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Marvel Comics

With great power comes great responsibility. That’s the motto by which Peter Parker goes about his Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Business, and it’s connected with a bunch of other superheroic provisos: he has the secret identity in place to keep his loved ones safe, all that guff, but tantamount amongst those guidelines? He doesn’t kill. It’s not really in the fun-loving family guy’s nature.

It’s possible that’s partly to do with the origin story, with Batman’s own influential childhood tragedy leading him to take a strict “no killing” (and “no guns”) rule. Spidey’s never really ever come out and said as much, because he never really had to: it’s kind of assumed that a superhero in the Marvel universe who isn’t The Punisher doesn’t kill people in cold blood.

Except, well, it’s even easier to play fast...

DC Comics

Batman doesn’t kill. It’s sort of his “thing”. Well, besides dressing up as a bat to strike fear into superstitious and cowardly criminals, anyway. What with his whole personality, character and modus operandi being the result of seeing his parents gunned down in front of him as a kid, it’d be a little hypocritical for the Caped Crusader’s brand of justice to centre on totally murdering bad guys, too. Especially if he did it with firearms. Then he wouldn’t be any better than the criminals he’s trying to rid Gotham’s streets of. Just stick ‘em in Arkham, it’ll probably be all right.

The other half of DC’s “Big Two” has a similar moral code that precludes him from ever taking a live. As we’ve seen, though, there have been times Superman had been forced to kill. Or sometimes,...