The Hoard Potato makes a note.

[athelind]

I'm watching Justice League Unlimited again, a disc or two each week.

Man, Superman is really surly in this show. He comes off as snarky, sarcastic, and irritable-while Batman seems relaxed and comfortable and cracks a genuine smile now and then.

It's surreal.

Amanda Waller, however, remains the scariest person in the DCU.

Comments

[cpxbrex]

Some of those Americans who would care have names like "Batman" and "Superman", so I'm not so sure she'd blithely dismiss the opinions of Americans. And YES she WOULD likely be indicted, like she was with the murder of Max Lord. One of the key roles of government is monopolization of violence and it's a role they traditionally take very seriously - certainly the US government does. As a Westerner, it is superficially easy to find many cases of vigilante justice being met with overwhelming government force even when the victim of the lynching was guilty of serious crimes - crimes as serious as the Joker's, might I add.

And, no, breaking into people's houses and interrogation techniques that quite often go into assault territory is both morally and legally different from premeditated mass murder - which isn't just committing a crime but becoming the government. It is quite literally taking the law into your own hands, which is why it would be treated far more seriously than the B&Es and violent interrogations that Batman does. It wouldn't be walking in a moral gray area, it would be undermining the foundations of the state and quite likely to turn the people against them because in a democratic state we don't really like that kind of thing.

You can't just handwave away the differences between some B&E and simple assault and undermining the authority of the state. The differences are real and really there - and they are as "there" for WW as Batman. So, yes, they all do draw the line at what laws they're willing to break and there are a . . . lot of very good reasons for them to forgo taking the law into their own hands, which is a direct challenge to government authority and taken extremely seriously for a whole raft of reasons.

[notthebuddha]

Superman? The guy who was party to emplacing an orbiting strategic laser weapon and firing it into the territory of the United States? And hoards god knows what kind of advanced alien technology? He's one to talk about undermining the authority of the state.

Not necessarily premeditated mass murder. She could be out to apprehend the Joker and when he reaches to spray gas on the crowd or to set off a detonator, she used lethal force to stop him.

Or she could be on the government's side. After the Troubalert flashes the Joker's eleventh escape from Arkham and subsequent hostage situation, she decides its time for woman's touch and offers her services to the governor, and he deputizes her and sends her in to neutralize the Joker so no more policemen or hostages have have to die.

[cpxbrex]

Are you honestly saying that Superman would be comfortable with Wonder Woman murdering people? Also, two wrongs do not make a right. (And I'm not sure if we're talking about the Timmverse or regular continuity Superman, here. It is my recollection there was considerable backlash for using the big space weapon inside the US. Which more speaks to my point, that if they started behaving beyond the law in a frequent way there would be a tremendous backlash.)

Well, that would be murder. Because, frankly, the Joker couldn't hurt Wonder Woman at all would mean she would be morally and legally obligated to use a minimum of force in her apprehension. Her tremendous power would be a factor in her restraint, which would certainly be the case if she was a law enforcement officer.

I don't think you've levelled a serious justification why superheroes - or anyone else - could take the law into their own hands, either in a moral sense, a legal sense or in a practical one. The essence of your argument seems to be that once a criminal becomes sufficiently awful that it's okay to just murder them, which is both illegal and immoral. The other end of your argument seems to be that since superheroes already break the law that it would be acceptable for them to break this law, which is an argument of absurdity - there are compelling moral and legal differences between breaking into someone's house to look for clues and taking the law into your own hands to dispense private justice (by which I mean murder).

[notthebuddha]

Dude, this is superhero comics - airtight moral justifications are not required to motivate the protagonists, in fact some of the best stories are about them struggling with conflicting motivations. While all of what you say is true, it needs to be overtly addressed at some point. Providing a pretext of the kinds I've mentioned lets you have a story about the attempt to deal with the "Supervillian Problem" and end the stalemate. Would you find it more thrilling to read about off-duty Leaguers lounging around the satellite on a slow weekend having a beer-fueld bull-session about the hypothetical moral dilemma above, or to see a splash page with WW marching into a bank, stringing up the Joker with her lasso, and drawing back for the coup-de-grace and before going into a flashback to show how it all happened to that point?

Flash and Green Arrow burping about moral philosophy, or 22 pages of suspense over 'My God, is Wonder Woman really going to kill the Joker?!?!?'

(And of course the Joker could hurt Wonder Woman, she breathes like everyone else, and dropping a building on her could kill her, as would enough bullets.)

[cpxbrex]

*watches the goalposts shift* Oh, now we're talking about what makes a good story?

It is my opinion that the reason the Joker isn't dead is because he's the greatest supervillain of all time. If he were killed, no one would believe he would stay dead - and, indeed, he has appeared to have been killed on numerous occasions. So, since there is no chance whatsoever that DC is going to let the Joker stay dead, as a matter of fact I would definitely prefer it if they didn't kill him. I strongly dislike comics that fake ass kill characters without acknowledging something even more profound than the inevitability of superhero recidivism - which is the resurrection of characters. I would much rather see the recidivist Joker than the back from the dead Joker.

And while it is true that moral quandaries make for good stories, that was simply not what you were attempting to originally address. Sure, I like to see moral quandaries, but that wasn't the way you presented it until just now. Before, you were, y'know, that someone should "take care of the Joker permanently" - no moral quandary involved. We have spent most of this discussion going over the fact that there WOULD IN FACT BE a moral quandary and everyone wouldn't just cheer the newly minted murderer. Which means that this will probably be my last post on the subject because you're now trying to get me to agree to a whole different conversation - one that has no relevance to this conversation.

[notthebuddha]

*watches the goalposts shift* Oh, now we're talking about what makes a good story?

I have been all along, starting with the hypothetical plot in my first comment: "...why doesn't Green Lantern or Dr Fate or anyone else with ineffable powers say, 'Batman, let me help you with that Joker problem.'..."