scans_daily | Superman versus Wonder Woman : The Sacrifice Part 4 of 4

I do not react well to people saying this is awesome. Right now I'm having to keep looking at the neck-snap gif as I type this, and I feel disgusted. Some...person...thought that it was a good idea to turn Wonder Woman into Wolverine with a lasso, and this was the result.

Killing Lord was not the only option, and rather than explore alternatives Wondy just went "Kill you? Okay." *KRK*

I think the fucking casual way she does it is part of what gets to me, like it's no big deal. You just murdered a man, for fuck's sake.

Back when I first had a discussion on this, on the "You'll All Be Sorry" board at CBR years ago, I said that Wondy could have just knocked Lord out cold.

Here's how the conversation went from that point on, as best as I can recall:

"The problem with that is that Lord would eventually wake up, and once he did then Superman would start rampaging again."

"Well then, keep him sedated and unconscious 24/7 until you can find a way to break his hold over Supes. Or fucking depower him somehow--the DCU has somebody or something that can remove people's powers, right? And what's the range of Lord's mind control? If he were left with the Oans, could he still control Superman despite not being on Earth any more?"

My point is the "seconds to act" argument does not fly in my opinion because you don't need to think very long to come up with "I'm gonna punch this guy really hard." And that the "killing him was the only option" argument doesn't fly because if people had just put some thought into it, there were any number of ways to neutralize Lord as a threat. Or, failing that, there are ways to neutralize Superman as a threat, the most obvious of which begins with a "K".

Her willingness to kill in cold blood and in battle makes her Wolverine with a lasso because one of the things that makes Wolverine Wolverine is that he just does not care all that much if somebody he's fighting dies, or if the most efficient way of dealing with a problem involves him stabbing somebody to death. In that respect this version of Wondy is similar; both characters would say "I did what had to be done" and have no regrets.

Both characters are also not above using torture. Wolverine's history with that practice is well-documented, and during Simone's run on WW, Wondy lost her lasso and needed information, so she decided to torture Cheetah until Cheetah talked.

(Stuff like that, combined with Gail writing Wondy as ridiculously powerful and nigh-unbeatable even by the strongest entities in the DCU--don't get me started on the way Ares died, because that's a whole separate rant--is why I finally dropped the book and, later, just gave up on Gail as a creator.)

Call me a judgmental dick like Batman if you want, but there are certain lines I don't want a character to cross if I'm going to read a comic book about them.

People talk about Wonder Woman being a "soldier" and a "warrior", terms like that. That...doesn't make me view her in a more favourable light.

See, I can root for a superhero, because I imagine a superhero as somebody who saves people. A superhero's job, when you come right down to it, is the same as that of a first responder. First responders save lives instead of taking them. Even police are getting access to non-lethal ways of taking down violent criminals now. (And while some of them do abuse those tools, as we know, at least a taser is less likely to kill you than a bullet.)

A soldier is a trained killer. Their job, during conflicts, is to kill people on the other side until the end of the conflict.

No disrespect intended to anybody who's been in the armed forces, but I don't want to read a comic book about a soldier.

Except she IS a soldier. That's part of the balance of her character and it doesn't particularly matter whether that makes you view her in a more or less favourable light - That IS part of her character. You're also tapping into entirely separate areas with the notion of Diana torturing the Cheetah for information, because that's an entirely different creator with a different perspective - regardless of the fact that Wonder Woman IS meant to be ridiculously powerful and this often gets ignored to make Superman in particular look better.

I'd also argue about just how 'casual' she is in doing what she does. Certainly, she's expressionless when it comes to breaking his neck, but I'd rather have something neutral than anything that could be remotely misconstrued as her taking joy in murdering Lord. Also, if you think the killing of one person - a villain who promised to keep doing what he was doing again and again and proved the necessity of his being killed when he came back and started fucking around again - turns Wonder Woman into WOLVERINE, of all characters, then to me any validity your argument has falls apart. Because there is SO much difference. Does shooting Darkseid turn Batman into Wolverine?

