I thought Max got a biological body back at some point. Can’t recall - my reading of that incarnation of the League tapered off sharply at the end.
Batman didn’t take the killing well, his reaction can be seen in one of the post-Sacrifice issues of Wonder Woman (I forget which, I have it at home…) and to a lesser extent, Infinite Crisis #1.
As I said, Lord had grown as a character since his early days. His appearance as the head of Checkmate was extremely out of character for him.
In short: Bad writing, bad editors, bad call. And don’t forget, at the same time this was coming out, the second Superbuddies storyline was coming out in JLA Classified. Which showed the modern Lord.
Heh.
Krokodil. I agree it’s not completely true. It has nevertheless become the behavioral norm of superheroes since the late 1950s not to kill except in extreme cases of self-defense. I made my case for superhero behavioral characteristics in a thread awhile back. Characters like Conan, Punisher, Wolverine, Nick Fury and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. are NOT superheroes, but antiheroes. Wonder Woman’s origin and abilities are those of an anti-hero; but she’s been (badly) written as a superhero for decades. Many nominal superheroes took on antihero characteristics in the 1980s and 1990s.
Batman’s own personal sense of morality prevents him from taking human life, period. A good case could be made he’s innately psychologically adverse to taking human life under any circumstances. So Batman should get a pass. That said, there is no good reason why the Joker hasn’t been killed on sight by an antihero, or any crusading Gotham cop, or executed by either the feds or whatever state government Gotham is in all those times he was in custody.
There’s also no storylines I can recall explaining why the Joker hasn’t been subjected to several permanent non-lethal procedures in-continuity: perpetual sedation, mind-alteration, surgical lobotomy, maximum security solitary confinement, Phantom Zone imprisonment, Z’onn Z’orr Restriction, exile. Batman’s quadriplegic paralysis of the Joker in Batman: the Dark Knight Returns was a sensible, brilliant summation of that relationship.
I’m in the camp of ‘completely legally and morally justified’ myself. But as I understand it, this situation has been set up as part of a larger issue tackled by this Infinite Crisis story arc: namely, the ‘darkening’ of comic book heroes.
Of course, a lot of this has to do with the sizable DC comics fan base that really enjoys the golden age stuff, however, hokey it may seem now to newer readers. There is a constant rift between those that want pure escapism and those that need some grounding in reality for their comic fix. I’ve noticed that DC struggles with this more, if only because Marvel’s biggest titles (featuring Wolverine) fit the dark hero mold. DC has shunted a lot of its more gritty titles to Vertigo and ABC, and there has been a move to, if not totally revert to the older, cleaner, DC icons, then to stop the current trend of murder, rape, and other questionable behavior in what are still seen as a children’s medium.
Well, at the very least I’d venture that this particular villain (and I haven’t been following any super-hero stuff for years and years) definitely should be considered for the Darwin Award of the year. The other side of that is this: Do you folks think that mebbe WW should advertise what she did to Deimos circa 1986? And mebbe also that she and her mother strongly considered honoring the request of a hunger-obsessed hades-imprisoned (or something like that) monster that he be “offed” – even though he was no threat to either of them at thta point? Villains need to get over the idea that they can say really stupid things to ANY super-hero.
If I ever get back into reading funnybook stuff, somebody please slap me hard!
TBJ
There was an issue of Wonder Woman right after the Sacrifice arc in which WW explained herself to Batman–whose life she had just saved after the Max Lord-controlled Superman had beaten him to a bloody pulp, remember–which ended with Batman essentially telling WW to go to hell.
To be fair, given the premise that the golden lasso compels truth, but not any sort of behavior, Lord has 2 choices at that point (and I’m not even sure it’s a choice, really)
He can either, in the seconds between getting lassoed and interrogated, renounce all of his past deeds, and swear off his war against metahumans…or he can be thinking 'bitch, as soon as I get out of this, I’m going to totally fuck up your shit." Under that scenario, telling her that killing him is the only way to stop him is pretty accurate.
I also tend to be very wary of evil telepaths, myself. They challenge the natural order in ways normal villains do not- especially the lack of defense even the strongest have against them.
How is killing a subdued, temporarily powerless, bound and trussed man who poses no immediate threat legally, ethically or morally justified for anyone, let alone if you’re a superhero?
Stonebrow. Let’s accept your premise that what Maxwell Lord said to Wonder Woman was the truth. Seeing as its coming from a supervillian who was secretly taping the proceedings doesn’t mean it was justified or that she needed to kill him. That’s what capital punishment is for. Wonder Woman thought about it then proceeded to do it. Superman objected and failed to stop her.
It’s understandable, it’s forgiveable, it’s morally justified (to an extent) – but it was a mistake. Its not legal nor ethical for superheroes to go around executing people to prevent future crimes.
Was he really powerless, or just holding off until Superman recovered? In any event, she couldn’t keep Lord incapacitated forever, not even for very long, and had no idea if there was any way to undo or block what he did to Superman.
