Killing the JLA, or, How Are These People Still Alive?

[TeChameleon]

So I was going through a period of forced inactivity, and my brain started to wander down random pathways, as it is wont to do. And it occurred to me; how are the members of the JLA (and for that matter, most of the other super-types running around) still alive? It seems to me that it really wouldn't be that hard to take them out with modern military hardware and personnel (or equivalent), careful observation, decent planning and a little creativity. And some kryptonite, in Superman's case, but half his bloody planet landed on Earth over the years, so that's likely not a significant problem. These scenarios are trying to work with in-universe knowledge and things you could learn just by watching the heroes in question; so no nuking (Stately) Wayne Manor or dropping a kryptonite warhead on Clark Kent's apartment.

Superman: carefully leak word that there is a hit out on someone. For bonus points, make it someone that you actually want dead, but that's not strictly necessary. It just has to be believable. If you time the leak right, Superman will simply show up to protect the target directly, rather than hunting you and/or your goons down. Given Superman's standard MO, this means standing between them and your gunmen and letting bullets bounce off him and/or zipping around between them and your gunmen/snipers and letting bullets bounce off of him.

The trick here? Have the guns loaded with standard lead bullets for roughly the first half of the clip... and with lead bullets with frangible kryptonite cores for the second half. Do not bother informing your goons of this, so that there is no change in heart rate for Supey to pick up on, and lead bullets are hardly going to be a shocking giveaway either because, well, bullets. The lead will also prevent him from being warned by being weakened by kryptonite radiation, at least until he's been perforated by shards of the stuff. Have the hit go through shortly after sunset, to make sure there's no pesky solar-healing shenanigans for at least six-eight hours, and once Superman is down, double-tap him with the kryptonite bullets, shoot your original target just for good measure, and go home cheerful knowing that you just have turned the Man of Tomorrow into yesterday's news.

Batman: Have a well-trained sniper set up overwatch in one of the taller building above the central GCPD station. If you're worried about world's-greatest-detective-plot-armour-cheatiness, play a slightly longer game and have your sniper rent an apartment there and set it up as a bolthole. Have your sniper retreat there after a hit in another country and lie low for a few weeks. Then have them add an extra couple of holes to Batman's cowl the next time he answers the Bat-Signal. Alternatively, ambush, ambush, ambush, with loads of disposable know-nothing flunkies. If he's got ten guys shooting at him every time he pokes his pointy head out of the shadows, even the Bat is going to start making mistakes.

Wonder Woman: Similar tactic to Superman- tie her down to a target she wants to protect (and that you want dead, for preference, since you never know, she might screw up...). Half a dozen guys shooting at her probably aren't going to do much, really, even on straight-up spray-n'-pray full auto, but the guy that pops up behind her with an RPG will likely be able to do some damage. Add in some snipers on overwatch, a couple more heavy weapons guys, and maybe a vehicle-mounted weapon or two, and, assuming you position yourselves for good crossfire and in such a fashion that she can't take out 3/4s of your firepower just by throwing one jeep at the other, she should go down without too much trouble.

Martian Manhunter: Here's where it starts getting a little trickier. Honestly, best bet here would probably be drones loaded with incendiaries, maybe rigged so that they've got a sort of fire aura point-defense (maybe an aerosolized fuel from a variety of nozzles on the drone body?). Watch J'onn until he enters a building you don't care about, then drop enough thermite/napalm/white phosphorous/etc. on it to turn it into a glowing crater that will still be burning when Kamandi wanders by. When dealing with green Superman+, there is no overkill.

