Superman versus Wonder Woman : The Sacrifice Part 4 of 4

[lucky_gamble]

Over a storyline spanning several issues, it's revealed that Maxwell Lord has been taking over Superman's mind (it took him several years to achieve that). The result has made Superman highly suggestive, which ends with Clark taking out the whole Justice League sans-Wonder Woman. The actual story isn't that great but the climax is rather amazing. The following pages only show half of the WWvsSupes fight.





















We all know what Wonder Woman did next. Damn page limits =(

Comments

[aravis]

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)

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

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.

[lucky_gamble]

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.

[aravis]

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.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

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

[theflames]

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.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

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."

[theflames]

Superman's neck healed within a minute of her cutting it, he'd be back up and chasing her in no time If she flew off.

Scooping up Max makes no difference. He controls Superman remotely, she can only make so many guesses about how far she could leave for his powers to stop working.

Experiencing those alternatives puts MANY, MANY lives at danger, he's controlling the MAN OF STEEL, what if he just decided to say 'fuck it' and have the guy ram through a building of innocents while she runs around for morally cool alternatives?

A superhero needs to respond to the situation with the appropriate response, putting lives in definite danger to protect her own soul is only fair in so many situations.

I'm not fond about how you say she isn't using her head when she decides to kill Lord. It's hilarious though, because later on, she makes the perfect counter argument to you, Superman and Batman.

She's an Amazon, a good heroic Pragmatic. If Lord, had wings, horns and hooves, NO ONE would think twice about her killing him, she slays monsters who the AESTHETIC all the time, so do Superman and Batman, but when the Monster is wearing human skin? It's not acceptable?

And no, she isn't a cold blooded killer - get it together man, she didn't dance in glee about doing what she did. Her choice was no different than a policeman having to pull a trigger when the situation called for it - are they cold blooded killers? Hyperbole at it's best.

And since the story went on to discuss what she did, no, I don't think the writer was looking to make her 'badass' - it showed genuine repercussions that she had to face, more so than Batman ever did (the guy should've gone to prison for Jason Todd, they let that slide though).

And as you already mentioned with the Flash, there's this near... gross fetish with Superheroes where instead of just killing the VERY dangerous villains, they punish them with some kind of never-ending torture, that of course, they get out of. The Phantom zone, Inertia's prison; that is truly cold blooded, going out of your way to make them suffer permanently.

Wonder WOman just wanted to REMOVE the incredibly dangerous man who was controlling one of the universe's most powerful weapons. She wasn't interested in revenge, she just too the pragmatic route.

And to your last part, there's such little basis for that thought. Where are you seeing this evil, cold blooded Diana? Is she dancing atop Max's Grave?

[aravis]

"Superman's neck healed within a minute of her cutting it, he'd be back up and chasing her in no time If she flew off. "

Let's see what the comic says...

"And it will be again, because you can't keep this lasso on me forever."

Since he can't lie, that means he can't regain control while the lasso is on him. This means that the rest of your reasoning falls. They'd have a lot of time to, well, discuse alternatives, what to do and so on.

[theflames]

Then why was Superman charging towards her while he had the lasso over Lord?

Now it's a game of what the comics SAYS and what it SHOWS?

For all we know the mind control works with lasting commands, Max can't make new commands while the lasso is tying him up, but apparently his illusion and fight Wonder Woman command continued working while the lasso bound him, since he'd given it to Superman before that.

[aravis]

Because he'd planted stuff in Superman before the lasso came on. Once he removed that, he couldn't regain control due to being limited to only do true stuff. Simple.

[aravis]

She knows that if Max is unconscious, he can't control Superman. So, knock him out, grab him, fly him somewhere she can drug him to sleep would be perfectly easy. But, alas, Rucka wanted Diana more grimdark.

[mrstatham]

"But, alas, Rucka wanted Diana more grimdark."

Absolute rubbish. Judging the murder of one supervillain as turning a character 'grimdark' - which is becoming as pathetic and overused a term as 'mary sue' - is about as farcical as the reaction she got from Batman and Superman for what she did. That's also to suggest it was actively Rucka's decision in the first place.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

Except that she did get more grimdark, and it was NOT just one villain.

After she killed Lord, she tortured Cheetah, killed Grendel in cold blood, killed Ares by chopping his head in half, and killed another villain whose name I don't remember.

