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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8641
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | 1
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Batman never actually carried a gun. The gun in question in the Batman Year Two storyline in Detective Comics is the handgun that Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents with, and Bruce carried it when he confronted Chill, who ended up being killed by the story's main villain. Bruce tossed the gun in the cornerstone of the Wayne Foundation building.
Its true, though, that early on he had no problem killing criminals or letting them die of their own accord. I have the first 6 volumes of The Batman Chronicles, which reprint the first Batman stories in order, and here are a few examples where he either kills outright or sets someone up to be killed:
In his first appearance in Detective #27, he may have thrown a criminal off a roof to their death. The main villain tries to pull a gun on him but a punch knocks the villain off the catwalk they are on and into a vat of acid.
His second appearance, he may have thrown yet another criminal off a roof to their death. But in this case they were attacking him with a knife.
Third appearance, kills Dr. Death's assistant by either strangling them or snapping their neck with a lasso.
Fourth apperance, snaps the neck of Dr. Death's new assistant by swinging around and delivering a kick as the assistant looks out a window. (But the assistant was waiting for him while holding a gun)
Shot the Monk and Dala with a gun loaded with silver bullets. (The picture posted where he says "Never again will you harm any mortal being!" - the Monk appeared in a hood and robe for the entire story except the last few panels) However, since the Monk and Dala were vampires.....
He also takes out a villain by tossing gas into the cockpit of their plane so they crash into a bay and die, lets another die when their car goes off a cliff after he knocked the villain out while rescuing a woman and escaping up a ladder to the Batplane, and kills Professor Hugo Strange's henchmen with a machine gun on the Batplane (the "Much as I hate to take a human life, I'm afraid this time its necessary!" panel) and two of Strange's Monster Men in the same story. (One essentially by hanging it using a rope dropped around its neck from the Batplane, the other with gas pellets so it falls off the top of a building after bullets from the Batplane don't work (Strange had the Monster Men fitted with bulletproof vests).
It should also be noted that Robin killed a criminal during his first appearance by kicking them off a girder on the frame of a building they were fighting on, and Robin's first appearance was printed before the Monster Men story was. (The Monster Men story was originally supposed to be in Detective #38, not Robin's first appearance. They ended up putting the Monster Men story in Batman #1 instead)
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Darren De Vouge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 December 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 3586
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | 2
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The premise of the Sandman strip changed from his being a shadowy, cloaked figure who used sleep as a psychological and practical weapon in his battle against crime...
***
But primarily a Green Hornet clone.
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Dan Avenell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 March 2008
Posts: 1038
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | 3
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Following on from how Brian describes how Frank Miller made Daredevil seem weak by not lethally stopping the murderous Bullseye - it reminds me of how once The Joker is written to be a mass-murderer (who routinely escapes from custody), then him being permanently stopped makes some sense. BUT my question is when were these villains, or others, first shown to be mass-murderers? Did Dr Doom kill anyone in the first 100 issues of the Fantastic Four? Magneto wanted to rule the world, but when did people begin to die at his hands? I'm sure there were Silver Age villains who were killers (er I suppose Galactus counts though we never see him kill anyone/eat any planets for a long time), and I'm sure the bodies began to pile up during the seventies and eighties... if you didn't figure it out, this is not a rhetorical post, I'm curious as to which villains were first or early examples of 'raising the stakes' with their body-count, and getting us to the point where one might say 'the moral thing for anyone to do now is to stop these menaces by any means necessary.'
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Dan Avenell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 March 2008
Posts: 1038
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 2:46am | IP Logged | 4
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Oh, 1000th post, yay!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133512
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 4:26am | IP Logged | 5
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It should be noted that the phrase "carries a gun" doesn't refer to simply walking around with a gun in one's hand. It refers to wearing a holster or, in a pinch, shoving a gun into one's belt.
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Michael Hogan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2064
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 6:01am | IP Logged | 6
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Dan: Didn't Magneto kill in one of his first appearances, when he sunk a submarine?
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Agapito Qhelas
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 09 July 2009
Posts: 263
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 6:22am | IP Logged | 7
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This was fun. Needs to be on Tumblr
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Dan Avenell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 March 2008
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 6:36am | IP Logged | 8
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Curses Michael, my plan was to get OTHERS to do my research, not myself! But it having checked (the X-Men), Magneto, in issue 1, although being very naughty invading an army base, making missiles explode next to a carefully-scripted-as-unmanned boat, kills nobody. In his second appearance, issue 4, although he and his Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants attack a small country, it later seems they are only shelling the hills behind the main city to spread fear. Although Magneto does leave a nuclear bomb ready to go off and destroy the country as he flees (which Quicksilver defuses).
Subsequent appearances in 11 and 17/18 features no sub-sinking either... perhaps you were misremembering issue 1? Or I've missed it, though I do think Stan & Jack were very careful to not have bunches of innocent people/soldiers dying by anyone's hand.
(edited to make clear I meant Uncanny X-Men, and to give Kirby credit alongside Lee)
Edited by Dan Avenell on 07 May 2012 at 10:12am
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Ed Love
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 October 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2712
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 6:46am | IP Logged | 9
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The premise of the Sandman strip changed from his being a shadowy, cloaked figure who used sleep as a psychological and practical weapon in his battle against crime...
***
But primarily a Green Hornet clone
*********
There's nothing particularly "Green Hornet" about Sandman. Maybe you're thinking of the Crimson Avenger who also evolved from a hat & suit mystery man with a gas gun to a weaponless hero wearing tights
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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 1985
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 7:26am | IP Logged | 10
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In The Brave and the Bold (#104?, or thereabouts), Batman storms a building where a criminal is holed up by using a Tommy gun. I also recall a flashback scene a few years ago to Batman's "Year One" stage where he was firing various guns into sides of beef so he would understand what every type of entry and exit wound looked like.
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Andrew Hess
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9846
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 7:51am | IP Logged | 11
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Another example for the anti-gun lobby...
IIRC, in the story Batman is in a situation where these crooks doubt it's him, and to prove it give him a gun because the true Batman would never use a gun in any manner.
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Kip Lewis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 07 May 2012 at 8:08am | IP Logged | 12
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Why would comic companies take guns away from Batman? Because
comics sold almost exclusively to kids? Then what about westerns,
crime and science fiction?
(I can't help but wonder what comics would look like if fear of losing
sales didn't effect comics? At best, it may change things for the better,
at worst, it taints and dilutes storytelling.)
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