Greg Rucka specifically designed the situation so that Wonder Woman had a legal defense, at the very least: Self-Defense, as well as the defense of Superman, Batman and anyone else Lord decided to user Superman against. Imagine you’re attacked, but manage to pin your assailaint to the floor. You see your assailant reach for a gun. Now, you could wrestle the gun away from him (you are on top of him), maybe, or you could shoot him yourself. Under the law, you’re allowed to use deadly force at this juncture, and it’s very arguably an ethical choice, given that it’s the one thing guranteed to save your life.
I still think she had other options, but the killing was definitely legal (assuming that WW had police-like powers to be chasing after criminals in the first place), and at least ethically defensible.
Except thta he wasn’t “temporarily powerless,” nor even subdued, really. Post Crisis WW can only compel persons bound by her lasso to answer her truthfully; she can’t brainwash them into taking any other action. In this case, Lord still had Superman under his telepathic control, and the only reason the Kryptonian wasn’t trying to kill Wonder Woman at that very moment was that she’d just slit his throat with her tiara. And even THAT hadn’t incapacitated him; he was still standing, just hurting while he waited for his ultra-fast (probably faster than Wolverine) healing factor to repair the damage.
One of three things was going to happen in the next few seconds:
Options 2 & 3 both result in at least one innocent person dying; option 1 results in the murderous villain who set the whole thing in motion dying. I’d say that option one is not only A moral choice, but the ONLY moral choice.
But Lord was still in the *middle * of a criminal act. I contend than any respite Wonder Woman gained through her lasso was temporary and very precarious. Unless there is a 100% sure way to negate Lord’s power for good, it just becomes a matter of time before he is a threat again. And when your ‘gun’ is the most powerful man in existence…well, allowances have to be made.
I’ve never been comfortable with putting a burden on super heroes that’s so far beyond what is expected of law enforcement officers.
and minor nitpick…it’s stonebow, not stonebrow.
There literally was nothing else she could do; when you’re facing something with the potential mass-death capability of Superman being mind-controlled, your options are very limited. I think part of Batman’s discomfort at the killing was that he realized that WW in a similar situation would be quite willing to kill Superman as well in order to stop him.
It was set up to be an unwinnable situation for her and she took the most practical choice. If it had been the Joker she killed, would there have been such a huge argument and negative global reaction?
Personally, I’ve been musing over the theory/rationalization that, deep down, Batman won’t kill because he’s defined his whole identity and existence on fighting evil. Killing villains could put all that at risk. In short, subconsciously, he doesn’t want to win, he just wants to keep fighting.
Remember the JLU ep “For the Man who has Everything”? Bruce’s deepest alien-induced fantasy wasn’t the defeat of the mugger who killed his parents, it wasn’t them escaping to live happily ever after—it was his father punching the mugger in the face, over and over again…with no signs of stopping. Ever. Kind of Orwellian.
Talk about a “rich boy” attitude. To him, the entire world is just a stage for him to vent his bottomless rage and hatred over the ruin of his happy childhood.
If you don’t like that theory, I have others. 
The way I see Batman is that he’s aware that he’s driven by inner demons and darkness, and that he long ago gave up any hope at having a normal life. He’s aware that he could very well be honestly called insane.
So he draws a line. A simple, perhaps arbitrary line, but one that he’ll never cross. As long as Bruce never takes a life, then he knows he’s not a monster. He may be a madman, but still a useful one, still one of the good guys. If he kills, then he’s very, very close to falling the rest of the way and ending up like the Joker or Two-Face.
The current in-story explanation would no doubt be “continuity wave”.
Well, first of all, I’m no fan of the “continuity wave” explanation. For one thing, it makes any retcon you care to do too easy. It’s like the editorial staff came up with Service Pack Infinity.2 which can be applied to whatever you want. Doom Patrol all goofed up? Continuity Wave. There ya go, no problem.
Frankly, they could have used anybody at all and decided to make them the head of Checkmate based on this thinking. You want Alfred to be head of Checkmate but his backstory doesn’t support this idea? Fine. Continuity wave.
Now they haven’t played this card yet, so I can’t really complain that they have done so. I’m just saying that the CW makes any and all retcons far too convenient and as a reader I’m aware they could abuse the idea. I’m willing to accept it for the Doom Patrol, but I’m still wary of the whole thing. If they do decide to apply the Wave to Max, I’ll complain then.
You know, somebody really should start a running “Infinite Crisis” thread. We had one for “Identity Crisis” after all.
But my bigger problem is that they didn’t even go so far as to give us this explanation. They haven’t bothered to give any explanation at all. It looks like a decision was made that nobody read that story, nobody liked that story, so we’re going to ignore it. Despite the fact that it was being referenced in “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League” which was being published at the time. Which was a sequel to “Formerly Know as the Justice League”, which itself referenced Max’s status and aparently sold so well that we got the aforemantioned sequel.
Whatever. I’m continuity-waving everything from the first Identity Crisis. Maybe from when Kevin Smith decided to resurrect Oliver Queen. Don’t care.