Superman Vs. Homelander

[Ramza00]

I wonder, can anyone tell me when it was that batman stopped killing people? Classic batman killed PLENTY of people, mooks especially. There was one comic where he basically hung a big mental aptient a bad guy had doped up on drugs with a cable from the bat plane while he flew off. His very first comic he literally punched a fat dude into a vat of acid. Another dude in a later comic threw a sword at him, batman used a door to block it, then punched the guy as he begged for mercy neck first into his own sword. In another detective comic he dodged a gunman trying to shoot him, the proceeded to break his neck by kicking him so hard in the head his neck snapped. These were all in the first year or so of his creation. A lot of the others were alternate versions so dont count, but im honestly curious to know when they established "no killing, no, not even then." as his mantra.

This is complicated but let me give you the rough idea.

Batman was first introduced in the Detective Comics in 1939. He was such a popular character that he got his own spin off in 1940 (Batman Vol 1 issue 1.) Likewise there was a 2nd spin off in 1941 with World Finest Comics. At the same time Robin (**** Grayson) was almost always as old as Batman for he was introduced in Detective Comics in 1940 (so a year after), and was in Batman Vol 1 #1 in 1940, and World Finest Comics with Superman, Batman, and **** in 1941 (focusing on these 3 characters.)

When Batman is first introduced in Detective Comics he used guns and flats out murder people. Yet editors of DC behind the scenes were already reformulating the character by 1940. Batman still is murdering people with Guns in 1940 in Batman Vol 1 and by issue 4 (labeled Winter 1940 but not released until mid January 1941) Batman now sometimes uses the opponents guns against them but never shoots to kill. See editor's note.

Spoiler: Editor's Note in 1941

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Note there are contradictory stories which editor decided Batman should not use Guns but after that 1941 issue we see the amount of gun use dramatically decrease.

That said Batman was still killing via other means in the 1940s like throwing people off buildings, including a time a person was literally hanged. It was a very "pulpy" time in the 1940s with grim and dark. Yet that Batman #4 issue in 1941, in a different comic of this same anthology we hear Batman tell Robin to try not to kill via using the non sharp end of the blade when fighting villains while sword fighting.

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The Silver Age Batman more or less started in 1954 and 1955 with Seduction of the Innocent where psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, was corrupting the youth in various ways such as making them gay (see famous Batman and Robin picture with them in the same bed) and making the violent and so on. Fredric Wertham even had a congressional hearing for this was the time of the Red Scare and also the other politics of the Era tied to the Baby Boom.

Thus we see two things happen with Batman.

A) Batman becomes more sci-fi and "kids friendly" with things like Batmite and so on. The style of the silver age of Batman comics is different than the darker more gritty crime fighter of the 1939 to early 1950s. Note the sales of Batman was already going down in the late 1940s and early 1950s for "pulp comics were no longer in fashion."

B) 2nd the Comic Industry decided to self-censor itself with the adoption of the Comic Code Authority, something similar to the Hay's Code.

Here is the list of the rules of the CCA with 1954 http://cbldf.org/the-comics-code-of-1954/ Note there is not a single CCA for it got revisions at later dates notably 1971 and 1989. But the 1954 code would not allow Batman to throw people off buildings and so on. The heroes must be heroic and the villains must always lose and their plans thwarted. Crime can never be fun it must be seen as unpleasant and sordid. Authority figures such as Cops, Judges, Mayors, etc should always be presented in a light that elicits respect and is not disrespectful. No gay stuff, no horror, so on and so on. It is only 1200 something words long so go read it, and only 900 words of actual rules with the rest being preamble and set up on the mission statement.

But yeah the CCA pretty much created the "no killing rule" for Batman while prior to that it was "no gun rule" in less than 2 years of the character's introduction.

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And thus writers wrote around these constraints especially when Batman became less sci-fi and less camp in the bronze age roughly with the 70s. That said in the 70s to 00s we see different takes on Batman some giving tragic backstories like Batman does not use guns due to his 8 year old trauma.

While other stories have Batman specifically killing supervillains in direct and indirect ways. For example in (Batman Annual #8 in 1982) Ra's Al Ghul is mad and space laser stuff. At the end of the comic Ras is getting away but Batman modified the shuttle before the final conflict and Batman literally kills him with the sun / space laser, via remote controlling the spacecraft. Let me repeat this, Batman purposefully murders Ra's for Ra's is nuts. Batman after listening to Ra's dying screams decides to turn off the radio where he is listening. Then he vents the body from the space shuttle (now dust, not a body) and Batman, Robin, and Talia go back to earth. Robin calls him out on this this and says you killed him and Batman rhetorically says "did I?" Talia is crying. When they get back on Earth Talia who was planning to marry Bruce earlier in the issue and helped betray her father tells Bruce to leave and she doesn't want to see him again.

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In sum Batman is a complicated character over 75 well now 81 years of history. Many of the different Batmans are "Not My Batman" for I use a "loose cannon" approach with Superheroes and also Myths when the stories are dozens of years old and thus there are THOUSANDS of issues.

For example do I want to think about in Greek Myth in one of the stories of Odysseus he had kids with Circe (3 of them) and one of the kids, the youngest Telemachus, wants to know where his absent dad is? That kid Telemachus thus goes Ithaca to search for his father, gets lost actually shows up to Ithaca but does not know it is Ithaca then raids that city for he is starving and in the process kills his father Odysseus. More stuff happened but the end result is Telemachus marries Odysseus first wife Penelope, while Telegonus (son of Penelope and Odysseus) who also did his own sea journey searching for his dad goes to Circe's island and marries Circe. In sum two "half-brothers" marry each other's Step-Mothers who used to be married to their dad Odysseus. So did these stories both happen? Can we merge the Illiad with the Odyssey, and the later epic story the Telegony? Well I say they are merely Loose Cannon and you can say the stories take place in alternate universes for sometimes these canon fights get creepy and weird.

Yeah that batman is awesome. He is gruff, stern, stoic, and all of that hard nosed behavior you expect from the terror that flaps in the night. But he CARES. He cares so deeply its incredible when you get to see those rare flashes. He cares for his children, every member of the bat clan. He cares for the league who are, at least the senior council members, his friends, or more family to him. He would rather that nobody ever see that as he knows it can be used against him. "Oh so you care about robin ey? I wonder what would happen if I, i dunno, beat him to death with a crowbar then blew him up?" (Not sure why such a random scenario popped into my head) And he also hates showing any vulnerability. But its there. I also liked the start of batman beyond. Where bruce retired because he picked up a gun to threaten a thug with due to his heart issues nearly getting him killed. The second he got out of there he swore never again, and stuck to it. Because he knew he was an inch from being forced to shoot someone or die himself. He hung up his suit and stopped.

And that is the batman that I like, for as you pointed out Traab even though he is mostly healthy in Justice League, he is not always healthy and he was a jerk some of the time with **** Grayson, and Terry McGinnis. Sometimes you wonder why the Bat Family bothers with him. Other times the same person actually does care when he is around people he cares about and he gives himself permission to be a better version of himself (which in turn helps other people , even the villains of the series.)