Comics in which Batman kills

[ElCuervoMuerto]

In TDK Rises Batman shoots the bomb truck with The Bat, killing the driver.

It's not alright to fire a handgun, but it's alright to fire machine guns strapped on a flying vehicle.

So when are the Nolan lovers going to say there ARE situations when lethal force (intentional or not) is required?

If the deaths of Ra's and Two Face aren't going to make them do it, I can't imagine anything being good enough.

Indeed. And destroying the monastery in BB.

I don't even know where to begin with this movie. There are so many plot holes and curiosities in it.

I hate it when Batman kills intentionally, or doesn't save life when he can. But I am OK with colateral damage. Case in point I've always hated how Batman left Ra's to die in Begins. But on the other hand I have no problem with Two-Face's demise in TDK, since I see that as Batman making the only choice he could in saving Gordon's son. Nor do I really have a problem with the monastery, since I saw it as a necessary action again. As far as TDKR...well I guess he had to do it to save the city, but with all my problems with that film I kinda choose to forget it and not really consider that film. 

But Batman's attitude to killing has always been one of my problems with Burton's take on the character. It doesn't bother me that much in B'89 (since narratively that film only can end with either Batman or the Joker meeting their end), but I do have issues with hoe he cavalierly dispatches those Penguin goons without much consideration. Still a valid take on the character, but my view of Batman is the more "I hate Killing, No guns" Batman of the 90's comics I grew up with.

[The Dark Knight]

You are fine to have that view, and I will not attempt to 'rebut' or argue your post per se but merely post what I like about Burton's take.

I like Batman killing on occasion ala B89/BR because I think it plays with the character. A dark paranoid loner who when out of the suit broods alone waiting for the signal to light up. If he has to kill, he will. The Nolanverse shows killing in the heat of battle is unavoidable. From my point of view, Batman killing intentionally without any set code removes all of the technicalities and cop-outs ala "I don't have to save you".

The Keaton Batman is just honest about it to himself. As a basis Batman is a vigilante and operates outside of the law. If he engages in that behaviour where do the extremities end? People are scared of him and he has a detached aura about him. Ala the myth of Johnny Gobs, or walking away from Gordon down the ramp after uttering two words to the guy. If he's challenged or mocked and if a situation escalates, it's on. There's something very cool to me about a dark knight engaging in the fight of his life and winning by throwing the enemy down a bell shaft, composing himself and moving onto the next challenge.

It can become like, Batman likes coke and Superman likes fanta instead, but yeah - a killing Wayne and a more pure pacifist ideology Kent works for me.

[thecolorsblend]

The straw man that usually gets thrown back is "Batman isn't the Punisher". And he's not. But I truly believe a guy like that is perfectly capable of realizing the threat the Joker presents... and wouldn't think twice about ending it. Permanently. That's not necessarily an attitude he'd take about some random purse-snatcher but a monster like the Joker? Sooner or later (sooner, I think) Batman would have to put him down.

[Azrael]

"Realistically" speaking (even for a comic book/ fantasy setting like this), when someone goes out in the night to hunt down criminals, it's inevitable that people will get killed. Even when it's indirect e.g. a thug falls from a staircase/roof etc. after Batman roundhouse-kicks them, it still counts as a kill.

Personally I think it's not a problem if Batman kills as a "soldier" (i.e. in the heat of battle, when he has no other choice to save lives and his own skin so he can't pull his punches), as long as he doesn't act as an "executioner". The Punisher kills not only when he battles hordes of gangsters, but also when criminals are at his mercy and pose no immediate threat. He's an executioner.

[ElCuervoMuerto]

^I agree with that take, when the kill is more colateral damage. I prefer the no-kill rule in part because of the dramatic tension it creates in some situations (ie, The Joker), but I understand that something deaths will happen.

I also like the no-kill rule because it provides this connection to Superman. I always loved that scene in Kingdom Come where Supes tells them that's what they share, that deep down Batman is "someone who doesn't want to see people die".

[Green Lantern]

As part of the research for a blog I'm doing, I decided to check out this thread to see the amount of times that Batman had actually killed someone. And I have to say some of the examples that have been posted in this thread surprise me. Because Batman had a policy against killing people that was implemented very early on, yet he was still somehow killing people after that rule was introduced.

This panel from the 1,000 Secrets of the Batcave story, which was originally printed in Batman 48, Autumn 1948 is one of the earliest examples of this.

