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First, in James Daily, Ryan Davidson book "The Law Of Superheroes", it is pointed out that legally the Joker is not insane so should have been executed by the government decades ago. Besides the idiocy of "Batman doesn't kill", Joker isn't legally insane and could/should have received the death penalty. IE Batman might not kill him but the government could/should execute the Joker.

Second, the Punisher is a good example of why the heroes shouldn't routinely kill their opponents. The classic super-hero is a person acting outside of the Law and thus are not under the safe-guards society correctly applies to the police and other law-enforcement bodies. If Batman (or Superman) routinely killed criminals, they'd be hard to stop if they started killing the wrong people. Let's be honest, the comic book writers don't often show the heroes targeting the "wrong people" but in the Real World "mistakes are made". That crime boss might be completely innocent of the crime that the heroes believe that he is guilty of.

So yes, the super-hero in a fight for his life and the life of others shouldn't be expected to "not kill". Just as a police officer would get in position where he has to take a life, so a super-hero would be in such a position.

Yes, we should want our super-heroes to leave the "proper punishment" up to the Courts but they routinely go into dangerous situations so expecting them to "Never Kill" is idiotic.

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Oct 27, 2021Liked by Caroline Furlong

While I've never got any stories up yet, I am working on several--including a number of superhero stories. One of these superheroes is a displaced female Elf warrior, who is recruited by a wealthy woman trying to clean up a highly corrupt city, and has discovered that there's only so far she can get when nearly every force in the city is arrayed against her...and having someone who can literally take the fight to the streets would be more than helpful. The warrior agrees to take up her cause and takes the name Harbinger. Being a battle-hardened warrior from another world, Harbinger obviously doesn't balk at killing those who cannot be stopped any other way. But at the same time, she doesn't want to bring the horrors of the battlefield into a city, and generally looks for non-lethal ways to stop the villains she faces. For the most part, she's content to push the wheels of justice into proper turning. But those that human justice can't (or won't) touch--especially if they boast of the fact--will swiftly find themselves facing a higher court.

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> If the protagonist is just as vicious, just as horrible, and just as cruel as his enemies then he is not a hero. There is nothing heroic about the Punisher’s crusade: He wallows in the same crimes as the monsters he slays. His targets may be murderers and all manner of filth, but he himself has descended to murder to “clean them up.”

Um, this is nonsense. There is a moral difference between killing murderers and killing the innocent.

> Evil will never go away or be uprooted. Killing all the gangbangers, murderers, mobsters, et al in New York City is impossible.

The same can be said for locking them all up, but that doesn't mean we should scrap the justice system.

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