No one is right all the time. As much as we all try to maintain a constant state of correctness, that's sadly impossible. And, when I look around the internet, I see a lot of people saying things that are patently wrong. Which is totally fine, it's okay to be wrong, but I thought it'd be best to help out the best I can by gently correcting some of those common misconceptions.
This article serves two purposes: one, if one of these misconceptions was a thing you didn't know wasn't true, you'll learn some cool comic book facts. And two, when someone you know goes off on a rant about how Batman has always killed people or DC has always been dark and gritty, you can just passive-aggressively send them the link to this article. Let's go!
Source: newyorker.com
10. Myth: “Batman Totally Shot/Killed People ALL THE TIME in the Comic Books.”
The Truth:
Now this one is super interesting because it comes from a place of truth…sort of.
Yes, in Batman's first appearance in Detective Comics #27, he does carry a gun, and he does kill people. But here's the thing, Batman was still a work in progress at that point. Things about the character constantly changed across the first year of Batman comics, as writer-artist team Bill Finger and Bob Kane figured out what kind of character they were writing. And I don't mean things about the character changed, as in "bright purple gloves were a part of his costume in his debut" (although that's totally true). I mean things about the character changed, as in "He doesn't get an origin or backstory until Detective Comics #33".
Around that time, Batman stopped killing people and stopped carrying that gun. This culminates in Batman #4 in 1940, when Batman tells Robin, "We never kill with weapons of any kind." Wanna guess who wrote and drew that story? Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The character's creators. Batman's no-kill rule wasn't censorship, it was two guys looking at the character they'd created and realizing how to write him better. Any later Batman killing stories were all either retconned for being out of character or were out of continuity.
And to counter the two examples people are going to bring up to argue with me on this, Batman NEVER definitively kills anyone in Dark Knight Returns (As argued quite well in this linked article) and the whole "Batman kills the Joker at the end of the Killing Joke” theory has been disproved by the release of the original Alan Moore script which you can find here. Oh and "he kills in movies" isn't a refutation. This entire entry is pointing out why that's a bad adaptation of the character. In every case.
