To kill or not to kill?

It is the chief philosophical question that superheros face. Do they kill their arch enemies when they have defeated them? Usually,the answer is quite simple and the bad guys are knocked unconscious or tied up really good and handed over to the police. There are a few heroes though that cross that line and just take them out. Although, to be fair, it would be hard, as a comic book author, to continually create new and powerful enough villains to keep the story interesting if you were always killing them in the end. All of that aside, the real question comes down to, are you really becoming the villain if you kill the villain?

While in some cases this is most definitely true; you don't want to go around wasting people who stole some ladies purse, the punishment should fit the crime. But when the crimes are monstrously evil, are you really "stooping to their level" by killing them? I think not. There is a point where evil must be destroyed, not just put away out of sight.

Perhaps this quandary is revealing of our lack of a moral foundation. When the hero himself (or herself, whatever) cannot judge why his actions are good independent of the villain's actions, then he has ultimately lost. There is no way he can truly win. He will always question if he did the right thing. Struggling with guilt and self absorption, he will always wonder if he can truly be a judge of another person. When we only define good individually, this is inevitable.