For someone who has taken a personal vow never to kill Superman certainly seems to do a lot of it, though for some reason sentient robots and other non-humanoid shaped aliens don’t seem to count.
I know the real-world explanation is that the writers want to show Superman cutting loose ever so often but in-universe has anyone ever commented on his hypocrisy, has the character himself ever explained why he draws such a seemingly arbitrary line?
Thanks!
Taking apart Brainiac-always a good idea.
I read a golden age Superboy story where he banished himself as to the moon after he killed a girl by embracing her too passionately (he hugged her to death).
He came back when he found out that he’d been punked with a Cleopatra-bot created by a mad scientist who wanted him out of the way, so he could, I dunno, rob banks or something.
The point is that maybe the whole experience soured him on robots.
He’s a ???-ist (I’m sure the smart people here will be able to replace the ???, I’m drawing a blank) - he only doesn’t kill intelligent life created through biological means. If you can be restored from a backup, you don’t count. Of course, I’m sure that real people have been restored at some point in the DC universe, but the general point may stand.
In some comic involving (IIRC) Wonder Woman Superman killed a bunch of Parademons once with a massive blast of heat vision and gave himself an out saying they were “never truly living.”
Robots don’t have souls.
Superman ain’t Godzilla, who the fuck wants to see him “cut loose”?
It’s just the way Ma and Pa Kent raised him. “Robots are like tractors, son, they aren’t really alive.”
I assume the market would have some overlap with the World War Hulk fans. A Superman version of this was explored in the parallel-universe Injustice Gods series (i.e. Joker and Harley Quinn manipulate Superman into killing Lois and destroying Metropolis, Superman then rage-kills Joker, the world divides into Superman and Batman factions with the former seizing global power and the latter acting as resistance). It has its moments, but it reads like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, i.e. the story is geared to make Batman look cool and Superman look like a jerk who ultimately becomes Batman’s punching bag.
For sure not Darkseid.
I’m sure I once saw a panel somewhere where he explains that his criterion is whether the creature has a beating heart. Which is stupid, but at least he’s consistent about it.
And Ike, I knew before I clicked it that that was going to be the “world made of cardboard” clip.
Squeee!!
I like the clip, though I kind of wish Superman wasn’t determined to make his point in the middle of a major city.
Also it doesn’t end well, after the clip cuts off.
According to Elliot S! Maggin…
…that’s what prompted Clark’s vow never to end a conscious life. Machinery? Pfft.
It was somewhere around Superman 310-315 (ETA: I looked it up. Superman 314, circa 1977). He was going to um…end…an organic being that was spreading a thinly veiled expy of the then-trendy “Legionaires Disease” type sickness, but just as he was about to squish it, the bad guy made being’s heart start beating. (Superman compared it to a caterpillar in a cocoon. Which…makes no sense at all, but let’s let that pass)
He’d used the same criteria before and after, but that’s the one where it was point-blank, explicitly stated that “heartbeat=alive (organic being or not)” vs “no heartbeat=not alive (organic/sentient or not)”
And I agree with Chronos that it was stupid but consistent.
Waldo-- I think the novel was his attempt to rationalize the DC rule. As rationalizations go, it was a decent attempt at a fix*
*Although it doesn’t explain why he still eats meat.
In a similar vein…ST:TNG…they DISMANTLED Lore??? Really?
I remember an LSH issue. Superboy is very careful with aliens in ships, sets dinosaurs and such in electro cages…but will smash the f**k out of giant bugs.
Just what I was going to chime in to bring up. I’m not really that big a DC fan, but I understand this “beating heart” thing wasn’t just some odd Golden or Silver Age thing, either; it was actually current as of relatively recently, like within the last fifteen or twenty years. :dubious:
So, aside from seeming a bit hoary and fairy-tale-ish (at least to this jaded reader), not only are there fictional people who it would thus be uncomfortably “OK” for Superman to kill, even within his own canon, but there are real human beings alive today, surviving via implanted cardiac assist devices, who Superman would feel comfortable killing out of hand, by that criteria.
Crikey.
Thanks for the answers everyone! 