Soldier as a profession, not as a character trait, I expect. And Diana is rarely seen as a Soldier on active duty in war, is she?

(The next logical step is to say what Punisher does is okay, because he believes himself to be a soldier in the war on crime. That clearly doesn't fly.)

Being a soldier is one of Wonder Woman's traits. Raised by the Amazons and earning her title by showing her battle prowess through competition, Diana has often been depicted as the most pragmatic of the DC trinity. If you read the entire issue, Wondy was in this battle alone due to her immunity to mind control. Everyone else was either incapacitated or MIA. She tried to convince Lord of a more peaceful alternative, something that is consistent with her "Amabassador of Paradise Island" title and her compassion. He refused. With no immediate alternatives and knowing that Lord can control multiple individuals even while unconscious, I see her solution as appropriate.

Right. Trait. As you may know, being a Soldier in war is more of a profession, especially regarding the rules of killing. This instance was in no way, shape or form a war, for example, and no soldier would have the right to kill in this instance. And "if you read the entire issue" is somewhat condescending. I read the entire crossover. Did you?

And she had immediate options. Knock him out, fly and get some chloroform (which would take all of one second) to keep him unconscious. Put him on stasis, or in the Phantom Zone. Then you've bought yourself plenty of time, to follow somewhat more proper protocol. Max saying killing him was the only way means diddly squat; it's just what HE believed to be true. Did they, for example, explore J'onn putting mental blocks in Max's brain, preventing him from ever using his powers again?

So she had options. Just the writer decided he wanted 1) Wonder Woman to murder, and 2) because she wasn't thinking properly.

(Yes, murder is appropriate, since it was in cold blood)

I also thought that. She could have asked Lord--after she'd put some distance between herself and the rapidly-healing Superman--"Okay, are there any OTHER ways?"

In the comment I just posted below, I said that killing Lord was the easiest and simplest thing for Diana to do, part of the reason being that whatever they decided to sentence Lord to would need to be less cruel than killing him. I'm assuming here, but I figure that when a hero doesn't kill somebody most of the time it's because they feel that taking the villain's life would be excessively cruel, even for a villain. So that would rule out something like the Phantom Zone, which is pretty nightmarish when you imagine yourself ending up there.

I don't see any problem with stasis, though.

Is it murder when her life, and her comrades, have been threatened? If we want to apply everyday terms then what we have here is justifiable homicide. But then we have to ask ourselves, "is it justifiable homicide when the person I killed was mind controlling the actual threat?" If we dig deeper, then applying human laws to the actions of a divine being seem a little silly. And then things get even more cray cray because I'm pretty sure we can counter that claim with another claim.

Being a soldier, if you talk to many veterans, never leaves you even after war, especially for those who've killed in the conflict. While they may not actively practice it because hey there is no need, many keep the philosophy and the connections. It's not just about the killing or waving a gun.

If my previous comment seemed condescending, sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that. And yes, I have the entire crossover. (okay maybe that last sentence was suppose to sound a little :p)

The choice she made I think defines her. Superman would've dragged the arc another issue in search of an alternative to killing if the tables were turned. Batman, knowing him, would've been prepared with his anti-mind control spray. Diana, as part of the JL (which regularly fights evil), kills him after having her life threatened and appeals ignored. She isn't some neck snapping killjoy.

It becomes murder if the killing is carried out when the threat is not a clear and present danger, and carried out in cold blood. She had Max subdued, so justifiable homicide is the wrong term; murder the only one that applies.

This is what makes the situation not work, in my opinion; the lack of clear and present danger. Knock Max out cold, put him on stasis or whatever, and you have time to consider alternatives etc.

If we dig deeper, then applying human laws to the actions of a divine being seem a little silly. And then things get even more cray cray because I'm pretty sure we can counter that claim with another claim.

Er, yes.

We can counter that claim with the claim that if Wonder Woman were put on trial for this, there are some defenses her counsel could use which stood a chance of convincing the judge/jury/whatever to rule in her favour, and some which wouldn't.

And saying "I'm a divine being, so therefore I don't have to follow your stupid laws, nyah!" falls into the latter category.

