The Penguin Tells it Like It is.

[Cynical Cat]

Thanks to Shep, for the original.






Got to say I agree with him.

[frigidmagi]

I maintain my position that refusing to kill the Joker and others only allows for the death and maiming of a greater number of people.

[Stofsk]

To be honest, I see this as more of an indictment against the way ongoing comic titles are written, rather than anything in-universe.

[Cynical Cat]

To be honest, I see this as more of an indictment against the way ongoing comic titles are written, rather than anything in-universe.

Plenty of ongoing titles avoid this kind of silliness.

[Stofsk]

And what are these titles you allude to?

[Cynical Cat]

And what are these titles you allude to?

Off the top of my head (I don't follow comics that closely anymore, with a few exceptions) the Bendis run of Daredevil, Ultimate Spiderman, the Ultimates, Punisher, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Squadron Supreme (where the Batman equivalent most definitely killed the Joker equivalaent) and the Authority.

[Josh]

Squadron Supreme came back? The miniseries from twenty-odd years ago was pretty awesome.

[Elheru Aran]

Squadron Supreme came back? The miniseries from twenty-odd years ago was pretty awesome.

In Marvel's MAX line with rebooted characters, yeah. Pretty good stuff, I thought, even if there was no chance it could possibly cross over into standard Marvel.

[Josh]

Squadron Supreme came back? The miniseries from twenty-odd years ago was pretty awesome.

In Marvel's MAX line with rebooted characters, yeah. Pretty good stuff, I thought, even if there was no chance it could possibly cross over into standard Marvel.

They did cross over the original series a couple of times. The twelve-issue miniseries had a crossover with Captain America where the Batman-equivalent (Nighthawk or somesuch) came over to try to recruit help from the standard Marvel heroes to oppose his old compatriots, who'd taken over the US and began abolishing various civil liberties (got rid of the guns, began brainwashing criminals against their will and using former super villains as slaves essentially, etc.)

[Cynical Cat]

Its pretty good and crossing over to the Ultimate Universe in the minseries Ultimate Power (the origin miniseries[which was about 20 issues long] was called Supreme Power). Hyperion's lonelyness is almost heartbreaking.

Nighthawk fought his Joker equivalent Whiteface in a six issue miniseries. It ends with a wounded Whiteface being swept downstream and Nighthawk shooting him in the back with his grapple gun. The head comes out the front of Whiteface's chest and the tongs spring out. Nighthawk pulls the grapple through Whiteface's torso. Its pretty gruesome and Whiteface is definitely very dead.

[Josh]

Wow. Sounds like the end of the original series, though not quite as graphically brutal. (But then, this was the pre-Image eighties.)

[Cynical Cat]

Its pretty brutal in the appropriate parts. Towards the end of Supreme Power (which ends with the formation of Squadron Supreme) Nighthawk, Hyperion, and the Blur are tracking down a super powered serial killer who can got head to head with Hyperion. The killer ends up in a mall and starts throwing people at the heroes. When they finally put him down they end up looking down from a balcony and see about thirty dead people in pools of blood, smashed where they hit concrete walls at a very high velocity. Its a sobering moment.

And the Lex Luthor equivalent is such a sneaky scumbag.