There are plenty of comics with killing, they exist you can read them.
obviously the seduction of the innocent argument is nonsense, I'm not making a censorship argument I'm making an artistic storytelling argument.
You're confused about what I'm talking about.
I'm not anti-no killing in comics. That ideology serves its purpose and can (and has) generate great stories with certain heroes. Works great for DD with the added religious angle. Works well for younger heroes. Has its place in other mediums obviously.
I was specifically talking about using comics as a scapegoat and how it curtailed artistic creatively in comics for about 25-30 years give or take. Its well documented, first hand by the creator's during the time.
but as it relates to batman, superman and most mainstream heroes, the reticence or outright prohibition against killing adds a dramatveubg nsion to the super hero super villain conflicts, and adds thematic complexity that actually makes the characters more complex and mature not less.
Killing and using a gun works in context for Batman. The reasoning against it was always weak to me. Mind you guns were phased out of Batman before the CCA but the killing issue which happened every now and then was due to the unfair and unwarranted senseless bashing of comics.
Superman is a whole other case. I wasn't talking on an individual case to case basis.
I disagree that it can't or couldn't work on a mainstream level for reasons that should be clear when we look it comics today or entertainment in general. We could go decade for decade as well. In America, the good guys killing the bad guys isn't an issues until we want to be hypocritical about our values which is simply just an ongoing theme in this country.
never mind the obvious problems it creates:
if hero is willing to kill the villain, then they should kill all of them, and the story is over.
Until the villains ressurrect, revealed to not actually be dead, are cloned, time travel return, or any other machination to bring back any villain worth being brought back cuz you know comics. Death in fiction is as finite as you want it to be in the big 2 mainstream comics business where the stories being told are serialized and never stop.
Before we get in to the whole death problem in comics my stance is it always depends on the stories being told and how they're executed. The Green Goblin can die in a great story in 2016 just to come back in 2017 or 2035 where he can be involved in great stories onward.
If they kill with impunnity then they the heroes become are no different from villains
If the super powered heros are handing out death sentences as vigilantes then no society would tolerate their existence.
This whole no different than the villain argument always sturruck me as odd and contradictory or just convienently ignoring facts. By and large all superheroes are committing the crime of vigilantism even if they're not killing with impunity (unless they work for an established recognized authority). So they're already criminals from that stand point. They're ******* up crime scenes, causing all sorts of damage and destruction in public.
As far as the killing aspect. Most would be killing in self defense or the self defense of others. Its what law enforcement usually does and wouldn't be much different other than the whole part where they're consistently committing the crime of vigilantism.
I'm really not sure the public and even the powers that be would across the board be against it in certain circumstancea let alone entire societies
but hey that's an interesting issue to explore within comics in itself.
necessity is the mother of invention, and imo no way comics reach the current cultural position they inhabit if they didn't have those limitations placed on them at a critical point in their invention.
they would have gone the way of other forms of formerly popular pulp fiction. noir, detective novels, comics would have decline like the rest of them.
I disagree with this completely
Especially when we look at the start date of comics, it's success, then it's waning in popularity, and then it's sudden ressurrgence and then continued succes.
The idea that without that period where comics was being stupidly policied was needed cuz creators were just ready to have Green Lantern throw a bus full of criminals in to sun is bull ****. The editors of both companies know how to set their own limitations. The creators at that time doing mainstream comics (many of which created the mainstream heroes themselves) know what works for each and every character.
People have been naysaying with doom and gloom predicting the death of the comics industry since its inception for all sorts of reasons. Now I'm being told that bull **** era of McCarthysim, pseudo intellectuals using faux science/psychology who had a soapbox that gave us the CCA was a good thing. Instead of comics survivng it like the majority recognizes it.
:x Not buying it.
Once Justice League comes out I wonder who will drop more bodies, the League or the Avengers.
