Checkmate, moral compass

That would actually be a pretty cool premise. A hero who promises he will kill himself once all evil is defeated, as what he does although for good is evil itself. But people love him too much so they themselves become evil to keep him around.

I guess kinda like a incredible situation, but more dark because the protagonist just wants to die instead of raise a family.

He could always, you know, just break their spine

So would the number of citizens in gotham. Apparently everyone is a killer in that city.

So by your logic… Would you become a triple killer by killing a double killer? Or a serial killer by killing a single serial killer? What about the trolley problem if the single guy is a serial killer then? I need answers

That only counts if your killings are non-consecutive.

Hah. Absurdist on the surface, and yet if you were to imagine yourself forced to be a vigilante…

Good writing prompt 🤔

Obviously

I was about to make the argument that if batman killed the joker the only consequence for him would be his compromised morals, but if someone else killed the joker while he was in custody then they would at least lose their job and most likely go to jail and that’s not comparable. Then I remembered that if a cop killed him they’d just get paid leave before they were acquitted of the murder and worst case would have to get a job in a different city. So yeah ACAB.

Yea, it’s always been weird to me that Batman alone is being judged for not using lethal force.

Batman is the focus of the narrative and the audience. Of course he will be the focus of the criticism. But technically yes, a lot of others in universe do also share responsibility for any further victims of the Joker. After a certain number of escape, spree, capture, escape, spree, etc cycles surely they must have realized he cannot be rehabilitated and will continue the remorseless mass killings until he dies.

or even proximity to him, be morally obligated to kill him?

This is a compelling idea for sure, and could definitely lead to interesting questions in other cases. Let’s say the Joker has a body count of at least 1000 victims, how far back do you have to walk that number before such an obligation is no longer reasonable. Would a serial killer with 40 victims also be such a clear and present danger that they’d represent a moral imperative for their elimination? Or does it have to reach comic book levels of obscene?

But he spends a fuckton of his money to change things, though?

Pretty sure it’s even a point in the comics that he hires a bunch of ex-cons and stuff specifically so they don’t have to resort to a life of crime again.

Sounds like something the Joker might say.

It’s funny that Punisher really isn’t all that popular but in the US his skull emblem in a Blue Lives Matter livery is an extremely popular automotive window decal.

Pretty much why I prefer manga. The convention for manga is creators come up with their own characters and stories rather then remixing preexisting ones. Of course there’s original stuff in the west, but people don’t talk about those nearly as much. There’s also some examples of Japanese characters getting passed about to different writers, but that’s also less common.

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Not if at least one of the killers was already a serial killer.

In a world where bad guys routinely obtain super powers and put on costumes to do crime, one guy with a bunch of money fighting crime in a bat suit doesn’t sound so far fetched. I mean his best friend is literally an immortal alien from Kansas, who could, should he fancy it, murder every criminal as they step over some arbitrary benchmark for criminality. Beating them to a pulp and turning them in is just a sick hobby they get away with.

Yeah that’s why the Joker is a great nemesis for Batman. They’re both crazy people, they’re both are aware that they’re crazy, only difference is one has rules and the other doesn’t. That’s basically all that separates them.

I feel like portraying Batman as someone does kill people is boring because there’s not psychological aspect to it.

I think the point is that he wasn’t an amateur and the guy was. He was trying to do a job and they got in his way.

Replace batman with a firefighter and give the guy a water pistol and it’s the same story.

I think that’s why I like Spiderman so much. He’s a vigilante who genuinely struggles to make ends meet at times and has gone through so much that he arguably deserves to completely stop protecting people and yet, he continues anyway.

I like the idea of a Batman story where it’s slowly revealed that he’s the villain. There’d be his most sympathetic villains revealed to be people that are fighting the morally correct fight, while Batman is just fighting to maintain the status quo.
The sequel would have the Joker trying to undermine the public trust in the systems that maintain the status quo

No more spoilers. Start from Dark Knight: Metal if you want to read the comics.

In the next series “The Batman Who Laughs”, they showed that the mainstream Joker also had this failsafe too and no spoilers because the plot kinda builds around that.

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The rest of the rogue’s gallery does in fact have better dynamics with Batman than Joker does.

