Brians Superman Post

[Odjn]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Here's the thing: The only reason that preventative retributive justices works in comics is because we can divide people in good and evil people. What's the difference? Evil people kill people. Goodpeople don't.
If good people can kill people, hoshit you are in the real world- good people aren't universally good, evil people aren't universally evil, and thus villains can be cured.

Well technically there's all kinds of evil doods who never killed anyone and then gotten beaten up so yeah. Oh and it's worse to be in comics land because then you're saying Well, it's ok for me to send this guy to the same jail he just broke out of after killing forty people and now that I've done that I better help clean up this fifty people. That's incompetence.

Also also. Villains can't be 'cured.' People can choose to change but they're not cured because that would imply they're forced to be good. Superman lobotomizing them in the Justice Lord dimension is a cure.

[Dracorion]

Superman doesn't kill all the bad guys because then the writers would have to keep coming up with lame-ass new villains for him to fight every week and then you'd be bitching about that.

I think the point you're really looking to make "is the comic book medium is broken" or some such.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Odjn

Well technically there's all kinds of evil doods who never killed anyone and then gotten beaten up so yeah. Oh and it's worse to be in comics land because then you're saying Well, it's ok for me to send this guy to the same jail he just broke out of after killing forty people and now that I've done that I better help clean up this fifty people. That's incompetence.

This is complete nonsense. You reducing morality to a simple math equation of how many people live and how many die- not even utilitarians do this (and if they did the utility loss of letting a few individuals adminster justice and death should easily outwiegh the benefits), not even comic books do this.
As discussed above, superman doesn't say "Oh I'll let this person die to save a 100 people" he tries to save everybody and generally does because that's what he does. Superman is pretty good at saving everyone.

Also also. Villains can't be 'cured.' People can choose to change but they're not cured because that would imply they're forced to be good. Superman lobotomizing them in the Justice Lord dimension is a cure.

I'm saying this in relation to a comic book world where there is "evil" and "good" as definite concepts and one of them is inherentely bad and liek a disease. Comic book people don't work like real people, villains generally can't choose to change because they are cast as archetypal villains. You are trying to hodge-podge comic book morality with real people- it doesn't work.

[Odjn]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

This is complete nonsense. You reducing morality to a simple math equation of how many people live and how many die- not even utilitarians do this (and if they did the utility loss of letting a few individuals adminster justice and death should easily outwiegh the benefits), not even comic books do this.
As discussed above, superman doesn't say "Oh I'll let this person die to save a 100 people" he tries to save everybody and generally does because that's what he does. Superman is pretty good at saving everyone

Joker kills people because he likes doing so and will never stop killing people, with the possible exception of Batman dying sometimes (but not the actual Bat death.)

So yes, I will, because he is a grade A evil guy and it's either he dies or every one he continues to kill dies and it's up to you which happens. The answer is, kill his dumb ass dead because if the legal system doesn't do it, someone should. There's no reason NOT to kill the joker- he always gets out and always kills more people and no shrink can cure him. He's less of a man and more of a beast/force of nature. And yeah, he's 'come back from the dead' a lot, but I don't seem to recall someone shooting him in the head and burning the corpse so someone should give that a try.

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

I'm saying this in relation to a comic book world where there is "evil" and "good" as definite concepts and one of them is inherentely bad and liek a disease. Comic book people don't work like real people, villains generally can't choose to change because they are cast as archetypal villains. You are trying to hodge-podge comic book morality with real people- it doesn't work.

No, some comic books treat it like that and some don't.

Good comics do treat good/evil as vague, good fictional characters aren't how real people act but are reasonable replicas, and good fiction can present the illusion of choice which makes quite a lot of villains more compelling.