From Jonathan Maberry and Scot Eaton’s DoomWar:

Doctor Doom invaded Wakanda (a sovereign nation), held its queen hostage, murdered a whole gang of its inhabitants whenever he liked, staged a coup, and generally acted exactly like a James Bond villain, complete with a plan with poorly defined goals and acts of villainy for the evil of it.

If someone breaks into your house and starts murdering your family while cackling about how you are lazy and terrible and threatening your wife like he’s Snidely Whiplash? You don’t let him off with a warning. You leave his brains on the wall and sleep the sleep of the just. That is the only appropriate response. You kill him, and you kill him because he needs to be dead. Some things are beyond the pale, and what Doom did? That’s worthy of death. Past a certain level, your position on the death penalty and violence become irrelevant. And I know, blah blah blah, protect trademarks, blah blah can’t kill Doom, blah blah comic books, blah blah diplomatic immunity, but to that I say “blah blah crap.”

Who cares? If you’re going to wear Big Boy Pants and write comics with Big Boy Stakes, maybe you should be willing to make some Big Boy Decisions and not completely neuter your heroes at the end of the story. “We won! By destroying everything that made us special and by letting this guy who just killed a bunch of us walk away. But we threatened him a little bit and now he knows not to come back!” You don’t get to have your cake and eat it, too.

Every time a hero pulls the “I want nothing more than to kill you… but I won’t! Even though you’ve just murdered hundreds of my people/my family/my sidekick/a bus full of children!” I’m reminded that superhero comics used to be aimed at children and still haven’t grown up yet.

The only African country to genuinely escape colonization and stand on its own for centuries, which allowed it to advance culturally and economically without being brutalized by Europe like every other African country, which in turn allowed it to approach other countries in the United Nations as equals, rather than as poor little colored folks begging for scraps from the countries that screwed them over, was made lazy, weak, and corrupt because it took advantage of natural resources? Never mind that much of the country still lives in huts and stuff out in the plains or in the jungle?

Really?

Jay-Z said it best, man.

You only get half a bar – fuck y’all niggas.