Over the years Batman has killed many superbeings, like when he murdered Darkseid with a Rhodium bullet in Final Crisis, or when he impaled the Prince of Darkness himself in the Elseworlds Batman & Dracula trilogy. But fans seem to be most divided over his choice of whether or not to kill the more human of his villains like the Joker, the Penguin, and their many henchmen.
The Early Days of Batman
Though "Batman doesn't kill" has become a contemporary comics mantra, his early canon betrays this with multiple examples of him murdering criminals, hailing from his very first issue. In 1939's Detective Comics #27, during his very first appearance Batman kicks a man into a vat of acid and calls it "a fitting end" -- this bit was famously reimagined in The Killing Joke to explain the origins of the Joker and, of course, inspired the backstory Jack Nicholson's iconic performance in 1989's Batman. In Detective Comics #29, Batman kills his first supervillain known as Doctor Death by trapping him in a burning building and chillingly stating, "Death... to Doctor Death!" In one of his most famous murders, he snaps a man's neck whilst swinging on a rope in Detective Comics #30. And in what is most likely his most brutal crime, he hangs the Monster Man from the batcopter in the debut issue of his solo title, Batman #1.His penchant for guns -- which often saw him wielding the weapons in early issues like Detective Comics #35 or on the cover of Batman #15, sometimes to shoot a silver bullet at a vampire or to help a war effort -- and killing makes sense when you look at the inspirations for the man who would become Batman. In his original form he is Bill Finger and Bob Kane's riff on pulp heroes, private detectives who take on the jobs that the police won't, ne'er-do-well do-gooders who are happy to kill if and when it's necessary. It's a far cry from the moral hero he would soon become, but it's still a notable part of his early life.The Origin of Batman’s “No Killing” Rule
The first issue (we could find) where Batman states that he never kills is Batman #4, which was released as the series' "Winter Issue" in January 1941. He makes the statement which would define the rest of his career during a fight with some nefarious pirates in the story "Blackbeard's Crew and the Yacht Society" and the exact wording is pretty interesting: "Use only the flat of your sword, Robin! Remember, we never kill with weapons of any kind!"This was a clear delineation that his days of stabbing criminals with swords -- like he did in Detective Comics #37 -- or giving them very public hangings were over. So what encouraged this moral shift? Allegedly one of Batman's creators Bill Finger was at one point forbidden from writing the character with a gun by National Periodical Publications (A.K.A) DC Comics' editor Whitney Ellsworth. His notorious collaborator Bob Kane wrote about the shift in his autobiography Batman and Me. "The whole moral climate changed in the 1940-1941 period,” Kane said. “You couldn’t kill or shoot villains anymore. DC prepared its own comics code which every artist and writer had to follow.”It was likely a way to appeal to a young market that was at the time the biggest demographic spending money on comics. Similar titles like Fawcett's Captain Marvel would soon begin to outsell the pulp-inspired adventures of Batman. But on a moral and narrative level there's a relatively simple answer: it makes sense for Batman to oppose killing and specifically the use of guns because of his parents' murder on that fateful night in Crime Alley.
Speaking of Batman, here's your first look at him as he'll be appearing in Gotham:
The Impact of Batman '66
Though as the years went by Batman would become more family friendly -- especially with his post-war Golden Age and subsequent Silver Age comics which featured multiple wacky adventures and iconically zany covers featuring aliens, rainbow Bat-suits, Bat-gorillas, and the introduction of Bat-Mite -- that was by no means the end of Batman's ultimate moral quandary.The next era of Bruce's life, career, and moral compass was defined by the popular 1966 Batman television series. Though the technicolor tone of the show was all about humor, puns, and family friendly fun editor-in-chief Julie Schwartz became so tired of the camp and comedic Bat that he decided to take the Bat-line of comics back to their dark and brutal roots.
A vital moment of this new regime was Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' reimaging of the Joker as a devastatingly violent threat after years as a canny trickster in 1973's Batman #251. Though this issue was not specifically focused on Bruce committing murder, they established a bleak world where fans could perhaps empathize with why Batman would kill, which he would begin to do again with an alarming frequency in the '80s.