Flash: Once again, tricky-ish. Easiest solution that I can think of is lots and lots of matte razor-wire, a dimly-lit room that he has no reason to suspect you've been to already, and some kind of big, obvious immediate threat at the far end of the room- for example, a bomb with a few seconds left displaying on the big digital readout. If you want to go a bit higher-tech, you can use a grid of weapons-grade UV lasers. Given that the Flash often displays a certain level of impulsiveness, odds are he'll hit the far wall as a rather unpleasant Jackson Pollock painting. In case he somehow manages to survive the razor-wire/lasers, have them hooked up to trigger the fire suppression system so that there's squat for traction in that room. And have the bomb set to go off when the readout says '0:03'. Alternatively, colourless, odorless poison gas of some kind- for best results, some kind of fast-acting carcinogen if you can get one. Yeah, hypermetabolize the cancer, Barry. Good work! *slow clap*

Green Lantern: Honestly less sure about the GL. The ring's built-in defenses make it tough to overcome. Some variant of sonics might be able to slow him down enough for more standard weaponry to do the job, or maybe just dump flashbangs on him by the truckload? Like I said, just not sure.

Aquaman: Same sort of idea as Superman or Wonder Woman- pin him down to a target he has to protect and unload on him with heavy weaponry. At least, if he's above water. If he's under water...

...

... carpet-nuke the seabed and pray you got him?

[Jayngfet]

[

Spoiler: This is long, so I'm gonna spoiler it

Show

QUOTE=TeChameleon;17793589]

Superman

[/QUOTE]

The obvious issue is that Superman doesn't just sit there and take every shot. He's faster than bullets, it's right there in his title card. Superheating guns with his heat vision or knocking the gunmen over with super breath is basically his standard MO at this point. At this point Clark is literally good enough to stop two gunmen without getting up or setting down his coffee, because he's been playing this game every day for years.

Batman

...is the worlds greatest detective and has a whole bunch of backup he calls on if somebody serious comes after him. Your know nothing flunkies are going to leave a paper trail and have to come from somewhere and be paid somehow. He's tracked down better men with less time at this game, after all.

Wonder Woman

Is currently a literal god of war. Unless you can pull out some literal god tier firepower, you aren't really going to make a dent. All of her friends are either demigods, black ops elites, or immortal superhumans so picking a target isn't easy, especially since their address is invisible and physically moves under them.

Martian Manhunter

A mind reader. Convincing him to walk into a presumably abandoned building alone with no warning isn't exactly easy.

Flash

Phases through objects at will. He'd just go straight through the razor wire.

Green Lantern

Again, vastly underestimating the power scale here. Those automatic defenses can stop anything so long they have power, and there's enough energy in that ring to build and destroy entire planets in one go.

Aquaman

You're again vastly underestimating the kind of damage a justice leaguer can take, especially a heavy hitter. He's no superman but he's dense enough to take more than a few good rounds before going down.

[/QUOTE]

The thing you don't seem to get is the sheer scale this team operates on. When you have someone like Superman or Green Lantern, a nuclear explosion doesn't really count for much. Even "weaker" teammates like Aquaman or Wonder Woman deal with tanks basically all the time and have cosmic level upgrades in play. Batman may be a regular human, but he has enough mechs and power armor to step up if you're just playing around with regular humans and standard guns.

[Lord Raziere]

Dude, your doing killing the JLA wrong.

anyone who wants to kill the JLA is probably already cackling mad evil as all heck anyways, so why be minimal about it? set up a base on Mercury or Venus, make a world destroying beam, aim it at the Earth and fire it so that they will be caught in the blast and die along with everyone else, there a lot of worlds out there to conquer, the loss of Earth is nothing.

but thats too close, instead, you should probably go to Pluto while making a cannon aimed at the sun, so that when its beam hits, it causes the sun to go supernova, thus wiping out the entire justice league along with the Earth, except maybe Superman who gains energy from solar energy. yeah, thats still a problem but hopefully the loss of his REAL home and all his friends and family will crush him emotionally, that and there is limits even to Superman's speed- there was to be some reason he travels in ships to get to other planets rather than just flying himself there- especially when he no longer has a sun to draw upon, and will starve or become dehydrated, since he can breathe in space. supernova is pretty much the only way to be sure, and it will be FUN! because you get to watch one of the biggest kabooms ever!

[TeChameleon]

I'm actually pretty well aware of the scale that the JLA operates on, although I wasn't aware of Wonder Woman's recent upgrades. I took one look at the new 52 stuff and went "... meh." and ignored it.

In any case, this was more of a thought excercise than anything else, and I readily admitted that I wasn't sure on Green Lantern.