The choice she made I think defines her. Superman would've dragged the arc another issue in search of an alternative to killing if the tables were turned. Batman, knowing him, would've been prepared with his anti-mind control spray. Diana, as part of the JL (which regularly fights evil), kills him after having her life threatened and appeals ignored. She isn't some neck snapping killjoy.

Hang on, read that over again and tell me again that Diana's solution was the only one, because you seem to be admitting that it isn't. Or, at the very least, that you aren't completely sure it is.

If Diana's solution were the only one that resulted in Superman being freed and Lord's threat neutralized, then you would have written "Superman would have looked for an alternative to killing...and he would have died, because there wasn't one and the other Superman that Lord had taken control of would kill him while he was looking." Or you'd have written "Batman would look at his arsenal for something which could break Lord's hold over Superman, and he would have gotten killed by Superman while he was wasting time looking, because nothing short of killing Lord could break that hold."

You are acknowledging that there are different ways this could have been dealt with, perhaps even resolved with the good guys winning and Lord staying alive, but that Diana didn't bother with those approaches--did not even consider them for a second, because that's not her style.

Her style is to break Lord's neck. And break Grendel's neck in Secret Six. And put an axe through Ares' head, killing him too. And kill a sentient android in a cage fight. And who knows how many other killings that happened before and after the time I was following the character during Simone's run on her title.

She doesn't always kill, and sometimes she'll even try to save villains. But she nevertheless has killed when she didn't have to, on more than one occasion. Which, IMO, is not cool

Fly and get some chloroform? HAHAH! That'd be incredibly irresponsible, she doesn't KNOW exactly how his abilities work, leaving him with Superman or simply not killing him is a huge gamble. And since he's controlling Superman, it's a stupid gamble.

She can fly. With Supes incapacitated, she has plenty of time to get a head start. Scoop up Max, fly away, explore alternatives to killing him. As I already said, exploring those alternatives wouldn't take any longer than asking "Okay, killing you is one way, are there any OTHER ways?"

But I guess what it comes down to is that DC--editorial or Rucka or whoever--wanted to write a story where Diana killed a bad guy, because that was supposed to make her cooler and edgier and convince more people to buy her book.

There are plenty of ways this story could have ended with the good guys winning and with Lord still being alive. Under another writer, Wonder Woman would have said "No, I'm not doing that," and she would have used her brain to figure out a way of restoring Superman to his old self without resorting to murder.

But this writer wasn't interested in that. This writer wanted to make Wondy a cold-blooded killer, and wanted to say to all of us "Hey, there are times when it's totally okay to kill in cold blood. She was right to do it. Also, maybe this will bring in readers who weren't interested before and who now see Wonder Woman as a badass."

Now, there are worse things that Diana could have done. Compared to what Wally West did to Inertia--"I'm not going to kill you, I'm just going to make you a prisoner in your own body and force you to stare at the same thing day after day, month after month, year after year, until you go completely insane and WISH you were dead"--Lord got off easy.

Acknowledging that doesn't make me any happier about Diana's actions here, though. Actually, you know what just came to me? As somebody who "does what's necessary and makes the tough decisions", I have a feeling that if sentencing Max Lord or another villain to the same hellish torture that Inertia went through accomplished some noble goal, Diana wouldn't bat an eyelash about it, or lose any sleep over it. She's just do it and not feel the least bit guilty, because "it was necessary."

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Hmm, while I was writing the post with the question of what being a "soldier" means here, it looks like the question got partially answered.

Okay, so on the one hand we have her trying to convince Lord of a peaceful alternative. On the other hand, we have "release Supes from his mind control by executing him".

Is there really no third option, nothing in between? Why would knocking Max out not have worked, at least in the short term?

I'm afraid I don't see this as pragmatic, or doing what was necessary, so much as I see it as Diana doing what was simplest and easiest. With a living Maxwell Lord, things would be complicated, because you'd need to figure out what to do with him. With a dead Maxwell Lord, they're simple and the only question you need to answer is "So, what to do with this corpse here?"

