!!Disclaimer: Man of Steel spoilers after this point (well, really just 1)!!
You know what I'm talking about. That one rule that most heroes who aren't in the dubious and ever-shifting region occupied by the anti-heroes and anti-villains abide by. No killing. First of all, I'm sure this has been talked about before, but watching the Man of Steel made me want to say a few things.
Note that this is not a new issue - it's bothered me before - but fan reaction to a certain event in Man of Steel has prompted the need for a discussion, namely the one near the end, and I'm not talking about superman wasting millions in taxpayer money to make a petty point about his privacy.
Fist of all, "Superman doesn't kill" is a lie. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physics knows that transferring enough energy from a fist sized object to someone's chest to lift them off the ground and throw them 20 feet through the air (a common fate for henchmen in superman's world) would leave a crater where their chest used to be (or depending on the density of the object a fist-sized hole in their chest). These people are not knocked out, they are dead. Also, does anyone seriously think that in those fights where superman and le supervillian de jour are duking it out in the middle of crowded cities, smashing into cars and through buildings, that no one dies? While technically I'm pretty sure that qualifies as manslaughter (or maybe wrongful death?), not murder, it still falls under the domain of "killing". But that's fine, some will say, it's the fault of the villain that instigated the conflict! Right, because superman totally can't fly, can't breath in space, and is incapable of simply taking the battle up there where there's no bystanders. Oh wait, he can. But doesn't. Because these are comics and drawing people getting thrown through buildings is more fun than watching them flail around in space. Ah well.
Anyway, even if it were true, it would not be a particularly moral rule anyway. It sounds great as a concept, but it doesn't even remotely work in the worlds these people live in. Take Batman for instance. We all know (including Batman) that the Joker (and many other villains) treat Arkham Asylum like a hotel they can check in and out of at their leisure. And every time they break out, people die. What is the death penalty for if not this exact instance, killing people who will continue to kill others if they are allowed to live? And if the justice system is incapable of doing so, I would argue that it falls to the heroes - who as vigilantes are already outside the legal system - to do the right thing for the people they claim to protect. Otherwise all they are doing is serving as extremely expensive speed bumps on the highway of crime.
"But wait!" you might say, "what then would make them better than the criminals they oppose?" Then I would slap you for being an idiot. Unless you live your life by some extremely vague numerical system of reckoning, killing people for fun and profit does not in any way equal killing people because they would keep killing other people for fun and profit if you didn't. Honestly, if they believe as strongly as most of them supposedly do about not killing, I would invest a little time building a much better prison. Bruce Wayne could donate a billion or two for a special prison for supervillians (you know, one that doesn't let them leave whenever they feel like it), Superman could fly them to a prison he built on mars, get creative! But simply tossing them in a cell or letting them walk away - I would argue - does make them almost as bad as the villains they fight. Because it means they value the ideal of justice more than the people that ideal is meant to serve and protect. And for anyone concerned that killing a villain for all the right reasons is the first step on a slippery slope, I would argue that holding ideals higher than lives is much more dangerous.
