What Measure Is a Non-Human?/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Depending on the author, Batman varies greatly in this regard. However, he is shown many times to consider all sentient life sacred. An example would be where he believes he accidentally killed Judge Death in the Batman-Judge Dredd crossover, despite Death being an undead killing machine that just killed three people in front of him.

Batman: I didn't mean to kill him!
Random police officer: It was a monster! It just killed (policeman's name)!
Batman: That doesn't mean I had the right to take its life!

    • Not that this mattered; turns out it takes more than being impaled to kill Death anyway.
    • Batman's no killing clause varies depending on the author. He has no problem killing undead in the above-mentioned Batman Vs Dracula, and in Batman/Aliens he goes ahead and jams a Bat-grenade down a Xenomorph's throat.
  • In a late-1990's Elseworld-type story, Batman teams with Tarzan, and finds his new ally has no problem casually tossing a mook off a cliff. When Tarzan risks his life (and the mission) to save a lion, Bats reads him the riot act. Tarzan's response: "The man was my enemy - the animal is my friend."
  • Speaking of Judge Dredd, their twist on the matter involved an alien shapeshifter escaping to the Big Meg to get out of slavery. Dredd, who wants to arrest the shapeshifter for murder, is partnered with an alien administrator who wants to return it to its owners. The shapeshifter is finally left with the decision to either stay in Megacity One, where he counts as a sentient being and is therefore subject to the city's comically strict justice and faces a long prison term, or return to Alientown, where, legally counting as property, he can not be held culpable for his actions, but will remain a slave.
    • Also in Dredd, robots are sentient and exactly like humans, but are still a slave race and abused. Dredd himself is responsible for destroying a robot revolution and sending everyone back to slavery. (Usually the writing is on the side of the robots, as is reader sympathy)
      • Should be noted Dredd himself is a robot-rights supported, the robot leading the revolution was clearly evil.
  • Probably the most interesting exploration of the zombie issue is the web-turned-actual comic Dead Eyes Open where people start coming back to life as zombies -- but retain all of their memories and personality. They don't even start eating human flesh. The ramifications of intelligent living dead are the focus for the rest of the story.
  • In Runaways, during the Civil War crossover, the Cape Killer unit is shown to actively rate an enemy's worth based on how much the news-viewing public might object. Minors are treated with non-lethal force, adult humans with moderate force, and with artificial beings like Victor, it is permissible to use full lethal force. Aliens have no legal standing in the US and do not generate any sympathy from news-viewing audiences, so it is considered the same as hunting an animal.
  • The Bizarros in Silver Age Superman stories were another example. Made of "non-living matter", having them killed off was often a source for comedy; they even made a meteor plunge into one of their cities and kill a lot of Bizarros, on the grounds that Bizarros do things backwards so they want to maximize casualties. This was played as a pure joke.
  • Ghost Rider, at least in his 90s incarnation, did not kill even the most inhuman of humans, to the point where his apparent destruction of a ninja in one issue was retconned into that single particular ninja actually being a robot. However, he was quite happy to maim and slaughter demons and other Exclusively Evil beings, in one instance tying the photosensitive pseudovampire Blackout to the spire of the Empire State Building and letting him die a horrific burning death as the sun came up.
    • To be fair, Blackout didn't actually die and popped up on the Raft about fifteen years later, but Ghost Rider had no way of knowing that.
  • Another classic Superman story from # 314 (back in 1977): Superman is faced with a dangerous alien Jevik, who he intends to destroy. When questioned about how he can kill when he has a code against killing, he replies that Jevik is not really alive. When Jevik's heart begins to beat, Superman says that somehow he's come alive, and Superman can't kill him. Apparently for Superman, if you don't have a heartbeat he can do anything he wants to you; merely being able to walk, talk, and act on your own doesn't qualify.
  • On the other hand, the Legion of Super-Heroes's official rule against killing extends to anything sentient, including AIs.
    • Maybe now it does, but historically that hasn't been the case; among other examples, they originally killed Brainy's malevolent AI creation, Computo, without a qualm, and in the next incarnation tried to do it again, although Superman was the one who struck the death blow that time. Then there was an entire later arc about an invading machine race which raised the issue of the rights of AIs in the Legion's society (namely, that they didn't have any); at the end the Legion's leader pointed out that they'd been killing the machines all through the storyline, and wondered if this was a violation of their code.
      • In one set of issues they actually published the Legion Constitution, which states that any Legionnaire who uses lethal force against a sapient being must be expelled, unless the act was in the final extremity of self-defence, or a provable only alternative to the deaths of other sapient beings. In the case of the original Computo story, his destruction was very definitely a "provable only alternative."
      • That's a later provision of the Constitution; at the time of the Computo story the Legion did not allow the use of lethal force under any circumstances, however justified...but no one blinked at using it on Computo.
  • In The Sandman, Richard Madoc justifies his abuse of Calliope to himself because she's not human; however, this is clearly portrayed as absolutely immoral.
  • The Red Tornado angsts over this constantly, and when the Justice League of America needs a member to sacrifice himself, he's usually at the top of the list.
    • In the 1980s, however, he was retconned to contain an alien Energy Being called the Tornado Champion.
  • In Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, Director Manning reveals to Hellboy that the BPRD upper brass decided to install a bomb in Roger the Homunculus, as a "fail-safe" to prevent Roger from endangering the lives of agents in the future; their explicit reasoning is that Roger is expendable because he's not human. When Manning gives Hellboy the detonator, HB is not pleased: "You know, I'm not human, either, remember? When are you guys gonna put a bomb on me?" Then, when an opportunity arises for Roger to kill the Worm by blowing himself up, he's perfectly willing to do so, and it's Hellboy who insists they find another way. By the end, Director Manning comes around to HB's point of view, but Hellboy is so ticked by the entire incident (and a few other factors) that he quits the BPRD.
    • To be fair they only did it because Roger killed one agent and almost killed Liz, albeit by accident.
    • The same story also contains the phrase,

