“Hulk commit involuntary manslaughter!”
So there’s been some discourse online about editorial denial about specific events/characterizations both explicit and otherwise heavily implied in recent X-Men comics, specifically regarding Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Cyclops. I haven’t read an X-book in probably a decade-and-a-half, so I can’t speak to specifics, but it’s pretty clear the creative teams had one intention with the characters’ particular romantic triangle, and the highers-up are giving the ol’ “noooope” to the whole deal.
This put me in mind of other editorial decrees that seemed…oiut of place to me. This was a discussion on Bluesky, which started with my post here, and I fully acknowledge the contributions others made there with their replies in informing my blog entry here.
I’m going to address the second example I gave there first, in that it’s stated that the Hulk has never purposefully killed. Okay, I don’t know for sure that this was an editorial demand, but here in Incredible Hulk #110 (November 2007) by Greg Pak, Carlo Pagulayan and Jeffrey Huet, Hulk’s Really Smart Pal Amadeus Cho explains what’s going on:
He continues:
“How many times have you fought the military? How many tanks and helicopters have you smashed?
“And not a single soldier has died.
“Yesterday you brought down the Sentry’s Eyrie. You smashed the top of the Baxter Building.
“You pulverized all these heroes…
“…And yet you haven’t killed a single soul.”
Hulk brings up some examples where he has killed, but Cho counters these were instances of self-defense against other killers, as opposed to slaughter of innocents during mindless rampages. Basically, so long as the normal Bruce Banner/Hulk dynamic is in place, Banner is somehow running numbers/probabilities in the background, exerting some subtle influence to prevent Hulk from murdering people.
There is the caveat that Cho slips in there about “as long as your brain hasn’t been tampered with,” allowing for an “out” for examples of Hulk killing, like, say, during instances of Banner being entirely subsumed by the Hulk’s personality, or removed entirely.
This is all fine with me, to be honest. It feels counterintuitive, that there were no casualties during one of Hulk’s destructive rampages, but This Is Superhero Comics. This isn’t any worse or stranger than super-battles always demolishing abandoned buildings, for example, or like the Flash clearing the area of civilians before the rest of the Justice League fights the Shaggy Man or whatever. It’s not as much fun if you realize thousands of people got slaughtered because the Avengers didn’t get to the scene on time.
For some reason this puts me in mind of the events from Miracleman #15 (the Eclipse Comics numbering, from 1988) by Alan Moore and John Totleben. This is like the exact opposite of the “thank goodness these buildings are empty!” kind of explanation for why every superhero battle isn’t the equivalent of multiple 9/11s. In this issue, Miracleman has his final(?) battle with former sidekick-turned-evil Kid Miracleman, and it’s just mayhem and slaughter all over the place, and it’s not all done by the bad guy:
It works here in context because the superbeings have been presented as above normal human concerns, uncaring about mortal lives, and that when these “gods” battle it’s humanity that pays the price. It’s a theme of the book.
The theme of the Hulk is “man vs. himself,” Banner having to cope with the monster that lives within in. The additional guilt of “and that monster kills a lot of people” would have made it an entirely different book.
Another thing this all brings to mind is Wolverine, where, as I recall, an edict was put down by then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter that the ol’ Canucklehead has never killed anyone. You know, despite this happening in X-Men #133 (May 1980) by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin:
…which was later retroactively explained that these guys Wolverine was fighting were just “injured” and came back as cyborgs or whatnot. Look, I’m not a big X-Men reader, I don’t know the details, but this clearly is a case of obvious intent being subverted by editorial edict. I mean, I get it, the X-Men are heroes, you don’t want ’em killing folks left and right, but this was clearly to show how dangerous Wolverine could be when not kept in check. It’s characterization, it’s a plot element adding tension to the proceedings. It’s a reminder that he’s not just a tough-talking bloke that hangs out at the X-Mansion, he is literally One Savage Dude.
Anyway, you can get into a whole thing just on X-Men comics alone. Jean Grey had to die because as Dark Phoenix she killed millions of beings, that sort of business. She got better, obviously, and I’m pretty sure they’re less shy about letting Wolvie off baddies now.
Should note that Amadeus Cho, in that Incredible Hulk #110 I excerpted above, goes on to tell Hulk that Captain America probably killed a few Nazis during WWII, because, well, it was WWII. Hate to tell you this Mr. Cho, but Cap did a little more than that:
I mean, holy crap. Though to be fair, maybe Bucky did ’em all in.