If it's a character trait, then what does that mean? I'm genuinely confused about that, because I've never heard it used that way except in expressions like "So-and-so is being a real trooper."

Anyway, right after I made that other post I remembered another superhero who actually did fight in a war as part of the military: Captain America. And I am a fan of Cap usually, so what I said earlier about not wanting to read a comic about a soldier isn't true after all.

I guess it's because Cap doesn't act like a soldier that I like him. Or maybe it's because he acts like some real life soldiers act. I don't want to seem like I'm generalizing, because not all soldiers will feel this way, but what happens to a lot of people who fight in wars is that they come home and because of their firsthand experiences they are more anti-war than they would be otherwise.

Case in point: it wasn't that long ago that some scans were posted showing the aftermath of "Operation: Galactic Storm".

Iron Man, in that story, wanted to kill the Kree Supreme Intelligence, the villain. He wanted to kill the Supreme Intelligence because it had done something much worse than what Maxwell Lord did here. The Supreme Intelligence had killed billions of Kree.

Cap was dead set against it. And when Iron Man and the Avengers who agreed with him succeeded in executing the Supreme Intelligence, it led to a falling out between Rogers and Stark.

Would it have been more realistic for a former soldier like Cap to rationalize the killing of the Supreme Intelligence? Maybe.

But he didn't, because at heart he's an idealist. He believes there's always a better way, and he always looks for it.

To me, that makes him awesome.

To fans of Wonder Woman as written here, I guess that might make him an idiot, or weak, or whatever.

It's not just Lord. Most villains pick up where they left off after they come back, whether it's escaping from prison or coming back from the dead.

What exactly do you propose? Death penalty for everybody? If you want to have Lord killed here not so much to stop Superman right at that moment as to stop Lord from doing bad things in the future, then logically you should also support hunting down and killing all villains, everywhere.

It's the nature of his abilities that make him a huge problem.

The Riddler goes back to doing what he's doing? Fine, we can fight that and contain him.

Lord goes back to freely MIND CONTROLLING people? The death count would rack up so fast on his simple whim.

Oh okay, so only villains with high death counts should die, then?

I'm more of a Marvel history guy than a DC history one, so I'll have to use mostly Marvel examples here, but...

-MAGNETO: Sank a submarine, killing everybody on board. Also set off an EMP that deactivated every electronic device on Earth, which undoubtedly killed an awful lot of people relying on those devices.

-KANG: Killed millions of people on the way to conquering Earth.

-DOCTOR OCTOPUS: He tried to kill off most of the Earth's population, and that was just in one story.

-CARNAGE: Just Carnage.

-KINGPIN: I figure that between turf wars and ordering hits on people who won't cooperate with him, he probably kills a person a day on average or something like that.

-MISTER SINISTER: Ordered the Mutant Massacre.

-SABRETOOTH: Happily took part in the Mutant Massacre, and even that enormous pile of bodies was just like, 1% maybe of everybody he's killed over the course of his life?

I could go on. Even if you eliminate the villains who've never killed anybody, or who've only killed one or two people, or a handful, or ten...there would still be lots and lots of villains who present just as much of a threat as Lord did, with past body counts and/or potential future body counts being the measure.

And if you were in the universe they inhabited and had the authority and means to order all of them killed? You'd have a pretty huge body count yourself afterwards.

Yeah, as an ultimate last resort - everyone on that list should be killed if no other option presents itself and the legal system truly couldn't detain them.

Yep, everyone on that list. The body counts they rack up truly shows the necessity of that. It's either innocent lives, or theirs that you have to choose between, the vast majority of the time the innocent lives lose out on that decision.

I don't believe in those idiotic 'send you off to another dimension' punishments which never seem to hold, especially since they're basically cruel and unusual torture,

Ok, aside from the dealing-with-Max part (and I will note she's killed before. She killed gods way back in Perez)...

The fight before that was pretty boss, wasn't it?

You may mean no disrespect but it is offensive. Soldiers can negotiate, save lives, and kill when needed. The killing, unfortunately, draws the most attention. They aren't just one dimensional "trained killers."