To be other than human does not necessarily mean to be less.

  • Subverted in the original Fawcett and DC Pre Crisis Shazam Captain Marvel stories. One of the odder characters is Mr. Talky Tawny, a talking tiger who is taught English and chooses to live with Humanity. He's well dressed and has excellent manners. Captain Marvel made sure that Mr. Tawny is treated as nothing less than a full citizen of the society he chooses to live in, which comes into play when Tawny is on trial for... mauling someone. (Incidentally, the current version of Mr. Tawny in the regular continuity is a magic stuffed toy brought to life, and the Jeff Smith version for DC's kids is a shapeshifter whose favorite form is a tiger.)
  • In the reviled Superman: At Earth's End, Superman uses "you're just an android, I AM A MAN!!" as justification when he punches Ben Boxer's guts out. There are many things wrong with this, least among them the fact that Ben Boxer is about as close to human as you can be, with emotions, a personality, and brothers. Oh, and intestines. This guy has relatives and can poop, man, that doesn't sound all that inhuman to me. Superman then condescends to him further, claiming that Ben is "only doing what your creators programmed you to do"... even though Ben actually has free will and makes his own decisions.
    • He has no centralized circulatory system active (see above)?
  • The X-Men have issues with this. Most of them are reluctant to kill (with Wolverine the most obvious exception), but will if they think it's the only solution. After they met the Brood, a Exclusively Evil alien race with a rather unpleasant reproductive cycle, they rapidly modified their policy.
    • Jubilee was a particularly extreme example. Normally she's so firmly opposed to killing that she once abandoned an escape attempt -- effectively giving herself up for another round of torture -- in order to perform CPR on a random mook she had injured. Then during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover, she was killing Skrulls without even blinking.
      • It was pointed out in New Warriors by that Jubilee's personality had radically shifted. Never got around to why before that one ended though.
      • Well, a lot happened before Jubilee joined the New Warriors but after she gave up on that escape attempt to perform CPR. Among other things, her almost-boyfriend was killed while trying to protect racist humans (in Generation X) and she lost her powers (in M-Day), and probably more.
  • Speaking of Skrulls in Secret Invasion every hero killed Skrulls by the truck loads without blinking even when there were beaten and on the run, even POWs eating for their lives (ok the only ones that kill those are HAMMER) it makes you feel real sorry for the Skrulls (even if these ones were religious fanatics who odds are would have wiped out the human race if it wasn't for their Queen)
  • Heavily analyzed in Earth X, not so much with the mutated population of the world (they're all people), as with X-51, who suffers from Pinocchio Syndrome. At one point, Uatu actually inverts the scale since he believes the Celestials are so far above ordinary organic life that we might as well be bacteria, telling X-51 that he is superior to the artificially-created organic being Woodgod because Woodgod is a biological lifeform--a "beast".
    • Speaking of Aaron Stack this viewpoint traveled with him over to Nextwave
