So I picked up a few Captain America TPBs at my library & have been reading them. A couple of times, they mention Captain America didn't kill his enemies. WTF is that crap? The guy was a soldier in WWII fighting Nazis. You mean he didn't kill them? I think that is some epic fail training there. So if he did kill Nazis, why would he not kill his enemies in modern times? I can understand some heroes that weren't ever in the army not wanting to kill but army trained people really should be taking out the enemies.
There is a difference between wartime killings and peacetime killings. In fact, if a soldier kills during peacetime, its regarded as homicide. What would make someone the "worst soldier ever" is if they couldn't differentiate between wartime killing and peacetime killing.
He doesn't kill his current enemies, at least if he can help it. He killed a lot during the war and has so on a few other occasions. He even once decapitated a vampire lord with his shield. But he prefers not to kill if he can help it.
Captain America isn't that bad, but if I wanted to buy a trade with a patriotic hero, I'd go with Superman.
You're probably reading a lot of the old 70s-90s trades. Lately Marvel has been less shy about letting Cap, not to mention their other heroes, kill.
Cap killed plenty in WW2, he regularly killed vampires when he encountered them then (basically Baron Blood worked for Hitler) but in modern day he has bed come much more reluctant to kill.
Maybe he was under orders to take them prisoner so they could be interrogated for information? After all, the average Nazi isn't going to be a match for Captain America, so it wouldn't be much trouble to capture them. Do vampires really count though? Seems like most heroes with a code against killing don't extend that to vampires, zombies or other creatures of that type...usually justified by them already being dead or something to that effect.
He doesn't kill anymore because he doesn't need to. He can beat the snot out of various chumps and drag them to justice. Now, this is Steve Rogers Captain America. Bucky Barnes Captain America or whatever the name of the crazy McCarthyist Captain America plant was, they'd probably put a sucka down for good if they had to. And then of course there's Ultimates Captain America.
Because the comic companies can´t have heroes kill their enemies because they would run out of villains, no matter how wrong it is nor how good it would be to kill them.
Except for Spider-Man who recently, in a "life-changing moment," declared that he would never let anyone die. His new catch phrase: "NO ONE dies!!!"
So, then they just make new villains after the old one die. Look at any superhero's rogue gallery before the 80s. Bad guys aren't created all at once and then recycled in every comic book. If they were, then it would be a team of bad guys like the Decepticons or the Masters of the Universe. I find it tasteful to keep the fan favorite villains like the Megatron and Skeletor while introducing new villains who are more powerful than the previous to prove the hero is honing his skills..
Dragonball also happens to be one of the most commercially sucessful comics of all time, largely because it sticks to a similar set of storytelling basics to the one that superhero comics had when kids used to read them.
I'm not debating its success, and unless I possessed reality warping powers, I couldn't. What I'm saying is that in some of the less savory threads on other forums (largely the Escapist), DragonBall/Z/GT were all tarred with a brush saying that the escalation of powers and villains was '******ed Japanese storytelling' and 'Wapanese/Weaboo power fantasy'.....as if to imply that Superman wasn't on some level a Jewish man's way of sticking it to the Nazi's in the one way he knew how. And even the fans of the show I know, some of them whinge that Goku, Vegeta et al are just OP. I never gave a shit; my only objection was what they did to Gohan post-Cell Games.
Fair enougth, just pointing out that Dragonball probably isn't the best example for a counterpoint. I'd say thats especially the case when... ...the sample of opinions comes from a handful of ignorant internet morons from the tiny readerbase of a genre thats spent the majority of the last 30 years committing commercial and creative suicide.
Frankly, I think this is overstated. These days, the problem isn't much that the hero doesn't kill the villain, but rather, that the villain can't say dead, Captain killed the Skull a few times if I well recall, has he ever STOOD dead? Nope. He can always bring himself from the grave. In the latest Secret Warrios series, Nick Fury had Strucker arrested. What did he do? Shoot him in the bloody head while he is tied up. The times of all heroes going "THOU SHALL NOT KILL!" is far past us, these days, about some 80% of Marvel heroes will murder their supervillain if given the chance. Problem is: A) They come back. B) They're absurdly resilient. C) They usually escape before you can do anything. D) They probably have a trap in case you kill them ["Oh, Shoot me, when my heart stops beating a thousand nukes will be unleashed upon New York.."]. As for Cap in WWII, it slides back and forth in the comics, sometimes he killed people, sometimes he didn't. It's basically a retcon Civil War. The most accepted version seems to be that he usually didn't kill much people because he could handle himself just fine with his shield and super-soldier body, but that he would resort to guns with no problem at all.