Call me a judgmental dick like Batman if you want, but there are certain lines I don't want a character to cross if I'm going to read a comic book about them.
People talk about Wonder Woman being a "soldier" and a "warrior", terms like that. That...doesn't make me view her in a more favourable light.

You do realize that you don't have to read about every single character ever, right?

I like WW (and Batwoman too) because she, unlike 99% of superheroes, is a soldier. I understand that that upsets you, but different people like different things, and different fans enjoy different books.

You already have literally the near totality of the medium, but one character acting like a soldier makes you rant that you don't want to read her book? Dude, I hate to be brusque, but it's not all about you. Read about 99% of superheroes and let us enjoy WW's stories in peace.

No soldier would kill an enemy that's been pacified and captured, which, as the scans up above shows, Max was. Soldiers kill in battle, in war. Not when they have captured the enemy and have them at their mercy. Diana most definitly didn't act like a soldier. Rather the opposite.

We can agree we disagree.

You already have literally the near totality of the medium, but one character acting like a soldier makes you rant that you don't want to read her book?

No, that's not what set me off. What set me off was reading comment after comment about how much this rocked. How awesome Wondy was for doing it and--there were fewer of these, but they were there--what morons Bats and Supes were for criticizing her and/or not doing this kind of thing themselves. I'm pretty sure there was nothing by aravis here when I posted my first comment, and I know that deepspaceartist and jkcarrier hadn't weighed in yet. Literally everybody who'd commented liked what she did to Lord. It was a pretty big shock, because I'd expected it to be more of a 50/50 split.

Everybody here knows what a "trigger" is. I've seen trigger warnings on here for some things I'd expect to see warnings for (rape, homophobia), and others which I consider pretty much par for the course in comic books these days but which it doesn't hurt to have warnings for because it might push somebody's emotional button and you want to avoid that if possible (gore and violence).

People get into heated arguments over real life application of the death penalty, and when you come right down to it that's exactly what this is. Diana unilaterally decided that Max was too dangerous to live, and she executed him.

That kind of thing, more often than not, is a trigger for me. If the decision is popular, that makes it more difficult for me to ignore and to stay calm about.

There are exceptions, but going into those would probably create another wall of text, so I won't go into those unless you or somebody else asks me to.

You might be thinking that nobody forced me to read any of this stuff that ended up upsetting me, and you're right. I could've chosen not to read the post and the comments. And considering that I've gotten into arguments over this story before, that probably would have been the smart thing to do.

Unfortunately, I didn't do the smart thing.

As far as I'm aware, a trigger is an event causing traumatic memories or feelings to resurface.

For example, a person who experienced domestic violence will be triggered if they watch a scene in a movie about somebody getting hit by their spouse, and the trigger will cause them to mentally relive those horrible memories. Or, a person who was victim of homophobia will be triggered by homophobic slurs.

I don't know you, but given the rather definitive nature of the death penalty, it seems very unlikely that you had to deal with it. It seems to me like you are confusing "trigger" with "things I strongly disagree with and that makes me uncomfortable."

People have very different opinions. I've often argued with people who thought that something I utterly despise is awesome, and I'm sure that plenty of things I love make people wonder how I could possibly see any good in them.

You've made your point crystal clear, but my opinion is pretty much exactly as you described. If that sets you off, it's not my fault. I'm not going to pretend that I don't fully agree with Diana's actions just so you can fee comfortable.

I guess I was confused about what it meant. I pretty much thought it was anything that pushed somebody's berserk button, whether that was due to past trauma or for another reason.

Mean this sincerely: thank you for explaining.

This isn't the case with me, but I actually can think of a way that somebody might end up with a trigger for execution scenes like this: if somebody close to them had been executed.

I wouldn't ever ask you or anybody else to pretend anything for my sake. But, similarly, it's not easy for me to pretend I'm okay with this, or even--to paraphrase a certain xkcd strip--say to myself "Okay, people are wrong on the internet, or I think they're wrong anyway, but I don't have to say so, I should just forget I ever read this and move on..."

At least I seem to have calmed down, and I'm ready to move on to other discussions.