  • Examined in Elf Quest. It's an unwritten rule that elves, especially the Wolfriders, Don't Kill Other Elves. When finally one elf has to choose between killing his enemy and losing his son, it's appropriately traumatic for the character when he decides to shoot. However, the Wolfriders consider themselves part of the forest, and as a result they hunt, kill, eat raw meat, return their dead to the earth, and never interfere when one of their wolves is cast out from the pack (which essentially means a lonely death). The Sunfolk, who live as oasis farmers, take it one step further and lived as vegetarians for close to 10000 years before a lack of rain forced them to take up hunting. One character who particularly fits the trope is the Wolfrider chief Mantricker, who enjoys hunting humans, but would never kill one. In an unfortunate case of a localisation entirely missing the point, his name in the Dutch version roughly translates to "Humankiller".
    • Concerning the interference with the pack, Cutter, living comfortably with the Sunfolk, is able to take care of his aged wolf companion in a kind of "retirement" after he is cast out.
  • in "Ode To Kirihito" by Osamu Tezuka, a newly discovered, fatal disease caused by exposure to high levels of mine runoff called Monmow's disease causes people to change into doglike mutants before dying within about a month. Dr. Osanai Kirihito is assigned to medical research in the African village where the disease originated by his boss in order to gather data on the disease.
  • Something similar has popped up in, of all places, the past few years of Witchblade; Sara Pezzini has read a monster its rights at least twice. Of course, the monster responds by attacking and she gets to kill it anyway.
  • Subverted in an issue of the Superfriends comics (70's version): the heroes rescue a beautiful woman from what appears to be a collection of movie monsters (including a werewolf and a mummy!) It turned out however, that she was actually a space criminal, and the monsters were- alien superheroes that just happened to look like our movie monsters!
  • Yoko Tsuno plays this straight and averts this as the plot demands. The insectoid Titans are generally treated with respect, for instance, since they do appear to have some human-like qualities. The antimatter-eating alien from The Time Spiral is considered to be "gross" though when it turns out to look like a jellyfish--and its fate therefore is simply to be killed without mercy.
  • Spider-Man nearly did this in an issue of, of all things, Ghost Rider. He was facing the vampire queen, Lilith and a host of the undead. He attempted to use Johnny Blaze's gun on them, explaining that "They're already dead". In team ups with Blade, he has also not seemed to care much about vampires getting killed. This is the same guy who will box your ears if you try to kill Carnage, a super-powered serial killer.
  • There was a 70's comic in which the Avengers were blowing up alien ships sent by Thanos. Presumably, there were aliens inside. This is odd considering the Avengers have a strict no-killing policy. What makes this even more odd is that many team members have been androids, aliens, or otherwise non-human.
    • This was subverted in the Operation Galactic Storm arc, however. Captain America and other Avengers were opposed to destroying the Kree Supreme Intelligence, a sentient super computer, because they considered it alive and thus its life was sacred. Iron Man and other Avengers disagreed and destroyed it in order to save the galaxcy.
  • Its long been assumed that Aquaman doesn't eat fish or would be offended by others eating fish. As of the DC relaunch, Aquaman shocks a restaurant full of patrons by ordering fish. As a telepath he knows the fish he's ordering have very low order intelligence.
    • This quote also sums up his feelings about taking a life.

Aquaman: Do not assume I'm governed by some code against killing, or fear of legal consequences. No one will ever find your body.

Back to What Measure Is a Non-Human?
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/What_Measure_Is_a_Non-Human%3F/Comic_Books?oldid=1692651"