RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Superheroes and violence

I see superheros as cops with powers & spandex. Punishing villians isn't really the superhero's job. That's what the legal system is for. Stopping the villian and bringing him to justice is the superheros job and that DOES require violence. If the villian can take the top off a mountain with the wave of his hand, it could take a LOT of violence!

Superheroes are violent.

Some are violet.

Marc's post is blank.

Why, that blankety blank! He blanked it out!

Hmmm...I thought I edited it? Guess not?

Right. Looks like I killed my post. Too bad, because it was a long diatribe about violence and how it is portrayed as a positive solution to problems in superhero comics. I was having a slight crisis in ethics over this, because I might be writing superhero comics in the near future.

Violence by itself doesn't bug me. My own comics tend to be extremely violent. But the violence has consequences.

The way I had gotten around my issue was to break superhero violence into two categories: violence of punishment and violence of reparation.

In violence of punishment or punitive violence, the hero's main concern is punishing the bad guy. I can't in good conscience write about a character who does this.

In violence of reparation, the hero's main concern is undoing the bad consequences of the villain's actions. This seems palatable to me.

I wasn't sure the distinction in types of violence was a real one, so I wanted to get your thoughts and comments.

Mmmm. Hard to say. I do remember a Jim Starlin interview where he brought up the fact that he was writing Batman while being ethically opposed to vigilantes of that type. Despite that, or probably because of it, he wrote some of my favorite Bat-tales: Ten Nights of the Beast, Death in the Family, and The Cult.