Batman: To kill or not to kill?

[Relish in Chaos]

OK, last Batman thread, I promise.

Do you think Batman works best killing his enemies, like in the original comics, or not killing, as in how he was perceived in more recent comics and what his widespread image in popular culture is today?

As a comic book fan, do you think that Tim Burton was wrong for having Batman kill his enemies (some would say even sadistically) by going against the now-accepted view of Batman as a vigilante holding to a strict moral code of non-murder, or are you fine with it because he technically stuck to the original premise of a killing Batman?

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Wasn't Deadshot created to basically be the Batman who kills?

 

[Bucht]

I thought Deadshot had always been a villain?

But to answer the first question, I think it depends on who he's dealing with.
He shouldn't kill random goons, but he should kill the real bad guys, those that have a "get out of jail free" card and start the random murders as soon as they get out.

What I don't want is what happened in the Spider-Man movies, i.e. every damn villain dying by accident on the end.

 

[Lonely Swordsman]

The thing about Batman is that most of his villains are just very psychologically damaged people who, if they would get proper therapy could be reformed for good. Riddler, Two-Face, Clayface, Harley Quinn, even the Joker all successfully turned away from crime and became productive members of society in the past (of course it never fucking stuck because the one law of Batman-land is status-quo)
However, if it's about killing normal criminals like Penguin, Black Mask, Bane and so on, there shouldn't even be a question. If the prisons can't hold them, waste them.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Oh, I also forgot that it seems Batman only kills in the stories that aren't as, for lack of a better word, psychologically deep. In his first outing, Batman wasn't exactly the dark, brooding individual that we know today, popularized by The Dark Knight Returns, Year One (a revision of Batman's origin story, although more than half of the book is more about Jim Gordon), and the Nolan films.

But as time went on, and there was more exploration into his character, his unwillingness to be an "executioner" seemed to play more of a part in his character, used as a topic of criticism, rather than his initial murder of criminals, and not being disturbed and hunted by the police over it.

I mean, I guess, since I'm not that big of a comic book fan, I wouldn't mind if Batman at least killed some of the main dangerous villains, like the Joker. I know it's non-canon, but in The Dark Knight Returns, what I found strange was that Batman didn't hesitate to kill that man who was holding that toddler hostage, yet he still couldn't bring himself to kill the Joker by fully breaking his neck, who's far more dangerous than what may just be some off-the-rails teenager (as many of the members of the Mutant gang were) and has repeatedly broken out of Arkham Asylum to kill countless innocents.

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Also, as a side-note, why is Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying so goddamn expensive to buy on Amazon? I mean, as a new paperback, it costs upwards of £44! Although I've heard that Batman: A Death in the Family includes it too and is much cheaper, at the usual price of a paperback. Is that true?