Superman would have no reason whatsoever to melt the bullets- his consistent MO (to the best of my admittedly dated knowledge) for decades has been the whole bullets-bounce-off-the-shield thing. Which is kind of what the whole plan hinged on.

Batman? If the sniper has a believable cover story that makes it seem like they're simply in Gotham to hide out, odds are that Batman isn't going to go personally throw them out of town/avoid the Bat Signal until they go away. The most that seems likely is a threatening visit warning them not to start trouble in his town. Batman is brilliant and paranoid, but he's not omniscient. The 'disposable flunky' routine? Eh. Could work, could not work. It's more a 'plan B' than anything else.

Wonder Woman didn't used to be bulletproof, which is why she'd do the 'bullets and bracelets' schtick. If she is now, then, well, that plan goes out the window.

I never said 'abandoned building' for Martian Manhunter. I just said that one that you personally did not care about. And I already acknowledged and tried to deal with the mind-reading thing with the drones- robot planes don't have brains.

Why, exactly, would the Flash phase at random through an apparently empty room, especially if he was hurrying towards an obvious threat?

Green Lantern is admittedly problematic, although sonics have given him at least mild difficulty in the past, so it's not totally infeasible for flashbangs to disorient him enough to bring his shields down.

Aquaman... eh. I did note that you would specifically need heavy weaponry to make any real dents in his hide. Bouncing revolver bullets off your chest is one thing; bouncing .50 calibre sniper rounds is an entirely different thing.

[Dienekes]

So I was going through a period of forced inactivity, and my brain started to wander down random pathways, as it is wont to do. And it occurred to me; how are the members of the JLA (and for that matter, most of the other super-types running around) still alive? It seems to me that it really wouldn't be that hard to take them out with modern military hardware and personnel (or equivalent), careful observation, decent planning and a little creativity. And some kryptonite, in Superman's case, but half his bloody planet landed on Earth over the years, so that's likely not a significant problem. These scenarios are trying to work with in-universe knowledge and things you could learn just by watching the heroes in question; so no nuking (Stately) Wayne Manor or dropping a kryptonite warhead on Clark Kent's apartment.

Superman: carefully leak word that there is a hit out on someone. For bonus points, make it someone that you actually want dead, but that's not strictly necessary. It just has to be believable. If you time the leak right, Superman will simply show up to protect the target directly, rather than hunting you and/or your goons down. Given Superman's standard MO, this means standing between them and your gunmen and letting bullets bounce off him and/or zipping around between them and your gunmen/snipers and letting bullets bounce off of him.

The trick here? Have the guns loaded with standard lead bullets for roughly the first half of the clip... and with lead bullets with frangible kryptonite cores for the second half. Do not bother informing your goons of this, so that there is no change in heart rate for Supey to pick up on, and lead bullets are hardly going to be a shocking giveaway either because, well, bullets. The lead will also prevent him from being warned by being weakened by kryptonite radiation, at least until he's been perforated by shards of the stuff. Have the hit go through shortly after sunset, to make sure there's no pesky solar-healing shenanigans for at least six-eight hours, and once Superman is down, double-tap him with the kryptonite bullets, shoot your original target just for good measure, and go home cheerful knowing that you just have turned the Man of Tomorrow into yesterday's news.

It's been done, one plan that actually worked if not for assistance from other Leaguers. Though honestly, if Supes is at ridiculous full power he'll notice the bullet is kryptonite as soon as it leaves the barrel of the gun and just fly to mars while you're wasting bullets thinking he's still in front of you. Supes is OP like that.

Batman: Have a well-trained sniper set up overwatch in one of the taller building above the central GCPD station. If you're worried about world's-greatest-detective-plot-armour-cheatiness, play a slightly longer game and have your sniper rent an apartment there and set it up as a bolthole. Have your sniper retreat there after a hit in another country and lie low for a few weeks. Then have them add an extra couple of holes to Batman's cowl the next time he answers the Bat-Signal. Alternatively, ambush, ambush, ambush, with loads of disposable know-nothing flunkies. If he's got ten guys shooting at him every time he pokes his pointy head out of the shadows, even the Bat is going to start making mistakes.