[Azrael]

I also like the "no-kills" rule. Ever since Rorschach, and especially the 90s, the trend for many comic book heroes was to be as "grim'n gritty" as possible and casually kill with no remorse, so it is the dark hero with the moral code that feels "original".

[Silver Nemesis]

This thread hasn't been bumped in a while, so here we go...

In 'An American Batman in London' (Detective Comics #590, September 1988), Batman knocks Abu Hassan out of a window by throwing one of his goons into him. Hassan falls and is impaled on a fence. Batman shouts "No!" as this happens, so it clearly wasn't intentional. We'll just chalk it up to clumsiness.

But there's nothing accidental about what he does to a group of Hassan's terrorist henchmen later in the story. Batman steals a car and uses it to mow them down at high speed, leaping out of the vehicle just before it hits them.

And just in case any of the terrorists survived, the impact of the collision triggers an explosive device one of them was carrying, blowing them all to smithereens.

In 'The Fear' (Detective Comics #592, November 1988) Batman kicks a drug-addicted suicide bomber into a safe, triggering the bomb he was carrying and killing him.

In 'Our Man in Havana' (Detective Comics #595, February 1989) Batman discovers a munitions factory belonging to the Alien Alliance. It is heavily guarded by representatives from several different alien species, including members of the Thangarian race. In the end Batman blows up the factory and everyone inside by ramming a boat filled with explosives into it.

In 'Family' (Legends of the Dark Knight #31, June 1992) Batman travels to the Corto Maltese to rescue Alfred from a South American racketeer named El Vato. As they are escaping El Vato's base, Alfred runs down a pair of soldiers using a stolen lorry. Batman then triggers some explosives he'd planted in a weapons depot, blowing the villains' base to smithereens and killing many of El Vato's men in the process. This was clearly a calculated and premeditated act. Right at the beginning of the comic Batman had thought to himself: "I want to kill them [...] God help me, Alfred. I may just kill tonight. If that's what it takes to save you."

And indeed he did.

[Bobthegoon89]

Whenever I watch Batman Begins in which Batman constantly states how he will never kill it always feels to me like they were deliberately referencing the mistakes made in Batman Returns.

The thing about these comics is they were all written around the time the second movie was about to enter production. I'm not sure Daniel Waters was truly inspired by them. I believe it was merely the filmmakers darkening the hero and toughening up the world even more and the comics happened to have been doing a similar thing.

I remember the "Ecstacy" story moment most. Great intense scene. I always thought they should make that Ecstacy villain/concept an ongoing foe. A villain that only exists in a victims mind, or does it? Has a spooky supernatural feel like Scarface.

Batman's few kills have never really bothered me. I've always viewed them as an act of self defense. The flamethrower guy (in the red devil costume) got what he dserved in my opinion. Setting innocent people alight he was asking for the Batmobile afterburner lol In other ways even funny. I mean the moment he plants the dynamite on the big guy in Batman Returns, it was meant to be darkly funny. Guess it rubbed people the wrong way instead.

[Silver Nemesis]

Alas, the death toll continues to mount. 

Batman kills one of Kobra's henchmen in 'Serpent in the Sky!' (Batman and the Outsiders #26, October 1985) when he injects him with truth serum. The henchman had previously been conditioned using a poison reactive to truth serum. Batman didn't know this when he administered the lethal injection, so this one's definitely accidental.

Batman tricks two bad guys into stabbing each other to death in 'The Truth About Looker: Part Three' (Batman and the Outsiders #30, February 1986).

In Bride of the Demon (1990) Batman steals a fighter plane and flies it inside Ra's al Ghul's base. He uses the plane's weapons to open fire on a control room manned by several technicians, then activates the craft's self-destruct system, sets it on a collision course with the control room and ejects at the last second. The artwork clearly shows several people being killed in the resultant explosion. This in turn triggers a larger chain reaction that disturbs Ra's' Lazarus Pit and causes the entire base to blow up, killing countless people in the process.

The Thomas Wayne Batman kills Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash in Flashpoint (2011) by stabbing him with an Amazon sword. In doing this, Batman saves Barry Allen's life so that the Flash can travel backwards in time and repair the damage to the timeline, thereby creating the current 'New 52' universe.

Of course Reverse Flash will undoubtedly return from the grave at some point. He's done so before. But at the time I'm writing this, he has yet to appear in the New 52 canon. And so his death at the hands of Batman still stands.

Earlier in Flashpoint, Batman had also attempted to kill the criminal Yo-Yo by throwing her off a rooftop. It was only the intervention of Cyborg that spared her life.

Well, I think that's enough carnage for now.