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Was it right of Daredevil to kill Bullseye?
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DesignDevil
Playing to the Camera


Joined: 11 Sep 2009
Posts: 157
Location: Tennessee

PostPosted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

At the end of Diggle's run, yeah Matt says outright, or rather thinks, that he chose to kill Bullseye without any influence. To me this was just another example of the poor storytelling of Diggle. If he didn't want us to be debating the issue then he shouldn't have had numerous hints early in his run that there was something inside Matt Murdock manipulating him. The Japan arc he has a dream/vision of Elektra outright telling him there was something inside him. Either thats there to suggest his buttons are already being pushed or it a poor decision to introduce those elements before Matt actually does the deed.

For the overall question, Matt Murdock should have killed Bullseye years ago. This ridiculous notion that if a "hero" takes any life it makes them no better than the Punisher needs to go. Some heroes should have the no killing ever rule. For a character like DD it eventually just makes him look very weak. Frank Miller understood this. Matt didn't want to kill the assassin in TMWF or the helicopter pilot in Born Again, and he rightly regretted having to do both. He recognized that sometimes innocent lives are in direct danger and you have to take lethal action.
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theunrealstudios
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Joined: 14 Sep 2010
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

well said. When we found out the hooker who Matt pushed out the window in TMWF was his first direct kill (Fixer being an indirect kill), Matt grieves and that had weight on his conscious for years. Iron man and Cap can still be publicly praised yet they kill terrorists all the time on American soil and shrug it off. I think the no kill rule even goes beyond the Catholicism of "shall not kill" because he's a fair weather christian only because his dad made him go to church. The lawyer in him wants to see these men go to jail and serve the balance of justice. Killing Bullseye (with or without the beast) was an act of emotional vengeance and that's why Matt is ashamed because it was murder in the 1st degree and he cheated justice on himself and Bullseye. Heroes like him who don't kill do it not out of practicality of short and long term combat or because they have a "hero complex", they do it because they want to inspire the change they want to see. they want other people to lead more productive lives because of these heroes. they're not trying to inspire more punishers to "take back the streets with rifles". in short you disappoint the people who believed in your ethical structure when you yourself don't follow it as that act made him a liar and hypocrite. i don't believe it in shades of black and white but i can see how others would.
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Dimetre
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Joined: 16 Feb 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I still do not accept Daredevil's conscious decision to kill Bullseye, and that decision is the most disastrous part of the Shadowland debacle. Part of what makes Daredevil my favourite comic book hero is that he holds himself to such a high standard of conduct. He refuses to give up long after the average person would.

For those who think he earned the right to kill Bullseye, and that his "no kill" policy makes him look "weak," I would guess there were similar charges of weakness 30 years ago when he pulled Bullseye out of the path of that subway train.

Part of what makes him heroic, or at least made him heroic in the past, is that he does the right thing when it's difficult to do the right thing, and when he would be judged harshly for it. I felt writers abandoning during the Bendis era. With Shadowland, the character bottomed out, and that inner monologue on the last page of #512 is unforgiveable. Marvel can't take that back. I would love to forget Shadowland.

Waid is doing a fine job writing the character, and I think the fun and brighter direction is a negative reaction to tone of the book for the past several years, and specifically Shadowland. That is the only thing for which we have Shadowland to thank. But disasters don't get much more disastrous.
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DesignDevil
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Joined: 11 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I find it ironic that you use the Miller issue where DD saves Bullseye from the train. If I'm remembering it correctly, Bullseye taunts Matt with the fact that from then on every murder he commits is a murder Matt could have prevented. And Bullseye was absolutely right. Half the time when they clash DD is well within the legal rights of self defense. Like when Bullseye threatened Milla in THEIR HOME, Matt should have put him down. There is not a jury in the country that would have convicted him for defending his blind girlfriend from a known mass murderer.

At the end of the day morality has nothing to do with it. Characters like Bullseye will never be killed off permanently because of the serial nature of comics and fans wanting to see the same characters/fights/stories over and over and over. Thats why most comic heroes are held to this ridiculous high moral code of never ever killing, that and the left-over BS from the Comics Code
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Dimetre
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Joined: 16 Feb 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RGdesigner wrote:
I find it ironic that you use the Miller issue where DD saves Bullseye from the train. If I'm remembering it correctly, Bullseye taunts Matt with the fact that from then on every murder he commits is a murder Matt could have prevented. And Bullseye was absolutely right. Half the time when they clash DD is well within the legal rights of self defense. Like when Bullseye threatened Milla in THEIR HOME, Matt should have put him down. There is not a jury in the country that would have convicted him for defending his blind girlfriend from a known mass murderer.

I don't find any irony in my choice of a Miller issue. So Bullseye taunts him for saving him and says he shares responsibility for every murder he commits for then on? Bullseye is an amoral psychopath. I don't put much stock on a statement regarding responsibility. And Daredevil chooses to conduct himself at an infinitely higher level of morality.

Saving Bullseye does not make Daredevil responsible for everything Bullseye does in the future. Daredevil says to Manolis in #169, "Nick, men like Bullseye would rule the world... were it not for a structure of laws that society has created to keep such men in check. The moment one man takes another man's life in his own hands, he is rejecting the law... and working to destroy that structure. If Bullseye is a menace to society, it is society that must make him pay the price. Not you. And not me. I... I wanted him to die, Nick. I detest what he does... What he is. But I'm not God... I'm not the law. And I'm not a murderer."