Been done. There's this guy called Deadshot who did just this thing. Batman found out and beat him. Replaced his guns bullets with blanks and then proceed to kick his ass. Batman is OP like that.

Wonder Woman: Similar tactic to Superman- tie her down to a target she wants to protect (and that you want dead, for preference, since you never know, she might screw up...). Half a dozen guys shooting at her probably aren't going to do much, really, even on straight-up spray-n'-pray full auto, but the guy that pops up behind her with an RPG will likely be able to do some damage. Add in some snipers on overwatch, a couple more heavy weapons guys, and maybe a vehicle-mounted weapon or two, and, assuming you position yourselves for good crossfire and in such a fashion that she can't take out 3/4s of your firepower just by throwing one jeep at the other, she should go down without too much trouble.

You are highly underestimating WWs speed, durability, and fighting prowess. She can take a hit like Superman unless it's a bullet or blade. Yes I know that doesn't make sense. The guy from behind with the rocket launcher? Yeah, she noticed. She dodged it. And if she didn't, she tanked the shot and got mad at you. Or she flew away when she saw she was trapped. She can fly... sometimes. Wonder Woman is OP like that.

Martian Manhunter: Here's where it starts getting a little trickier. Honestly, best bet here would probably be drones loaded with incendiaries, maybe rigged so that they've got a sort of fire aura point-defense (maybe an aerosolized fuel from a variety of nozzles on the drone body?). Watch J'onn until he enters a building you don't care about, then drop enough thermite/napalm/white phosphorous/etc. on it to turn it into a glowing crater that will still be burning when Kamandi wanders by. When dealing with green Superman+, there is no overkill.

Ehh, pretty sure he can sense the drone coming and go insubstantial before the damage is done. Martian Manhunter is OP like that.

Flash: Once again, tricky-ish. Easiest solution that I can think of is lots and lots of matte razor-wire, a dimly-lit room that he has no reason to suspect you've been to already, and some kind of big, obvious immediate threat at the far end of the room- for example, a bomb with a few seconds left displaying on the big digital readout. If you want to go a bit higher-tech, you can use a grid of weapons-grade UV lasers. Given that the Flash often displays a certain level of impulsiveness, odds are he'll hit the far wall as a rather unpleasant Jackson Pollock painting. In case he somehow manages to survive the razor-wire/lasers, have them hooked up to trigger the fire suppression system so that there's squat for traction in that room. And have the bomb set to go off when the readout says '0:03'. Alternatively, colourless, odorless poison gas of some kind- for best results, some kind of fast-acting carcinogen if you can get one. Yeah, hypermetabolize the cancer, Barry. Good work! *slow clap*

Flash is faster than the lasers, much, much faster. The tripwire may cause him trouble as he can be a bit unobservant, but I've never seen a similar trick take him out for more than a couple seconds in comics. This is the guy that ran to the end of the universe and outpaced Death himself. The amount of force on his body a light jog is more than a razor wire could ever hope to deal him. Flash is OP like that. Though honestly, poison his food. The guy eats without even tasting what he's wolfing down.

Aquaman: Same sort of idea as Superman or Wonder Woman- pin him down to a target he has to protect and unload on him with heavy weaponry. At least, if he's above water. If he's under water...

...

... carpet-nuke the seabed and pray you got him?

Aquaman's strength is possibly even more variable than Superman's or Wonder Woman's. This might work, it might just piss him off. He might say "Good show, chum!" as he beats you to a pulp with a friendly smile, or he may try to skewer you with his hook with a look of grim determination.

[Jayngfet]

Spoiler

Show

Superman would have no reason whatsoever to melt the bullets- his consistent MO (to the best of my admittedly dated knowledge) for decades has been the whole bullets-bounce-off-the-shield thing. Which is kind of what the whole plan hinged on.

Except for all the times he doesn't do that, which is actually pretty often. I was quoting a specific thing he's actually done recently, wherein he thwarts a group of gunment without even changing into his suit, enjoying the paper and a coffee, from across the street, and uses a couple of well timed bursts to do the job anyway.