I’m guessing Bucky actually has some trouble counting and a million Japanese did not actually die in that issue.
Something I didn’t think to mention on bsky is that the “abandoned building” thing is something else that Zack Snyder ignored in Man of Steel that made it feel not quite right as a Superman film. Supes fought Zod and legitimately killed a whole lot of people doing so. Zod wasn’t the only one smashing buildings with people in them.
I mean, it always seems hokey when the Thing fights someone in an abandoned building at this point (or on a building site, or whatever), but I can understand why they do it.
It occurs to me that the whole “abandoned building” thing probably reads a lot differently today than it did originally. In the ’60s and ’70s, there were more abandoned buildings in New York than there are now.
Post-war changes in industry and white flight left whole sections of NYC empty, knocked down, under construction, and/or burnt out (for insurance money). So it was believable that the Thing or the Hulk would basically have a blank canvas for whatever fight they were engaged in at the time.
And just for the record, I don’t believe that the Hulk knows or cares if he harms civilians, while I agree with Cassandra that Superman absolutely does.
Something a whoooolle ton of people seem to have missed about Alan Moore’s superhero work (particularly Watchmen and Miracleman) is the point of how quickly superhero stories and the entire concept of superheroes falls apart when applied to ‘adult’ narratives rather than children’s stories. What happened to Liz Moran, what happened to Mike Moran, what happened to basically every human character without a costumed identity (and some with) in Watchmen–their concerns are crushed without thought of concern beneath the boot of superbeings operating above their sphere. Superhero comics aren’t grown-up stories, and that’s okay–all Zack Snyder ever managed to prove with all his borrowed 80s-90s edginess and multi-million dollar budgets was that Alan was right.
As many folks have pointed out in the past, if the Hulk routinely kills people, then Bruce Banner is an absolute scumbag for running and hiding from the authorities for all those years.
I don’t know that we needed an in-story explanation for it, though. That Amadeus Cho panel kind of reminds me of that Superman story where it’s revealed that he’s been subconsciously hypnotizing everyone into thinking he and Clark Kent don’t look alike. Over-thinking something that should just be hand-waved away.
@Cassandra
“Something I didn’t think to mention on bsky is that the “abandoned building” thing is something else that Zack Snyder ignored in Man of Steel that made it feel not quite right as a Superman film.”
I don’t think he ignored the trope in MoS, he ignored it in BvS by establishing that yes, there were people in buildings. It’s one of the reasons why I think BvS retroactively made MoS worse. It’s like he steered into every criticism of the first film.
Steve Gerber did a running bit with the Hulk in Defenders, where the same random unlucky guy kept getting his life further and further wrecked by the Hulk’s rampages. The Hulk stomped through the guy’s place of work, wrecking it. A couple of issues later, he’s sitting at home, unemployed, and the Hulk wrecks his house. A couple of issues later, he’s homeless, living out of his car… and the Hulk wrecks his car.
It seemed to me like Gerber wanted to acknowledge that people would get routinely killed in Hulk rampages, but knew that he couldn’t get away with it… so he kind of went right up to the edge of it, and showed all of the other non-fatal ways peoples lives would get destroyed.
He played it for dark comedy, but he was definitely pulling on that thread.
And of course, there was the Azzarello & Corben “Banner” mini-series, which used as the basic premise that people do routinely get killed in Hulk rampages. Why wouldn’t Banner just kill himself in that case? Well, he would… but the nature of the Hulk just keeps that from happening.
The mini was said to be out of continuity, but it always seemed to me that it totally COULD be canon… providing that you, the reader, are OK with accepting the Hulk-as-killer. And most readers (myself included) probably wouldn’t be.
Kills for fun: Homelander, The Comedian
Kills without regret: Punisher, Wolverine
Kills in war or to avoid larger loss of life: Captain America, Wonder Woman
Kills under only the most extraordinary circumstances involving saving the multiverse: Superman, Batman
Would never ever kill: Spider-Man, Nightwing
It strains credulity to have a character who is a berzerker with razor sharp claws who “never kills”. Come on, dude.
Cap was an active duty solder during WW2. “Golly I can’t kill these Nazis” is equally stupid.
Rifftrax has recently been running through the chapters of the original Captain Marvel serial and it’s amazing how many times Cap just tosses one of the bad guys off a building’s roof. Nobody’s keeping a death count but there are several.