Batman's '80s Killing Spree
In 1982's Batman Annual #8, Mike W. Barr and Black Lightning co-creator Trevor Von Eeden crafted a shocking short story called "The Messiah of the Crimson Sun." The science fiction adventure's strange setup would bely the brutality to come. The finale of the story saw Batman kill Ra's al Ghul by forcing his spaceship into a laser beam, decimating the leader of the League of Assassins before ejecting his ashes into space. Of course anyone who reads the comics knows that Ra's always comes back, but this time it was clear that Bruce wanted Ra's gone forever, so it's definitely notable as an example of his murderous instincts and more importantly as a place where he breaks that one important rule.It was something that Gotham's most famous son would do again in one of his most notorious and well-known stories in 1988. The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland saw Batman's brutality come to a head as he faced down his most iconic foe, the Joker. The Killing Joke's climax is purposefully ambiguous with Batman choking the Joker as his hysterical laugh spills between panels, but there is a reading in which as the Joker's laugh ends, the reader can assume that Bat has finally killed his arch-nemesis. This makes more sense when you consider the fact that the piece was created as an out of continuity story which ended up becoming one of the most impactful pieces of canon that still shapes DC comics to this day.
After the cataclysmic cultural shock of Watchmen, The Killing Joke, and The Dark Knight Returns (which we'll come back to shortly), superhero comics were forever changed. And at the same time The Killing Joke debuted, Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, and Mike DeCarlo presented "Ten Nights of the Beast" in Batman #417 which saw Bruce battling new adversary KGBeast, eventually bricking him up in a wall and leaving the brute to starve to death. He was presumed dead until 1989's Batman: Year Three when it was ret-conned to reveal that Batman had in fact called Gotham's Finest to retrieve the fiend from his brick prison, once again setting him back on the "No Killing" track.It's impossible to talk about this era without mentioning The Dark Knight Returns, which is of course the comic that Zack Snyder credits for giving him the aesthetic and moral code (or lack of) for his Batman. After all, when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced at SDCC mere weeks after Man of Steel hit screens, it was done with a quote from the cult comic. The director isn't alone in feeling like Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley's magnum opus challenged his “fundamental notions about Batman." But Snyder is mistaken in his regularly repeated sentiment that "in the Frank Miller comic book I reference he kills all the time." Though it's undoubtedly a brutal, violent, and scathing story, Bruce stands by his choice not to kill despite using numerous guns to assault and disarm his enemies, which is confirmed by a more thorough reading of the text.
Batman’s Most Profound Stance on Killing
As we look back over Batman's 80 year past it becomes glaringly obvious that the rule was less of a hard editorial edict and more of a general moral guide which spoke to readers on a profound level. It's something that's dealt with more directly in 2006's Batman #650 by Judd Winick, Eric Battle, Rodney Ramos, Alex Sinclair, and Pat Brosseau. The "Under the Hood" story arc saw Jason Todd brought back from the dead after apparently being killed by the Joker during “A Death in The Family.” In a panel which is one of the few explicit times that Bruce explains why he doesn't kill, he states that "if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place... I'll never come back." This idea of Bruce somehow knowing that he has the potential to kill and perhaps lose control if he does seems to be the most culturally accepted idea behind his famed rule.What About Batman Movies and TV?
In wider pop culture, though, his commitment to not killing has often been ignored with Tim Burton's beloved 1989 Batman film seeing the Caped Crusader blowing up a factory filled with people, as well as revealing a machine gun on the Batmobile that he fires recklessly all over Gotham. There's also the question of the Joker's gruesome end in which Batman secures the bad guy's ankle to a gargoyle which ends up dragging him to his death. In the sequel, Batman Returns, he continues this behavior with a notable moment that sees the hero straps a bomb to a henchman's chest and throws him in a sewer to explode and die.Many fans see Christopher Nolan's trilogy as a more clear cut example of Bruce's morality, especially because it includes one of the only on-screen moments which sees Batman state that he will not kill. It occurs after his training with the League of Shadows where, before he can take his place, he must kill a criminal. Bruce refuses to do it, but then causes an explosion which likely kills the dozen men training in the mountainous lair. This is further muddied in the film's third act, though, as he allows Ra's al Ghul to perish, and in The Dark Knight he's arguably to blame for multiple deaths including the pour souls (Joker's henchies?) driving the trash truck during the iconic car chase sequence and Harvey Dent. As for the third entry, he's also the reason that Talia al Ghul dies, so that doesn't offer up an answer one way or another. Does Batman truly not believe in killing if he's willing to allow people he hates to die?
