13 Reasons to Use a Deathtrap

Months ago, I saw someone on DC's own boards asking why villains so often capture a hero and then dump him
into a complicated "deathtrap" instead of just chopping his head off right away so they'll never have to worry
about him again. It was a good question! I responded with a few possible reasons at the time, and made a note to
come up with a better list later. Which I did; then I saved it on a floppy disk and lost track of the disk for
awhile. Today I managed to unearth it and decided to spruce it up a little and post it for you!
Note: Not all of the traps that villains set for heroes are actually intended to be deadly, but in the name of
simplicity I am sticking to the term "deathtrap" for any such situation.
_13 Reasons to Use a Deathtrap_
01. Crazy
02. Insecurity
03. The Pursuit of Science
04. Sadism
05. Sportsmanship
06. Cover-Up
07. Meant to Escape
08. Interrogate First, Kill Later
09. Patriotism and Other Scruples
10. Lack of the Killer Instinct
11. Proving a Philosophical Point
12. Greed
13. Conversion

01. Crazy
A "logical" chain of thought for a villain might go like this: "I want to steal lots of money. Character X [the
hero] wants to stop me. I finally got the drop on him, for the moment. If I kill him this time, he'll never be able
to stop me again!" (Granted, that chain of "logic" ignores the question of how hard it is to "really, really kill" a
superhero in the long run.)
However, not all villains are capable of such rational thought, identifying and then taking the simplest possible
route to reach a coherent objective. The Joker's characterization, for instance, has been all over the map in the
66 years since he was created, but it is generally agreed that the man is mentally ill to a significant degree.
(Which is why he keeps getting locked up in Arkham Asylum whenever he is recaptured.) Accordingly, those
occasions when he seems to have the upper hand on Batman, but doesn't just kill him as quickly as possible,
carry some credibility because hey, do you really expect flawlessly logical behavior from a raving lunatic with a
deranged sense of humor?
02. Insecurity
Killing the hero is not the point. Even stealing lots of money and making a clean getaway is not the point. The
point is to bolster the villain's fragile ego by creating a situation where he feels that he has proven himself
"smarter" or "more imaginative" or otherwise "better" than the hero. He may even be nursing the hope that he
will get to hear the hero explicitly admit that the villain is better!
I recently reread the crossover event X-Cutioners Song. In it, the villainous Stryfe has managed to capture

Scott Summers and Jean Grey and is holding them prisoner on the moon. Although he seems angry at them, he
doesnt kill them right away. I got the impression that he wanted them to do or say certain things that would
prove that his very low opinion of their characters was justified, and that he was right to be so angry at them.
(His belief (later proved mistaken) was that he was the grown-up version of the baby, Nathan Christopher
Summers, whom Scott and Jean had once allowed Askani to carry far into the future, where he evidently had a
miserable childhood, what with having been infected with a techno-organic virus and all that. Stryfe either did
not know or did not care to admit that the only reason Scott let his baby boy be taken away was because the kid
was otherwise going to die very quickly and future technology might be able to save his life.)
03. The Pursuit of Science
"Insert Superhero A into Deathtrap B, shake well, wait ten minutes, observe the results and write them down for
posterity."
In a three-part arc in "Uncanny X-Men #'s 145-147," the X-Men fought the temporary alliance of Doctor Doom
and Arcade. At the end of the first installment, several of them were captured. As #146 opens, Doom and
Arcade are chatting about the way Doom has handled his prisoners.
ARCADE: What happened to the X-Men? I saw your flunkies cart them away.
DOOM: I thought you'd never ask. Behold.
[A painting turns into an LCD screen to show the cell Nightcrawler is in.]
ARCADE: They're not dead?
DOOM: Of course not. I do nothing precipitously, Arcade, especially kill. I have never met the X-Men before.
Their powers are new to me. I wish to examine them - learn their strengths, their weaknesses, how they fight
and think.
[We'll skip a few panels, and then Doom says the following in a voice-over caption]
DOOM: Each X-Man faces a test. Each test has an escape route. But finding - and using - that route will require
the ultimate combination of their abilities and their intellect. The slightest mistake will cost them their lives.
Notice the key point: Doctor Doom apparently saw himself as looking down upon these X-Men from Olympian
heights. They certainly did not merit the sort of respect he might have offered Reed Richards. They were not his
"mental equals." They were not his "dangerous enemies." They were his cute little lab rats! Perhaps they would
beat the tests and live; perhaps they would fail and die; it was all much the same to him! After all, there was no
overpowering reason for him to feel afraid of them, was there? This arrogance struck me as being perfectly in
character for Victor Von Doom. (By the end of the story arc, I believe he was forced to reevaluate the threat
level they posed, if it makes you feel better to hear that.)
04. Sadism
"Sure, I could empty a .45 into his head, but where's the fun in that? It would be over before he knew it! I want
to see him grovel! I want to hear him scream!"
This is probably one of the most common motives. If the hero has made a lot of trouble for the villain in the
past, then the villain feels that just taking five seconds to kill him now wouldnt be nearly enough satisfaction to
repay all the heros past offenses.

One of the most prolonged cases of a villain torturing a hero, when he theoretically could have tried to have
the guy killed a lot faster, came in Frank Miller's "Born Again" story arc for the "Daredevil" title. It started out
by having the Kingpin learn Daredevil's secret identity. DD did not immediately know that this had happened.
First the Kingpin ordered discreet surveillance until he was reasonably certain that the information was
authentic and not some sort of hoax. Then the fun began! Matt Murdock's professional reputation was dragged
through the mud. Witnesses were bribed or coerced to testify that he had done all sorts of terrible things. He was
disbarred. Financial records mysteriously were altered so that it looked like he was way behind in paying his
bills (even though he wasn't). His house was blown up. When Kingpin decides he's really angry at you, he
doesn't do anything so "merciful" as just hiring someone to put a bullet through your head. Daredevil had
messed up some elaborate schemes of Kingpin's in the past and caused him some degree of humiliation, and
now Wilson Fisk was bound and determined to repay the debt with interest!
While most of this was going on, Matt did not know why it was all happening to him and did not know that
Kingpin (or any other enemy) had learned his secret identity as Daredevil. He eventually figured it out after his
house blew up, however. Later, already in a very unstable psychological condition, Matt entered Fisks
headquarters and fought him hand-to-hand . . . and got clobbered into unconsciousness. But still not killed.
(Well explore the reasons for that in #06, below.)
05. Sportsmanship
"Scytale," Irulan said presently. "It is said that you Tleilaxu have an odd system of honor: your victims must
always have a means of escape."
"If they can but find it," Scytale agreed.
"Am I a victim?" Irulan asked.
A burst of laughter escaped Scytale.
[Quoted from Dune Messiah , by Frank Herbert]
Some villains live by that rule: There must be a way for a victim, or at least a particularly respected adversary,
to theoretically survive the experience if he plays his cards just right. The odds may be way against it, but there
is still a chance.
In fact, some villains want to turn it into a "sporting proposition" in the form of a one-on-one duel, even when
they could easily end the hero's career by other methods. They may feel this is the honorable treatment a
"worthy adversary" deserves. (Some of the times when Ra's al Ghul has faced Batman man-to-man, using
swords for instance, spring to mind.) Or there may be a public relations component: The master villain figures it
will be easier to keep his subordinates and rivals properly intimidated if he shows them that he is not just
smarter than they are, but also much deadlier in a personal duel instead of just hiding behind an army of thugs
with deadly weapons all the time and letting them do the dirty work. Killing the hero is all very well and good,
but here the major point is to remind a bunch of other people of what could happen if the same villain ever got
his hands on them in a "fair fight"! Showing them the heros dead body and saying I killed him in single
combat is just not as spectacular as letting them see it happen, with blood splashing all over the place!
6. Cover-Up
"Murder? What murder? Gosh, it sure is a pity that this hero died in such an ignominious fashion by sheer bad
luck, isn't it?"
Picking up where we left off in the recap of certain events of Frank Millers Born Again Daredevil story arc:

It pleased Kingpin to slowly, carefully drive Daredevil into a nervous breakdown. And then to beat him up with
his own bare hands. And then to finally kill him but not with his own bare hands. Too obvious.
The crucial point was that Kingpin definitely did not want it known that he had done any of this. In fact, he
didnt even want the death of Daredevil to be identified as a murder at all! Hence, Matt Murdocks battered and
unconscious body was trapped inside a taxicab, with doors and seatbelt buckles sealed shut by a chemical
process that would leave results that looked (days or weeks later, when examined by a lab) exactly like the
natural process of rust in an underwater environment; something that obviously must have happened after the
car was already in the water and Matt Murdock was already dead. The taxicab was then shoved into the river.
Classic deathtrap scenario, from our point of view, but creating a deathtrap just to make Murdock suffer a bit
more was not Kingpins motive at this point in the game. I think he had already satisfied his own taste for
sadism by his previous abuse of Murdock while the man was still alive. Now he was thinking about the larger
picture, and a good solid Cover-Up. The key point was to prevent Matt Murdock from becoming a martyr after
his death, as might occur if it appeared that some villain had murdered him. This presumably was what had
prevented Kingpin from just breaking his neck and then tossing the corpse in a dumpster. Doing it this way, it
would appear that Murdock had killed a cab driver, stolen the cab, and then carelessly or suicidally driven off a
dock into water and drowned. Probably drunk at the time. The autopsy would confirm all this by showing the
man had died with river water in his lungs and no fatal injuries inflicted upon the body (just some nasty bruises
and such).
(Obviously, this last part Murdock drowning and being autopsied didnt quite work out. Nonetheless, Miller
had done a superb job of laying the groundwork for Kingpin to feel the need to take the calculated risk of using
this method instead of just killing the man in a blatantly murderous fashion.)
7. Meant to Escape
"They wiggled out of the trap and disappeared into the wild blue yonder, eh? Perfect! Everything is going
exactly as I planned!"
In other words, sometimes the villain's real agenda is not the obvious one that the heroes assume to be his
mission statement of the day (such as watching them die). He permits them the opportunity to "escape" from his
clutches for good solid strategic reasons: He calculates that their predictable responses to whatever nasty stuff
he throws at them will actually move things closer to the important goal he really wants to achieve, instead of
further away from it!
There was that time in the original Star Wars movie when most of our heroes fought their way through a bunch
of Storm Troopers, piled onto the Millennium Falcon, and went racing away from the Death Star, blowing up a
few TIE fighters along the way. Afterwards, Princess Leia worried that their daring getaway had been entirely
too easy . Han Solo expressed incredulity at her definition of "easy" - but it turned out she was right! Darth
Vader and Moff Tarkin, having failed to extract the true location of the current headquarters of the Rebel
Alliance from her by other means, were now taking the calculated risk of letting her "escape" (on a ship with a
special homing device installed) so she could lead them directly to it! Finding and crushing most of the
Rebellion's military resources was far more important than just killing a few riffraff who had been running
around stirring up trouble on the Death Star for an hour or two.
On a similar note, Grant Morrison's run on the JLA included a story (reprinted in the TPB "JLA: American
Dreams") in which The Key penetrated the security of the JLA's Watchtower, ambushed and rendered
unconscious several members when they teleported up for a meeting, and then injected them with a "psychovirus" he had invented which would take over their central nervous systems and trap their minds in a dream
world. Of course, many other supervillains over the years have also managed to "trap" heroes in dreams,
hallucinations, virtual reality, etc., but this time The Key took it a step further in his planning. The Key's

strategy took it for granted that the JLAers would eventually figure out what was wrong and somehow escape
the mental trap, because escaping traps and "winning" is what JLA members inevitably do! (Good to see the
man has actually learned something from past experience!) This time, their eventual "escape" was crucial to his
Master Plan! If all went well, the way he had things wired up would mean that their sudden awakening would
generate the necessary psycho-electric surge to let him project himself into "negative space" and then take
control of just about everything in the universe.
That's what The Key said was bound to happen, anyway. Since he didn't get to enter "negative space" after all,
we'll never know if he actually had his head screwed on straight when he came up with this "brilliant" plan. But
to give credit where credit is due, he might actually have gotten away with it if not for the unanticipated
interference of late arrival Connor Hawke with a well-aimed Boxing Glove Arrow!
8. Interrogate First; Kill Later
Here, the villain doesn't just kill the hero because that would be self-defeating. Corpses don't talk much. There
are things the villain desperately needs to learn from the hero before he kills him. Or at least that's what the
villain thinks. This is different from "Sadism" because the villain isn't just keeping the hero around for
demented reasons, hoping to enjoy watching him bleed and hearing him beg for mercy (although with some
villains, Sadism and a real need to Interrogate can conveniently go hand-in-hand in a particular case).
One nasty variation arises when the villain seems convinced that the captive hero "must know" the Secret of X.
(Whatever X may be.) Only the hero doesn't know much of anything about X, except for the inconvenient fact
that the interrogator seems obsessed with the subject! Unfortunately, a determined villain is unlikely to
immediately take his word for it and say, "Oops! How silly of me! Sorry I bothered you!" He'll probably say,
"Ah ha! You swore to keep your mouth shut and deny everything, did you? Well, let's see if I can't convince
you to change your mind!" Which means that these interrogation sessions (with physical torture, mind-altering
drugs, or whatever) are going to drag on for a long, long time . . . which has the advantage (for plot purposes) of
providing an excuse to keep the hero alive for as long as it takes for him to stage an escape, or for someone else
to come along and rescue him.
As a recent example, I'm thinking of the time in the "Villains United" miniseries last year (written by Gail
Simone) when the new Secret Six were being tortured in rotation by the Crime Doctor in an attempt to learn the
secrets of the mysterious "Mockingbird" who directed them via electronic communications from an undisclosed
location. As near as I could tell from available evidence, none of the Six (Catman, Cheshire, Deadshot,
Parademon, Ragdoll, Scandal) actually knew anything worth knowing about Mockingbird. Such as his real
name or home address, for instance. And what they didn't know, they couldn't spill. So of course the torture
sessions dragged on and on . . . until finally Tom Blake spotted a possible way to turn the tables on his
tormentors and break loose.
9. Patriotism and Other Scruples
"Kill you? A fellow American who's just doing his job? What sort of monster do you think I am? (Maybe I'll
just maim you a little bit!)"
Deathstroke the Terminator kills people for money. However, he used to brag (when Marv Wolfman was
writing him, anyway) that he never takes a contract that would harm "national security." (He clearly meant "of
the USA" - I doubt he loses much sleep over what his assassinations might do to any other country's national
security.) A legacy of his many years of proud service in the U.S. Army, we gathered, before he turned into a
freelance mercenary/assassin. Offhand, I don't know how often (if ever?) he has mentioned or demonstrated
these same scruples about "national security" in the hands of other writers over the past decade or so.
And even in the days when almost all of his appearances were scripted by Marv Wolfman, Slade Wilson never

offered us a good definition of just what he interpreted "against national security" to mean in practice. For
instance, he did not hesitate to nab the Teen Titans and turn them over to the H.I.V.E. in "The Judas Contract."
He must have known they had little chance of surviving whatever the H.I.V.E. intended for them, but apparently
he felt the loss of the Teen Titans would not be a significant blow to the "national security" of the USA.
There have been various other times when Slade Wilson has fought one hero or another and has managed to
gain some sort of advantage by stunning, injuring, capturing, or misdirecting them . . . but not actually killing
them, and in at least some cases, I was convinced he wasnt even trying. (Of course, different writers are bound
to have different views on exactly where he draws the line.)
On a similar note: While the Punisher, Frank Castle, is certainly not afraid of the sight of blood, I believe he
used to have a firm rule against using lethal force on "honest" cops, superheroes, well-meaning innocent
civilians, etc., even if they were forcefully trying to arrest him. His war was with organized crime and the like;
but he didn't just slaughter anybody who got in his way. That would be antisocial! (I've lost track of the
Punisher these last few years; his rules may have changed a bit.)
Other villains, patriotic or not, have scruples of their own they just wouldnt feel right about killing SpiderMan (or whoever) in cold blood after they had him on the ropes. But it might be okay to stuff him into some
fiendishly complicated prison cell to keep him out of harm's way for awhile!
10. Lack of the Killer Instinct
"Kill you? Why would I even want to kill you? Who needs a murder rap hanging over his head? If this fancy
trap keeps you out of my hair just long enough for me to get a good head start, then I'm satisfied!"
Some "villains" simply aren't murderous. "Take the money and run" often seems to be their motto. If they use
fancy weapons and traps to tie down a hero for awhile, it's probably as a delaying tactic; never seriously
intended to kill the guy; only intended to keep him off their backs long enough to get a good head start and
disappear into the crowded streets of the city!
The Batman/Catwoman relationship has sometimes worked this way, over the decades. There have been times
when Catwoman was allegedly in it for all the loot she could steal, plain and simple - but didn't actually want to
leave a trail of bodies in her wake. And she especially didn't want to kill Batman. But she might find ways to
stun him, imprison him, or otherwise hinder him so that he couldn't capture her right away.
11. Proving a Philosophical Point
"No, no, I don't want to kill you! I want a captive audience! I want to prove to you that I Am Right And You
Are Wrong!"
In Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke," the Joker captures Commissioner Gordon and then starts ranting at him
about a philosophy of life based on the theory that everything is a sick joke. And ranting, and ranting, and
ranting. (When Batman shows up later, he gets to hear his fair share of ranting as well.) I couldn't find my copy
just now, but Joker seemed to be hoping that Jim Gordon would come to agree with him about the benefits of
insanity by going stark raving mad himself, basically switching sides to the Jokers own school of thought.
(Didn't work. When Batman showed up later, Gordon said to him something like: "We have to show him
[Joker] that our way works."
12. Greed
"What good is a dead body? If I wanted a stiff, I could raid the morgue! But alive, you might be worth
something extra!"

There is a very limited market for the corpse of a dead superhero. (If you've seen one corpse, you've seen 'em
all!) A live superhero, however, is something else!
In the TPB collection "Robin/Batgirl: First Blood," there is a sequence in which Robin (Tim Drake) and Batgirl
(Cassandra Cain) are captured by the Penguin's mob in Bludhaven. They end up tied back-to-back in a pair of
chairs, surrounded by dozens of gangsters. Penguin assures his flunkies that the plan definitely involves killing
these brats - but first he figures he might as well rip off their masks and take some photographs which he will
then find a way to sell for extra moolah. One of his subordinates begs for the chance to do the honors there.
TWO-TON: You're already plenty famous, but it would help build my rep among my crew if I were the one to
unmask them. It's worth a grand to me.
PENGUIN: Really?
ANOTHER CROOK: Hey, I can do better than that. I'll pay two thousand, easy.
PENGUIN: It seems we've got an auction on our hands, boys. The current bid is two grand. Who'll give me
three?
YET ANOTHER CROOK: I'll go three.
PENGUIN: Westbrook, get the other captains on the phone, in case they want to get in on this!
So the winner of the auction turned out to be a crook who was out of town, and would need at least an hour or
two to get there and do the honors by ripping off those masks. That created a longer window of opportunity in
which Tim and Cassandra could try to find a way to wiggle out of their current predicament without dying in
the process. Penguin had honestly intended to kill them pretty darn quick once they fell into his hands, but his
greed got the better of him. I found it fairly plausible.
13. Conversion
"Why should I kill you when I hope to make you switch sides instead?"
In Uncanny X-Men #256, The Hand and the Mandarin dumped Psylocke in a sensory-deprivation tank and
then used a psychic sensitive to monitor and influence her thoughts along with the Mandarin's use of a ring
that lets the bearer exercise high-powered telepathy himself when he cares to take the trouble. The plan was to
turn her into a super-ninja who could kill the target with a single well-focused thought if need be. Much of what
we saw in that issue was actually happening inside Psylocke's mind, full of childhood memories and symbolic
encounters with other X-Men and and Mojo and Spiral muttering comments in the background and other weird
stuff, but on the final page it appeared that what had "really" happened was that somewhere along the line
Psylocke had physically broken out of the sensory deprivation tank, killing the "sensitive" who had been
monitoring her mental deterioration and several other members of The Hand as well. Which illustrates some of
the flaws in trying to pull anything so fancy on a telepathic hero, but Matsuo Tsurayaba and the Mandarin still
considered this one to be a win for their side because Psylocke ended up kneeling before the Mandarin and
calling him her master.
(Several of the details of what "really" happened here were retconned years later, but let's not go into that now,
okay? It had nothing to do with Chris Claremont's version at the time of just why the bad guys had stuffed
Psylocke into that tank and started manipulating her mind instead of simply cutting her throat.)
It worked well enough, despite the body count, that two issues later the bad guys decided to try the same stunt

all over again by dumping Wolverine in the sensory deprivation tank and having Psylocke use her telepathy to
monitor him and steer his thoughts in the "right" direction. (One flaw in this plan appeared to be that Wolverine
was already sufficiently crazy that when their minds "merged" Psylocke suffered more from the experience than
he did. Although she later claimed that the shock knocked some sense back into her and made her remember
which side she was on.)
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Some death trap ideas...
Dangle hero (or loved ones) over a lava pit. What intensity heat is lava? Could someone who is significantly
heat-resistant swim to the edge of the pit before death sets in? I'd imagine that a sufficiently high enough ranked
cold generation could cool the surface to prevent being immersed, but what other ways could this one be
escaped?
Flooding a room with the hero confined inside is good unless the hero can breathe under water or doesn't need
to breathe. My favorite example of escape on this one was the Alec Baldwin movie in which he was The
Shadow. He stayed alive by sucking air from a bullet hole his foe had put into one of the walls until he could
telepathically summon his girlfriend to come open the door. Obviously, good old fashioned strength or the
ability to blast out is a good way to escape this kind of trap.
Gas traps, particularly when the hero is tied up, or otherwise trapped in an enclosed space, are convenient. One
could use any number of poisons this way to get whatever might be most lethal to the victim. Has kryptonite gas
ever been used on Superman? Also, one could use a corrosive gas rather than a toxic one, with the intent of
burning the flesh from the victim's bones rather than just relying on respiratory function to get the toxin into the
victim (who might be able to hold their breath a long while). In that case, a tough hero might be able to endure
the corrosive longer than their bindings and use the means of their death to also escape.
Quicksand is a staple, but how would one stat quicksand in Marvel terms? Obviously, anyone with flight or
levitation could get out of it, but what other ways can quicksand be escaped? Once submerged, the only rules
you need to worry about are how long the victim can hold his breath until someone comes along with a pole or
something to poke down into the quicksand for the victim to grab on to.
Staircase slide with blades at the bottom is a fun ride. I remember this one from the Jake Speed movie, where at
the bottom of the folded down steps a trap door opened into a pit of hungry lions who would feed on the sliced
up victim. Jake shot the blades at the bottom and fell into the pit alive. Sufficient resistance to physical harm
would negate both the blades and mauling from wild animals.
Spiked pits are a classic, again with the hero or loved one dangled over the spikes. This one is tough to escape,
without being highly damage resistant, once the the drop is triggered. How much damage does a pit full of
spikes inflict, though?
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