to kill her several times.
- In Supergirl (2011), Kara does not know her own strength. She gets upset when her actions endanger people and is relieved once that she sees that nobody has been harmed.
- Subverted in Red Daughter of Krypton. Supergirl is horrified when she apparently kills mass murderer and hitman Lobo after kicking him. Then he takes advantage of her distress to catch her off guard, and almost fries her brains with an ultrasonic device. Right there and then she decides he has "got it coming".
- Subverted again at the end of that arc. She executed an artificial, genocidal body-snatching alien abomination reasoning that "This is not murder. It is the end of a terrible mistake."
- Zigzagged in Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl. Supergirl didn't like to kill… but when she discovered that Lex Luthor murdered her cousin, she wanted to kill him. However Batgirl talked her out of it, stating that she's a hero and she mustn't drop to his level.
- She fully intended to kill the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths, with just a brief distraction getting her killed before she can kill him.
- Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow: When a girl named Ruthye tries to hire Supergirl to carry her revenge out, Kara replies she is a superhero, hence she is not supposed to kill people.
Supergirl: You seem like a very nice girl, but I can't go with you to go off and kill someone. You don't know this about me, but I have a job, a very responsible job that I need to go back home to do. And the first rule of that job just happens to be "Don't kill people."
Other Spin-off Comics
- The bylaws of the Legion of Super-Heroes firmly forbid killing any sentient — unsurprising, since they were created during the Silver Age. The tradition has been retained throughout the Legion's various continuities; even in the Darker and Edgier Legion Lost limited series, Live Wire officially resigned from the Legion before performing a Heroic Sacrifice to kill the Progenitor, an Omnicidal Maniac with the power to control matter on a cosmic scale, in order to allow his teammates to escape without the Progenitor following them back and taking over their universe.
- The Legion Constitution was once published in the comics, in its entirety. The section in question says that "[n]o Legionnaire shall take the life of any sapient being, save as a provable only alternative to the death of the Legionnaire, or the deaths of other sapient beings." The writers usually have the Legionnaires treat the question of lethal force more strictly than their constitution actually requires.
Other Media
- In the DC Extended Universe, Superman's first outing in Man of Steel ends with him being forced to kill General Zod. It's portrayed as an extreme last resort against a foe who would not be talked down, would not stop harming innocent lives, and could not be contained otherwise, but the incident still traumatizes Clark so badly that he adopts his familiar no-killing policy.
