Supreme Power: Nighthawk #6

[history79]

Warning for Gore

Comments

[crimsonmoonmist]

Considering Nighthawk is Marvel's Batman allegory,
that is one big Wolverine call-back of a cover.

[joetuss]

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/f/f3/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_151.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180102034418

[crimsonmoonmist]

Oh... Well, crud, that's definitely where my mind should've gone first.
Good catch!

[joetuss]

Don't feel bad. I thought it was Wolverine too...and then I remembered that I have a shirt featuring that very same cover.

[goattoucher]

How satisfying would it be to watch Batman do this to the Joker?

Mmm....

[joetuss]

Ok, cool, but then why stop at Joker?

[goattoucher]

Why indeed? It doesn't make any sense for a man obsessed with protecting people allowing proven murderers and psychopaths to continue through the cycle of Arkham->escape->murder->capture->Arkham over and over again, from an in-universe POV.

Even if we took Batman's refusal to take a life seriously, he would have long since created an underground superjail where -he- could monitor, contain, and rehabilitate (?) his various foes.

The problem is that the story is stymied by the financial considerations that make the status quo king at Marvel and DC:

1: If you kill or otherwise take a bad guy out of the action, it means the company can't make money off that character. Thus, all the killing or incarceration does is require the new writer to resurrect or free the bad guy in question. Nobody gets to effect permanent change. Hell: Geoff Johns/ Joe Quesada.

2: The point of street level crime fighters is not winning the war: it's fighting the battles. Batman will -never- even put a dent in Gotham's crime problem, because then he would have fewer foes to fight. As much sense as it would make for Bruce Wayne to dedicate all his wealth, influence, and intelligence to social and economic programs and -successfully- reduce crime in Gotham, he will continue to spend billions on Bat-themed amphibious supersonic jets (not hyperbole) instead of devoting those funds to after school programs because that is what fans want.

[nyadnar17]

Batman doesn't kill because he is mentally unstable. A sane person can and should probably murder the Joker and go on about their lives. Batman aint entirely sane and murdering folk ain't good for his mental health. Once he starts he ain't stopping.

To me the unrealistic thing is not that Batman doesn't kill Joker, but that the DCU is SOOOOO anti Death Penalty that not even the cops "accidentally" kill Joker. Its also been shown that vigilantes that kill and/or disappear their villains aren't tolerated in DC by the authorities that be. If Batman started killing/disappearing people he would set off a war with the GCPD that would make it impossible to do his job. That might be dumb to us, but thats been shown to be the politics of the DCU.

I would also like to point at that Batman did win his first war on crime. He eradicated pretty much all of organised crime and destroyed all the crime families in Gotham. He rehabilitated the Gotham Police department from yet another gang of thugs into an actual force for good. He did the same to the DA's office and restored the office of Mayor to an actual power instead of just another puppet office. Batman for all intense purposes won. Crime was forced evolve to super crime to keep pace with Batman.

Finally Bruce Wayne is pretty much the only reason private charities and rehabilitation programs exist in Gotham. He pours what has to be billions into that city in the form of prisoner back to work programs, community outreach, scholarships. Hell he pretty much single handles rebuilt Gotham after the quakes hit it. We are shown this in the comics time and time again. Saying he is wasting his money on Batjets instead of building new schools is a terrible slur.

[jlbarnett]

well, I think a few people have tried to kill the Joker, unfortunately he always ends up surviving

[strejdaking]

I'm fairly certain that was the whole point of this dumb thing.

[lucean]

I always thought the killing sequence was bizarre as why would the Clown assume that Nighthawk would arrest him? It felt like such a metawink about how Nighthawk was so much more extreme and willing to kill than Batman, yet it ended up feeling like a cheap imitation just killing another cheap imitation.

The scene would have worked so much better if they hadn't forced that interaction there.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much Daniel Way to a T

[nyadnar17]

Its super bizarre because Joker only plays with Batman the way he does because he knows he won't kill him.

Before Joker knew that their interactions where different, same deal as when Joker runs into more lethal vigilantes.

It feels bizarre because if Joker thought Batman would kill him and walk away sane, he wouldn't put himself into a position where there was any chance of him dying. He would just murder Batman the first chance he got.

[strejdaking]

Not necessarily. Joker isn't afraid of death, he just doesn't want a lame, boring death and killing Batman would mean losing his perfect straight man for his comedic act.

[thehood]

That depends on the writer, there have been times where Joker clearly feared death. Not just boring ones.

[strejdaking]

Anybody who's actually read the thing, what is it they were going for with this? From the scans here, I don't really get any sense of theme or concept beyond just... Batman vs Joker, except extra gore. I know Nighthawk isn't just Batman from reading Supreme Power, but in this story, none of his unique character traits seem in any way relevant. He fights a guy who doesn't challenge him in any particularly unique or thematic way, doesn't really learn anything or reveal something about himself-like, maybe this was more groundbreaking at the time, but the only way I see in which this isn't just a slightly edgier Batman story, is that he kills the villain at the end, which A: doesn't mean anything in context of the story, since Nighthawk is already a killer, B: honestly wondering if that was the whoel reason for this comic, just Way really wanting to write Batman shooting Joker with his grappling hook, and C: look, can we just finally admit that "what if Batman killed people" is not that interesting an idea? Seriously people, move on.

[jlbarnett]

well, thinking about it, any law enforcement officer is supposed to stop using force when the criminal surrenders, and vigilantes in this verse are fairly new, that some of them freely kill might not be known

[strejdaking]

I think you meant to answer luecan above.

[wizardru]

So, again, this is just dumb.

Why this dude (who literally woke up like two days ago remember) would suddenly assume that Nighthawk would return him to a cell is kind of confusing. He's murdered street thugs for less than this guy has done in any single page of this series. This looks like someone trying to take the piss out of Batman...except that it's a false situation; SP Nighthawk has no such reservations on a good day.

This whole thing looks like it was a pointless exercise.

[freezer]

The whole thing is an excuse to make a comic where Batman kills the Joker.