We tracked down the man who helped bring Heath Ledger's Joker to life in The Dark Knight:
Of course, one of his most recent incarnations, Batman v Superman, is infamous for a sequence in which he kills multiple people and Snyder has confirmed that they are definitely dead. So it seems like on-screen there's more evidence that he is a killer than isn't one. But it's not always equivalent in the land of television, where Gotham saw Bruce make the vow to never kill to his faithful butler Alfred in the episode “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” after fighting with his arch-foe Jerome in a nightmarish carnival reminiscent of the end of The Killing Joke.Where Batman Stands Now
As for his more contemporary comics career, Frank Miller has returned to Batman more than once, but in 2005's All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder (with art by Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair, and Jared K. Fletcher) Miller offered up one of the more egregious examples of Bruce's penchant for murder as Batman kills a group of men who were trying to steal a bleach shipment by burning them to death.Batman's first appearance came back to haunt him in Batman: Zero Year, which saw Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, and Rafael Albuquerque take on the classic acid vat death that later became the origin of the Joker. In their take, though, Batman attempted to save the Red Hood as he fell towards his ultimate doom. This retconned the violence of his past, fitting in more with the philosophical idea of Bruce refusing to kill.
Snyder (and artist Capullo) seemed to upend this idea in their beloved Bat-series when, during the Endgame arc, Bruce killed himself in an attempt to kill the Joker. But as is the way with comics, they were both revealed to be alive again only a few issues later. This mercurial nature of the medium is likely why it's so hard to answer exactly where Bruce stands on this matter. Allegiances mutate and shift, motivations are changed, and sometimes (a lot of) people come back to life.
As for where Batman stands in 2019, Tom King's most recent run saw Batman attempt to kill the Riddler before being stopped by the Joker. The series also saw the return of KGBeast who shot Nightwing and was hunted down by Batman who broke his neck and left him for dead, though the Russian assassin didn't perish this time the vengeful intent to harm another was there.But that's not the be all and end all of the character's journey, as in the current The Batman Who Laughs series, Scott Snyder, Jock, David Baron, and Sal Cipriano make a very clear statement about Batman's willingness to save lives as he goes to extreme lengths to save the Joker. But even here there's no clean cut answers as in Issue #2 Bruce reveals he would kill one man... the evil alt-universe version of himself, the Batman Who Laughs.
So, Does Batman Kill or Not?
Over 80 years Batman's "no kill" rule has come and gone in the canon but has stayed a core part of the character's cultural mythos. This likely has a lot to do with the fact that so many creators have worked on the character over his eight decade tenure, and each one has come with their own reading, mindset, and moral code. It's hard to make a decisive statement on the rule and whether we can ever truly say whether Batman definitively does or doesn't kill. It's clear that it's a struggle that defines his character, and despite a few notable examples out of thousands of comics and close to a century of history, there are definitely more stories where he doesn't believe in killing and, more importantly, doesn't kill than ones where he does.It's interesting that it's Zack Snyder who sparked this conversation once again, as he's one of the many creators who's made his mark on Batman, for better or worse. And though his violent and cynical vision of Bruce has been a major part of the pop culture landscape for the last few years, just like the comic arcs which inspired him, Snyder's time with Batman is likely over, giving way to another era of Batman and his ever-evolving moral code.
While we're talking about the next era of Batman, here's how director Matt Reeves could be approaching the story of the upcoming movie The Batman:
