Marvel Comics has pushed the superhero forward in various ways and one of the most important was the anti-hero. Anti-heroes are heroes who use more violent methods and don’t really get along well with others. They became a sensation in the mid ’70s, as culture got more cynical and crime hit an all-time high in major cities. This type of hero brought back something that had been verboten in the Silver Age, but was common in the Golden Age: heroes killing. For a long time, superheroes didn’t kill but Marvel introduced heroes that would take out their enemies with extreme prejudice. At one point, heroes that would kill were more rare than those who don’t, but that has shifted a lot in the present day, with more heroes okay with it.
That said, heroes who kill still aren’t the rule. The heroes who do want to make sure that their enemies stop killing and are tired of the system letting them out or were warriors or soldiers at some point in their life. These seven Marvel heroes kill their villains, setting them apart from their fellows.
Thor is Marvel’s God of Thunder and one of the most powerful members of the Avengers. He’s been fighting evil for millennia, battling the enemies of Asgard and Midgard. He often killed his enemies back in these days, but once he became a superhero, he left killing behind for the most part. When he was Earth, he followed the no-kill rules of his fellows. However, on his own adventures, he would kill his enemies when he felt they needed it, as is his wont as a god. He has no problem ending a threat, and has been doing it for thousands of years.
Magneto has become a hero, but one thing about him hasn’t changed. The mutant master of magnetism has always believed in killing his foes and he’s done that as a member of the X-Men as well. He joined the team during the Utopia Era after years of being an on-again, off-again ally. There were under two hundred mutants in the world, and Cyclops was much more okay with killing than he had ever been before. Mags was at home with his former enemy, and has been killing almost the entire time that he’s been a member of the team.
Cable was sent to the future after he was infected with a techno-organic virus by Apocalypse. However, that future was also ruled by that ancient mutant and he was forced to become a soldier, fighting against an evil empire to gain freedom for his people and killing anyone who stood in the way of liberation from the dark mutant lord. He came back to the present to stop En Sabah Nur from taking over the planet, and has been killing since he got here. He doesn’t always kill his enemies nowadays, but if someone is bad enough and he has a chance, Cable is going to take them down forever.
So, this one applies to the version of Beast who is currently a villain, not the one who appears in X-Men (Vol. 7) (yes, there’s more than one; the X-Men comics are complicated, folks!). Beast was made head of X-Force, the Krakoan CIA, and sent his team on missions meant to destroy any threat to the mutant nation. He destroyed the country of Terra Verde, and killed Wolverine, having him resurrected as a mostly mindless weapon and using him to kill US military brass. He was all about killing during this period and was only stopped when Wolverine was able to restore his mind, leading X-Force after Beast. He became a villain at that point but most of his worst murders came while he was still technically a hero.
Deadpool is a complex character, but there’s one thing about him that is rather simple: he will kill you if you’re a bad guy. Wade Wilson had been a soldier before he joined Weapon X, and afterwards he became even better at it because he could survive anything thrown at him. He spent years as a mercenary and a villain, taking out targets left and right, and when he became a hero, he basically just changed his targets to evil people. While he hasn’t killed many big name villains, he’s killed thousands of people since becoming a hero and doesn’t really look like he’s going to stop any time soon.
The Punisher started his existence fighting Spider-Man, after being told that the Wall-Crawler was a bad guy. However, he quickly learned otherwise and started his one-man war against crime. Frank Castle lost his family in a mob hit and used skills that he gained as a Marine to kill every criminal that he can. His body count is honestly pretty uncountable at this point; he wastes entire crowds of bad guys and has starred in hundreds of comics over the years. He was one of Marvel’s original anti-heroes and is still one of their most popular characters.
Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he’s always done is kill. His first kill was his father Thomas Logan back in the 19th century, and he’s killed thousands upon thousands over the years, fighting in every major war, working as a mercenary and spy, and becoming a superhero. As a member of the X-Men, he didn’t kill as much, mostly because the rest of the team didn’t like it, but he did on his own. Over the years, the group would become more accepting of his proclivities and even use his skills in X-Force to kill the biggest threats to mutantkind. Once upon a time, Captain America told him the Avengers would never accept a killer like him. Years later, Iron Man brought him onto that team for that very reason. The Marvel Universe has changed and the acceptance of Wolverine’s killing is a perfect example of that.
What’s your favorite Marvel hero who kills? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
