She snapped his neck because he’d found a way to mind-control someone who could juggle planets and kill you by flying to the moon and staring really hard in your direction (yeah, his eyes are that powerful.) If Lord had been mind-controlling Batman or Cyborg, then the circumstances would have been different. If she’d taken the time to figure out a way to break Lord’s hold on Superman, Lord’s response would probably have been the same as mine: Have Superman fly upwards and past her limits (while exposing himself to a maximum level of sunlight), then rain down as many beams of heat vision as needed to kill WW. Or, obviously, kill as many innocents as possible thereby forcing WW to take lethal measures to kill Superman to prevent him from “murdering” bystanders. Either way, someone had to die in that scenario, and Maxwell Lord’s death was far more palatable than having to deal with the grieving parents and/or children who would have been left behind from a potential Superman rampage. Never mind the fact that Supes would never forgiven *himself* for being turned into a living space gun.

I think it’s more true that we need to discard the idea that all of society’s problems can be solved, PERIOD.

Even non-violent utopianism is still utopianism, and it is dangerous because it is unrealistic.

Otherwise, a very good essay, with which I largely agree. Your solution of lighter villains is already present in most cartoon adaptations of mainstream superhero comics, including Batman: The Brave and the Bold and — probably the height of the genre — Batman: The Animated Series.

I suspect that these shows will have longer legs than the current print incarnations of many of the same heroes, that they’ll be enjoyed by kids and even adults years from now, in part because the premises for their clearly fictional universes are more internally coherent.

That makes me wonder what will be the long view on Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker. It’s the clearest exception to this trend, where the villain went really dark, really quick.

also just a completely random thought: I liked how both times Rucka had WW violently kill a villain, it was on live television.