How come in the 30's Superheroes weren't afraid to kill villains but now they are all moralfags?
How come in the 30's Superheroes weren't afraid to kill villains but now they are all moralfags?
Dominic Phillips
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Hudson Sullivan
Comics Code happened. the alternative and independent market had greater freedom of expression than the big publishers.
Tyler Lee
Because society's morals change throughout time? Are you daft?
Joseph Stewart
en.wikipedia.org
TL:DR moral panic in the 50s that was extremely effective.
Isaac Walker
Those who make comics today are from an entirely different demographic. The "Old Guard" were influenced by silver age schlock and either subvert it or embrace it. The "New Guard" share one thing in common with the old in that they both aspired to be comic book writers and artists before they got into the field. In the 30's, 40's, and 50's no one went to art school to specifically draw comics, because it was a dead end career for deadbeats and Jews. Stan Lee himself wanted to be a novelist. Jack Kirby mostly thought of his work as a job to earn a paycheck. Either way, these were all Men and had similar backgrounds and perspectives on the world. Someone like Fletcher Hanks, a deeply troubled alcoholic who abused his wife and kids, likely felt utterly powerless and inadequate in the hard world of the great depression, and the fantastic powers of Stardust, and his karmic justice dispensed on pitifully incapable criminals reflects this.
Nathan Reed
But is it okay to be liberal and pedophile like that guy who wrote that green lantern comic ?
Levi Gutierrez
So you're saying this comics code made American comics too moral, then how come now that the comics code is gone. Superman and batman still hesistate to murder their enemy?
Noah Bell
That's to protect the most profitable recurring villains. A no killing code is an easy way to answer the obvious question of why Batman hasn't just killed the Joker yet.
Andrew Russell
Killing villains is the moral thing to do.
Hudson Edwards
This is blatantly wrong. Batman stopped killing his villains as early as 1940, around the introduction of Robin. Joker's "death. DC was phasing out the dark pulpy elements of their characters quickly as they realized their extremely good sales meant they had to appeal more to children and avoid critical stares of parents, and therefore their heroes became cleaner very quickly. The most successful golden age publisher Fawcett (sometimes first, sometimes second after DC) also became the biggest publisher by publishing very all-ages comics like Captain Marvel which were more cartoony. The publishers that stuck to the dark, pulp-ish schlock were all C and D listers like Marvel (who were at best the fifth biggest publisher) and never reached the wider audience. The Comics Code was essentially just making this mentality industry standard.
Second as has already been mentioned one-off villains can't be merchandised and for example Lex Luthor was an important character for DC, same with Joker, Dr Sivana etc.
Austin Rogers
Because in the 30s people blindly believed in black or white morality and might makes right. Today we understand the world is more complex and the dangers of unaccountable masked people running around murdering people left and right being glorified.
Jaxon Scott
This
Overtime killing became last measures.
Jace Turner
Society doesn't get to decide what is objectively moral.
Brayden Lewis
Jose Rodriguez
Nothing in the Comics Code prevented villains from dying.
They were prohibited from winning. "Crime does not pay"
And the police could never be shown as corrupt.
As others pointed out, social attitudes have changed and Joker and Luthor are too popular/profitable to die.
Let me give you a non-comic example. E.E. Smith's "Lensman" series. "First Lensman" was a sort of prequel, written in 1950, well after the other books had been serialized. The Good Guys get a hint that there will be an assassination attempt made on them at the Ambassador's Ball. Room is crowded with VIPs. Given a few minutes warning, the Lensmen swap their blasters for less-powerful weapons. I quote:
"Blasters are fine weapons indeed for certain kinds of work. In emergencies, it is of course permissible to kill a few dozen innocent bystanders. In such a crowd as this, though, it is much better technique to kill only the one you are aiming at. So skip out to my car, you two, right now, and change—and make it fast."
Benjamin Carter
Because the 30s was post WW1 when a lot of men who were alive still remembered having killed others for their own entirely justified reasons and knew that sometimes you just had to put a son of a bitch down.
It was also the run up to WW2, which was going to be another batch of justifiable killing, and the communist rampage through the cultural institutions with their demoralization tactics.
So 'Fuck you, right is right, wrong is wrong and a bullet can pick between the two' was a very appealing alternative to their inane 'Oh but what if every villain is secretly oppressed and it's the 'heroes' that are evil, UwU' faggotry; it's one of the reasons The Shadow was absurdly popular.
Oh and before anyone seethes, copes and dilates at me about how communists totes weren't a thing back then: 25 was the year of Dashiell Hammett writing The Gutting of Couffignal, check out his politics, Herb Sorrell was ascending to power as of the same year and by the 30s the Communist party was in ascension in Washington:
depts.washington.edu
Much in the same way Death Wish & Dirty Harry were a push back in their cycle of the war against the eternal retard of subjectivist morality.
Leo Bailey
People of the 30's remembered WWI and the Spanish Flu, both having killed millions, causing immense damage to survivors and property. The stock market crash didn't help much either. It was a dog eat dog world, lying in the gutters, trying to crawl out but instead ended up stumbling into WWII.
Pulp literature of the era (such as the Shadow) mowed down villains in droves in a hail of bullets. It simply reflected realities of that era.
Henry Murphy
They went to war over pearl harbor, it was never about peace and liberation. the army was racially segregated, i can't say how that makes the allies the good guys in this story, that sounds like nazism
Ryan Brooks
killing has always been a big part of story telling, even nowadays. The thing is that (in long running stories) you dont wanna will good characters.
TLDR: lazy writers don´t wanna kill the goose that lays golden eggs
Charles Davis
>The armies that fought against Nazism were Nazi-like!
Genius rhetoric, I wouldn't expect anything more from Any Forums
The Soviet Union lost something like five armies worth of people because they failed to properly arm or equip their fighters. It was a brutal, savage, and craven (for the commanders) tactic. It also worked for the war's duration, at devastating long-term cost.
The problem, as it is, is much simpler than politics: Sometimes someone just 'needs killing', due to situational factors, and sometimes even when imprisoning the individual is possible, punishing them with death is either more efficient, more effective (comic book revolving door prisons), or much more satisfying.
Chase Gomez
Because now the villains are popular and profitable, so killing them off would be bad for business.
John Cooper
They pretty much won the war on their own, the UK was much more inefficient than the USSR. USA took risks of letting people they treated badly into the enemy camp, they might as well release information about anything they did. And this is not even the first time that black people have had this opportunity. America could still be part of the English crown