Still leftovers from the war, but sometimes it’s just easier to toss someone off the roof, ya know.
There’s a reason the Firesign Theater renamed Captain Marvel the Caped Madman in the serial footage they used in “J-Men Forever.”
“Would never ever kill: Spider-Man”
Sorry DK, but he has at least.
DK, Joe – I almost brought up in this post that specific instance of Spider-Man killing someone, but didn’t want to spoil a story. A 35-year-old story, sure, but still.
The inherent violence of super-hero comics is why they can’t be treated in an adult fashion without every ‘hero’ becoming a raging psychopath. This is why I prefer 1950s batman.
“It occurs to me that the whole “abandoned building” thing probably reads a lot differently today than it did originally. In the ’60s and ’70s, there were more abandoned buildings in New York than there are now.
Post-war changes in industry and white flight left whole sections of NYC empty, knocked down, under construction, and/or burnt out (for insurance money). So it was believable that the Thing or the Hulk would basically have a blank canvas for whatever fight they were engaged in at the time.”
There are scenes from the 1983 documentary “Style Wars”, about graffiti artists in New York, that shows them walking down whole blocks in the Bronx lined with abandoned tenements. Yes, I think the idea of finding an abandoned building to fight in was not too outlandish when these tropes were first developing.
I think Marvel Unlimited left in the letter columns on those early Mark Gruenwald Captain America issues, just so people can see the lettercols where editorial works back from the literal “Steve Rodgers never ended anyone’s life before” to a more reasonable “Killing someone in war isn’t the same, obviously, as killing someone during peace.”
(Then, John Walker.)
To me, the worst example of explaining something that should’ve just been ignored is when they explained why The Spectre didn’t kill The Joker.
I loved that Ostrander series but that explanation was even stupider than explaining why Batman doesn’t kill him. (Not to mention any number of DC heroes who have no issue killing.)
Re: the Golden Age Captain America panel and the link to the article, I think it is important to remember that Golden Age Comics were a product of their time, and yes, many, many of them were WW II propaganda–some more jingoistic and racist in their use of language and depictions of enemy soldiers than others–
but if you look at Cap’s retort to Bucky in that specific panel:”Yes, lad, they found what they tried to dish out to
others–death!” and put it in the historical context of WW II (even though this is an over the top Golden Age Cap story with a goofy premise of a million enemy soldiers building an absurd “invasion tunnel” to the US) and the real life Japanese Militarist invasion of
Manchuria, attempt to take over and dominate South East Asia and Oceania, the
Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Rape of
Nanking, the Battan Death March, Kamakazi pilots, etc., etc., it becomes a bit more understandable why these comics were made –in light of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Militarists. That’s not to say that American soldiers didn’t also commit atrocities, or that negative stereotypes of people or cultures should happen, etc., etc., but I think it also
bears considering that most Golden Age Comics were made by young men in their late teens and early twenties…and that the Captain America Comics read by young American soldiers in their late teens and early twenties during WW II helped inspire them to keep fighting, as the sentiment at the time was that Japan started the war but America aimed at finishing it.
On a side note, Roy and Dann Thomas came
up with some interesting characterization in Young All-Stars in the ’80s when they had Sandy the Golden Boy (who was basically a Bucky clone created by Simon and Kirby as the Sandman’s (Wesley Dodds) sidekick) spout some xenophobic rhetoric regarding Japan, and other members of the
Young All-Stars, including Tsunami,(who was Japanese-American), had to educate Sandy not to be a racist. Thomas had also poignantly explored the sad reality of the WW II Japanese-American internment camps in The Invaders, when he introduced the character of Gwenny-Lou, who became the second iteration of Golden Girl, and joined Bucky and Toro in the Kid Commandos.
So, anyway, without a doubt Steve Rogers killed enemy combatants during WW II…but it’s more disturbing to think of young Bucky Barnes also doing so.
Just to be clear: the Hulk was born from Bruce Banner building a bomb for the military. No amount of attempted retcons in comics, television or movies can disguise that fact. The man made a machine to kill.
I can’t root for any super-hero or adjacent character that kills innocent people. I’m fine with the Hulk never killing innocents because otherwise he’s an irredeemable monster. The Cho explanation is goofy and unworkable, but I’ll take it. when Bendis wrote a death toll for the Hulk’s then-latest rampage (in, IIRC, an Illuminati story prior to “Planet Hulk”), I was shocked Marvel let it through, as it tainted one of their ongoing leading protagonists.