Somehow, despite killing being all in a day's work for her, she was supposed to be an "Ambassador of Peace". Sure, whatever.

[mrstatham]

Except you know those THREE things after weren't written by Rucka! Torturing Cheetah and killing Grendel? Simone. Not sure about Ares, but I'm presuming that was Simone too. So.. Yeah. It's SOOOOO Rucka's fault.

Rucka's version was an 'Ambassador of Peace', too. Because, you know, he was a skilled enough writer than he could balance the two aspects of the character, and the only villain she killed during his run was a secret spy-guy running his spy organisation and had been threatening to use one of her best friends to murder HER in cold blood.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

All of the examples I mentioned are Simone, yes.

I didn't say "Rucka made Diana more grimdark", though.

I said "[Diana] did get more grimdark". Which is precisely what happened.

Started in this story, continued into Simone's run and, judging from the comments above, is how Azzarello is writing her now.

Yeah, it might've been editorial telling them to write her a certain way, have her use lethal force more often. Rucka might have even been reluctant, for all I know.

But right before threatening to torture Cheetah if she didn't start talking quick, you want to know what Wonder Woman told her?

She reminded Cheetah that she had killed Maxwell Lord. She was basically saying "If I did that to him, just imagine what I might do to YOU."

Going by that, you can make a case that killing Lord was the beginning of Diana becoming a lot more ruthless and, in my opinion, a lot less ethical.

[aravis]

Suddenly, I'm happy I haven't read Simone's Wonder Woman, besides the one Power Girl is in...

Torture, really? Aside from the ethical factor, there's also the thing that torture has, historically, turned out to, well, NOT WORK. The Spanish inquisition stopped using it other than as punishment for that reason, and the English stopped using it when they realised the information they got by more ethical means was actually way more reliable. Etc etc.

Any work of fiction that shows torture as working perpetuates the myth that "sometimes you have to use torture to save lives!" Which, of course, is indefensible nonsense.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

What really made me have a "WTF?!" reaction at the time the issue came out was that I'd previously read a post by Gail in which she said she was happy to see the Bush Administration end. One of the reasons she gave was because they'd used torture.

So I would have thought that she would avoid writing a story in which it yielded reliable information. I remember asking her why Wondy did that, why she wrote it, etc. I forget exactly what her answer was. I think she may have said something like "You don't actually see Diana torturing her. She might not have done anything at all."

Here's the scene as best as I can recall it, four or five years after the fact: Diana had Cheetah tied up and wanted to know where her friend Etta Candy had been taken. Cheetah wasn't telling her, and I'm pretty sure she gloated about how Diana wasn't going to hurt her because she was a hero and so on.

It was, IIRC, at this point that Diana slashed Cheetah's face with her tiara. Cheetah was some combination of astonished, in pain, and outraged. (Btw, if you're wondering why Wondy didn't use the lasso to interrogate her, the lasso had been stolen by a villain named Genocide.) And as I recall, it was then that Wondy mentioned Maxwell Lord and how she'd snapped his neck.

Then she grabbed Cheetah by her tail. She held the sharp tiara up to Cheetah's tail. She either implied or said flat out that if Cheetah didn't give her Etta's location so that she could rescue Etta, she was going to start cutting Cheetah's tail off, piece by piece. The last panel or two we see is Diana getting ready to cut and Cheetah looking terrified and begging her not to.

Then it cuts away to some other characters somewhere else, and what happens is left to our imaginations. But when we next see Diana, she's attacking the Society's base, where Etta is being held.

Gail's answer didn't satisfy me back then, for the following reasons:

-Even if Diana was bluffing and wouldn't really have tortured Cheetah, she did cut her once, to "persuade" her;
-If Diana wasn't bluffing, if the only reason she didn't torture Cheetah was because Cheetah started talking before she started cutting, then Diana was still willing to do something both horrible and (in the real world, at least) counterproductive, which makes her the opposite of a hero in my book;
-Gail never said "She didn't torture Cheetah." So there is a very real possibility that Diana cut off part of her tail and inflicted considerable pain on her before she talked.

[theflames]

Not really grim dark, cause she had to face the repercussions afterwords and no character in story was showing 'BADASS!'. But I think they've learned a little from Identity Crisis, knocking him out and sedating him as a solution is so comic book temporary that they're almost begging for him to come back and start using his abilities again...

Like he did when he came back already...