Joker’s some lame ass loser who views supervillainy as a career while literally everyone else in the rogue’s gallery has better, more interesting reasons to do what they do. Joker’s doing evil for the lulz schtick is boring as fuck. He’s nothing but a boring-ass two dimensional Gary Stu and I am tired of being quiet about it.

The only interesting Joker we’ve had in the past twenty years is the Joaquin Phoenix one.

Wow! Something smart in this thread! Bravo !

Avengers touched on it a bit, not as much as maybe they should have, but there was a scene where an entire building came down and one of the people who lost family in it confronted them.

(I thought I replied, but it seems to not be here, not sure if I forgot to hit Reply or what but trying this again)

Sadly not really.
Sometimes aftermath is used as a plot device- for example the Avengers series dealt with that a bit and who should be responsible for the actions of superheroes.

But for real ‘full picture’ it’s almost never shown because it’s messy and bloody and awful and really really sad. Think opening scene of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ just with a lot more feels. If those cars weren’t blacked out you’d see blood everywhere and the people in them would be either wounded and screaming or gasping for air as their lungs fill with blood or dead and mangled as bullets tore their bodies apart. And if anyone else was in the back seat and survived you’d have the terrified screams of a child who just watched as Mommy get turned into so much hamburger meat and then the driverless car crashed. And then, perhaps hours or days later, you’d have families that break down in panicked screaming-cries when they are told their wife/husband/mother/father/son/daughter is never coming home.
Ask any of THOSE people, and any of them would happily trade Joker’s life to get their loved one back.
The REALITY of serious violence can’t be shown in PG-13 movies and even R movies either can’t or don’t often show it. People go to the movies to have fun and feel good, not see a bloody mess that makes them want to puke and then cry as they experience the pain of a broken family.

Perhaps this bothers me more than most because I HAVE seen what the real result is like. I was around for the shock video era in the 2000s and saw some really awful stuff from Chechnya. There’s a bunch of combat footage coming from Ukraine. And closer to this subject, I’ve seen a lot of videos of defensive shooting incidents. It’s not like movies, it’s not fun. It’s just brutal and sad.

The boys?

Yeah when Batman sees killing Joker as just as bad as him murdering random Innocent civilians of Gotham, he’s stupid.

Same for Two Face and Scarecrow and all the others. Batman by leaving people to escape jail and murder more each time is not helping Gotham.

I can understand Batman and his motivations, but I think he has blood on his hands, and not just from the crooks he leaves with crippling medical debt.

I am blaming Batman for his choice and for his reasoning.
He pulls the trigger, Joker (a psycho who’s killed dozens/hundreds already and will kill even more) dies.
He doesn’t pull the trigger, 3-4 innocent people die now and Joker goes on to kill scores more.

I argue Batman can’t just wash his hands of responsibility because he CHOSE to put himself in that position. He decided to be the one with a motorcycle cannon pointed at Joker’s face. If he didn’t want to be responsible for life and death, he should have stayed home and gotten a massage. But no, he chose to be the city’s defender, so there he is.

Perhaps it helps to drop the movie and pick another analogy. Imagine there’s a mass shooter psycho walking around shooting children, and there’s a police officer with weapon drawn and pointed at the psycho. Police officer decides not to shoot the psycho because his conscience says he doesn’t want to kill anybody. And because he doesn’t take the shot, the psycho kills 3-4 more kids.
Do you argue the officer is blameless for those childrens’ deaths?

But Batman is ok with killing the henchmen of joker and other villains by dozens

That’s kinda what I mean as far as suspension of disbelief is, concerned: billions would fix any city unless you aren’t trying to fix anything and no matter how smart you are you won’t stand up to someone with actual superpowers without a metric ton of plot armor. Like a kryptonian, someone with the speed force or even just magic could vaporize batman with barely any effort.

Like the comics and other media where batman is up against just normal humans I can understand though still not my favourites but the ones where he’s against actual superpowers you usually get some bullshittery.

I’m no expert in comics by a long shot but that’s just been my impression when I did read some batman. The one where batman was actually a patient in arkham and all the villains were just doctors, guards and patients was my favourite though.

The Dark Knight fits that summation perfectly.

The Adam West Batman was the only good Batman.