As for the walking back of one data page in an X-Men comic- ugh. If there’s any Big 2 super-hero franchise in which every character has a romantic interest in every other character, it’s X-Men. I don’t want hardcore violence or explicit content in Marvel comics, but saying “nuh uh, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Manly-Man Wolverine would never” is just lame.
@Science Giant
Good point! From Timely to Atlas to Early Marvel Comics the company was pretty gung ho. Think of all the now super expensive classic Alex Schomberg Timely Comics WW II era covers that depict Cap and Bucky, the Torch and Toro, and Subby wreaking mayhem upon the Axis forces. Then, in the ’50s, when Martin Goodman and Stan Lee briefly revived those characters under the Atlas logo, during the Cold War, it was all about “Captain America –Commie Smasher,” and Namor is depicted drowning some Soviet Red Army deep divers on one of his ’50s covers. And even during the first five years or so of Marvel Comics from the ’60s there are quite a few Cold War era Communist villains from the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, or unamed nations–the Red Ghost, Red Guardian, Black Widow, The Comisar, etc, etc.
Of course, the Nazis were perpetually brought back as well with various clones of Hitler, the Red Skull, Baron Zemo, von Strucker,etc, etc. There was even the son of a Nazi who battled Cap and Falcon under the name of “the Phonex” (and died) a few years before Jean Grey became the definitive Phoenix.
I think it was only during the later ’60s when massive protests to the Vietnam War became a major social issue that Marvel backed off of the whole “Commie Smasher” gung ho approach…and Cap found himself questioning himself. But, yeah, Bruce Banner and Tony Stark were both part of the Military Industrial Complex, churning out weapons of mass destruction…
“There was even the son of a Nazi who battled Cap and Falcon under the name of “the Phonex” (and died) a few years before Jean Grey became the definitive Phoenix.”
Sean, that was Helmut Zemo in his first appearance. He got (mostly) better.
Good points, I should have instead said that Spider-Man would not INTENTIONALLY kill to solve a problem.
He totally killed Gwen Stacy. An accident.*
If Mike is writing upthread about the story I am thinking of, that was accidental. “Suicide by cop” as it were. With a good lawyer he’s walking free.
IIRC there are a couple of other times where Spidey did the move from BATMAN BEGINS where it’s “I’m not gonna kill ya but I won’t save ya”.
But there are also many stories where Spidey is big mad at the Punisher specifically because he kills as a first resort- I’m not a huge recent Spider-Man reader so maybe someone can point me to a story where he says/thinks something like “Well actually Frank you make a good point there”
There are also times where Batman is depicted with a gun, but it’s usually taken as an out of character moment or Golden Age shenanigans and in the case of FINAL CRISIS, an “oh snap, this is so serious Batman is gonna shoot someone!” moment.
* the first victim of Spider-Man was Uncle Ben.
@Joe Gualtieri
Thanks for the info. I hadn’t reread that Cap and The Falcon comic in fifty odd years, but I had the Power Records version when I was a little kid and always thought that Sal Buscema did a great job on the artwork. So, basically Helmut is the villain in “The Winter Soldier” Captain America film, Baron Zemo, Jr. or whatever…? Or is that another son of Zemo’s named Alex?
“Captain America: Civil War,” I meant–I got my MCU films confused. So Daniel Bruhl portrays MCU Helmut, who originally appeared in Marvel Comics as a villain called The Phoenix in Cap and The Falcon in the early ’70s.
“an edict was put down by then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter that the ol’ Canucklehead has never killed anyone. You know, despite this happening in X-Men #133”
I guess they shoulda given him something less lethal to grow from his hands than 12 inch long razor-sharp claws! Felt-tip pens, maybe.
“Though to be fair, maybe Bucky did ’em all in.”
Bucky: Small But Deadly.
” In the ’60s and ’70s, there were more abandoned buildings in New York than there are now.”
I expect so.
“Cap was an active duty solder during WW2. “Golly I can’t kill these Nazis” is equally stupid.”
It was LITERALLY his job to kill German soldiers, unless he got lucky and they surrendered.
“Alex Schomberg Timely Comics WW II era covers”
MY GAWD is his artwork amazing!!!
“Spidey is big mad at the Punisher”
In every story I remember, they argue about it. REALISTICALLY, they wouldn’t team up so much, but, you know, SALES.