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

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

"I also understand that it wouldn't be legal for a vigilante to kill, but.. Well, what they're doing is illegal anyway."

Yeah, if you've broken one law why not break a bunch of others, right?

[mrstatham]

I just think it's naive. They're already taking the law into their own hands by doing what they're doing - Batman gets special exemption because of his relationship with Jim, but they're already working outside the law. It just becomes increasingly farcical for me that Batman spends years of his life chasing and beating and defeating the Joker only for him to escape again and do it all over again. At what point is he going to realise that the system doesn't work? And if he isn't willing to kill even though he knows the system he sends Joker back to doesn't work, why isn't he doing more with his millions? Why does Arkham still look like say, Castle Dracula in 95% of it's depictions - even when it was blown up post-Battle For The Cowl? It's farcical.

[aravis]

You, honestly, don't see the difference between stopping and apprehending villains, and killing them (hence also passing a final, non-reversible, judgement)? You think it's a case of "Well, they're already breaking the law, so might as well"?

Yeah, our two viewpoints are really really different...

[mrstatham]

No, I do see the difference, I'm asking at what point do Batman's efforts become a joke because he's basically doing the same thing over and over.

[aravis]

They never become a joke. What becomes a joke is, possibly, Gotham's legal system. And if that needs changing, it's up to the people. That Democracy thing, you know.

[arrogantcur.livejournal.com]

The points you make about the system are good ones. In real life, generally when somebody as dangerous as the Joker gets locked up, they stay locked up. So for him to keep getting out in the DCU means it's really screwed up.

That isn't because of anything Bruce has done/hasn't done, though.

He could use his money to help, as well as his inventions. Tony Stark did something like that in the MU, I believe. I know that Stark invented powered armor for the prison guards at the Vault, so that if a superhuman prisoner escaped they would be able to take him or her down in a fight.

So Bruce could make sure that places like Arkham and Blackgate were better funded, guards better equipped, etc. But he wouldn't be able to do very much about the level of incompetence or corruption in the system.

People would keep escaping. The aforementioned incompetence and corruption would take a long time to eliminate.

What do you do in the meantime? Kill all the escapees who are dangerous, rather than capturing them?

Would that do any good? Would the crime rate go down as a result?

The most recent pages posted here as of this writing are from Batman #17, in which Bruce tells Alfred that in addition to his no-kill rule, he doesn't kill the Joker because he has a fear that if he did, the Joker would soon be replaced by something even worse.

That's genre-savvy of Bruce. If there were no Joker, Batman would need a new villain to replace him and DC would get right to work creating one. And yes, that villain might end up being worse.

Meanwhile, over on Earth-616, Frank Castle is killing criminals as fast as he can, in as brutal and horrifying a way as he can, and he isn't even making a dent. More of them always pop up. There's no reason to believe that Batman would make any more of a difference if he started acting like the Punisher.

Nothing good would come of it.

[jkcarrier]

It is farcical, but it's an unavoidable situation because of the serial, commercial nature of the franchise. The Joker is popular, therefore he will always escape prison, and he will never be killed. I think they use him way too much, and allow him to rack up way too high a body count, which exacerbates the problem. But that disconnect is always going to be there. The readers have to suspend disbelief, and the writers have to try not to rub our faces in it.

Which is why having WW kill Max was a dumb idea. Yes, you can get away with bumping off Max because he's relatively minor, but then it makes it even more ridiculous when they don't kill the equally-dangerous big-name villains. I'm ok with the heroes being impossibly idealistic, if the alternative is making them massive hypocrites.