Morrison walks a fine line here. I think it's meant to be highly ambiguous whether clocking the Time Commander is a good thing or not: he does nothing harmful in this story unless you count defending himself against the heroes, and the time stunts he performs elsewhere are blessings to ordinary people, blessings cut cruelly short with his defeat.
On the other hand, leaving such a plainly addled man to do whatever he wants with the flow of time kinda seems like a bad idea. "The final transformation" could've been some glorious new golden age for humankind, but it seems a lot more likely to be one of those attempts at utopia that backfires quickly.
Ultimately, it's just not worth taking the chance. But Buddy acknowledges the possibility. And once TC's power is broken, Metamorpho's last punch just seems cruel. It's justifiable as part of hero work... how many times does it turn out that a seemingly defeated villain has one more ace up their sleeve? But it feels wrong, not just to Buddy but even to the other heroes present.
The line Morrison walks, then, is the firmly pro-superhero position of DC Comics overall and the view of heroes as agents of the status quo (and therefore, roadblocks against any real improvement of society) that runs through a lot of deconstructive work. Moore's 1980s creations often defied that status quo: Swamp Thing the hippie, Dr. Manhattan the living superpower, V the anarchist, Ozymandias and Miracleman the utopians.
Buddy does not have the moral confidence of any of those figures. He's a man apart, capable of neither joining in with his colleagues' undignified tomfoolery nor unquestioningly joining the fight. But he's not really capable of carving his own path either, so he's tried to join forces with others (the JLE but also animal activists) whose values align closely with his but who seem more certain of their way. This will backfire badly before much longer.
It's crucial to the balance Morrison strikes that Buddy's nonviolent tactic is not an averted solution: he's not in any way getting through to Starr when Metamorpho smashes Starr's hourglass. Once again it's not as simple as Buddy really having all the answers and lacking only the conviction to listen to himself. That sort of problem would be a lot easier to resolve, but a lot less relatable.
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On the other hand, leaving such a plainly addled man to do whatever he wants with the flow of time kinda seems like a bad idea. "The final transformation" could've been some glorious new golden age for humankind, but it seems a lot more likely to be one of those attempts at utopia that backfires quickly.
Ultimately, it's just not worth taking the chance. But Buddy acknowledges the possibility. And once TC's power is broken, Metamorpho's last punch just seems cruel. It's justifiable as part of hero work... how many times does it turn out that a seemingly defeated villain has one more ace up their sleeve? But it feels wrong, not just to Buddy but even to the other heroes present.
The line Morrison walks, then, is the firmly pro-superhero position of DC Comics overall and the view of heroes as agents of the status quo (and therefore, roadblocks against any real improvement of society) that runs through a lot of deconstructive work. Moore's 1980s creations often defied that status quo: Swamp Thing the hippie, Dr. Manhattan the living superpower, V the anarchist, Ozymandias and Miracleman the utopians.
Buddy does not have the moral confidence of any of those figures. He's a man apart, capable of neither joining in with his colleagues' undignified tomfoolery nor unquestioningly joining the fight. But he's not really capable of carving his own path either, so he's tried to join forces with others (the JLE but also animal activists) whose values align closely with his but who seem more certain of their way. This will backfire badly before much longer.
It's crucial to the balance Morrison strikes that Buddy's nonviolent tactic is not an averted solution: he's not in any way getting through to Starr when Metamorpho smashes Starr's hourglass. Once again it's not as simple as Buddy really having all the answers and lacking only the conviction to listen to himself. That sort of problem would be a lot easier to resolve, but a lot less relatable.