Nothing that has happened since #169 has indicated to me that Matt no longer believes this. Does he hate Bullseye more these days. Yes, I believe he does. But I also believe he believes in the law, and his own morality. And I also think that he believes that if he does kill Bullseye, or does nothing to prevent his wrongful death, that he is contributing to the breakdown of society.

So yeah, Shadowland is garbage, and I never want to see Andy Diggle do anything involving Daredevil again.
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DesignDevil
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Joined: 11 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"a structure of laws that society has created to keep such men in check. The moment one man takes another man's life in his own hands, he is rejecting the law... "
This reasoning actually ignores that the law allows for instances of self defense or eminent threats like the one I mentioned with Milla. I think this was Miller being constricted by Silver Age mentality. Pretty much all his later Daredevil stories show Matt willing to kill if given no other choice.

See I actually kinda agree with some of your points. Matt leaving Bullseye to die on the train tracks would have been murder (though I do agree with the "logic" of Bullseyes taunts as they start to apply later on as Bullseye comes back again and again to specifically target Matt and his loved ones.) If Matt had shot Bullseye in the hospital in issue 191? that again would have been murder and would hurt the character. Though had Matt shoved his billy club through Bullseye's throat when he was about to murder Milla, it would have been totally justifiable. In a fight if someone is trying to kill you, you try to kill them right back.

By your logic Matt should have let the girl die at the end of "The Man Without Fear" or the numerous people dying in the last issue of "Born Again".

Again, I don't want characters like Daredevil or Batman to become like Frank Castle, and DD should never want to kill and when he has he regretted it deeply.
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Dimetre
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Joined: 16 Feb 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 5:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RGdesigner wrote:
By your logic Matt should have let the girl die at the end of "The Man Without Fear" or the numerous people dying in the last issue of "Born Again".

In both instances, Matt was forced into a corner, where he had to stop the killer, or allow the certain death of an innocent. In the case of Born Again, I feel he had to blow up the helicopter with the pilot inside, because everytime that turret fired a bystander was getting hit. (For the record, my local comic book store manager disagrees. He thinks he could have knocked the pilot out with a billy club ricochet and Daredevil could have rescued him. I'm not so sure.) I'm less sure that the choice was so black and white when it comes to your Man Without Fear example, but Matt repeatedly stated that he didn't want to kill him, and the villain was given ample opportunity to stop. I don't know. I've grown less comfortable with Man Without Fear as time goes on, and am somewhat reluctant to consider it canon. At least there was a stated reluctance to kill.

As for your Bendis example, even though I can't stand Bendis, he succeeded in showing that Daredevil had enough discipline to stop Bullseye without killing him.
RGdesigner wrote:
Again, I don't want characters like Daredevil or Batman to become like Frank Castle, and DD should never want to kill and when he has he regretted it deeply.

I completely agree.
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Darkdevil
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Joined: 04 Apr 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 7:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If Shadowland was more about the corruption of DD, of Matt embracing his dark nature by leading the Hand, then for me, his killing Bullseye would've been more dramatic. It was shocking of itself but seeing as how it merely let some demon 'possess' Matt, it was cheapened.

Matt is no murderer, that is never his intention when he goes out as DD. He may feel that the legal system should judge Bullseye but that same system has consistently failed to do so. Bullseye's latest actions of detonating that apartment building with all the tenants inside was a good last straw for Matt. Because Matt had forsaken the law, had taken up leadership and authority of the Hand, he felt it was his personal responsibility to deal with Bullseye now.

If Shadowland was about Matt going to the dark side, about his friends trying to bring him back, about Matt trying to find redemption after seeing the effects of what he had done, and throw out all the demon rubbish, killing Bullseye makes more sense. I can understand why Matt would have wanted to do that but here, in that setting and story, it was just a shock stunt, nothing else.
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dsugar
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Joined: 10 Jun 2011
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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It should have been a better story to kill someone like bullseye. Probably something big that happend that very moment and then....
Even heroes make mistakes and can snap when being tortured. Being the fact that he is a lawyer it should never get to that level but he can beat the crap out of them.
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Sewersaint
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Joined: 23 May 2012
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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2012 3:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, this is why I like this forum, everybody has a well thought out argument and opinion.

Now to the question at hand. Do I think Daredevil was right in killing Bullseye? Yes. Of course, I also believe in the principle of the death penalty. I do not live in a country with the death penalty but I am still capable of recognising that there are some serious major problems with the implementation of the death penalty. However, Bullseye is a known killer who has thus far been unrepentant, a prime candidate in my opinion for the death penalty. What fascinates me about the should killers be killed debate is the alternative to the death penalty - essentially imprisonment for life. Locking somebody up until they die.

Back to Matt though, should he, as a hero, been the executioner? I guess it depends on whether or not you want to read about a hero or a protagonist. I choose to view Matt as the latter, somebody flawed. Honestly, Matt is a terrible hero to emulate, I mean look know further than the way he's treated women in the past. BUT that's why I like reading Daredevil, because he has a moral code that he tries to live by, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
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