Because you're dealing with a man who can use needlepoint accuracy from orbit on an energy beam, and is smart and quick enough to adjust his aim as fast as a supercomputer.

I never said 'abandoned building' for Martian Manhunter. I just said that one that you personally did not care about. And I already acknowledged and tried to deal with the mind-reading thing with the drones- robot planes don't have brains.

One wonders how you're going to get several thousand pounds of explosive and incendiary compounds into a populated building with nobody knowing or thinking about it.

Remember, Martian Manhunter isn't some dude, he's a detective. If he finds out a bunch of shifty thugs are moving barrels of theramite into a building and nobody is supposed to know, he'll probably bust you long before you're ready to pull the trigger.

Why, exactly, would the Flash phase at random through an apparently empty room, especially if he was hurrying towards an obvious threat?

He can interpret events far faster than any normal human and is well versed in the idea of running into a trap. People like to forget just how damn smart the rogues are, and how fast they can kill a non-flash speedster who can't pull that kind of ridiculous bull. Because super speed isn't exactly rare in the DCU, and lesser speedsters die or get beaten all the time using similar methods.

Wonder Woman didn't used to be bulletproof, which is why she'd do the 'bullets and bracelets' schtick. If she is now, then, well, that plan goes out the window.

Heck, now that I think about it, I don't even know if you physically can kill Wonder Woman. Not even as a power level thing, but she's both the god of war and the head of a nation state, so attacking her is an act of war, which makes her stronger. Anyone with the resources you're talking about may or may not run into some kind of bizarre feedback loop.

Green Lantern is admittedly problematic, although sonics have given him at least mild difficulty in the past, so it's not totally infeasible for flashbangs to disorient him enough to bring his shields down.

The shields run on an Artificial Intelligence within the ring itself and adjust themselves regardless of what the wearer does when working on life saving mode. Light and energy based equipment isn't fast enough to beat it, since it's a computer that literally works with light and it's mechanics as it's primary function. Heck, when the ring's AI calls the shots even Flash isn't fast enough to get the drop on it. Because again, supercomputer that literally runs at lightspeed, designed by a team that's been working with the tech and artificial intelligences for literally millions of years and providing constant updates and upgrades for all of that time.

Your main issue is you're thinking of them as a random collection of powers with vague heroic traits on top, as opposed to actual people that managed to earn a top spot in a world of contenders. They're that good, and anyone who even comes close to killing them also has to be that good. Even just the guys with sound and sonic weapons who do real damage aren't using military grade hardware, they're using one of a kind, cutting edge, next gen equipment custom made for that purpose after years of development, and half the time they still don't make a mark.

If you're trying to use standard paramilitary gear, you've basically lost right out the gate. Remember, this is the DCU, where there are literally millions of wizards and thousands of super scientists and just as many super humans, and you're trying to kill the best of the best of the best in that bracket. A few truck mounted guns won't do the job. Heck, a dozen missiles probably won't do the job. Unless your goons are at least mid tier metahumans you probably won't have a whole lot of success honestly.

[Pronounceable]

...how are the members of the JLA...still alive?

They're not. It's all made up, don't tell anyone else.

[Kitten Champion]

Even if they did kill them the universe would just reset itself.

Well, at least if they killed Batman, that's like 90% of their revenue.

[GloatingSwine]

Killing them isn't the problem. I'm fairly sure all of them have died at least once.

Getting them to stay dead is the problem.

[Devonix]

Many have already said the reasons why those particular plans wouldn't work. But there is also the fact that even most of their enemies don't want them dead. Why you ask? Because without them the world would have been destroyed a hundred times over.

No regular guy or mafia group is gonna want to take out Wonder Woman, You would have a powerful nation's military, or Actual pantheon of gods coming for your neck. And then after you die you'd end up in Tartarus where Hades can torture you for all of eternity.

Aquaman. You piss him off too much or kill him and it's global war.

Flash, hell most incarnations have his enemies and him have working relationships.

[Infernally Clay]

There was a whole animated film dedicated to this, with the most nonsensical twist ever - that Batman's contingency against himself going evil was the Justice League itself, as if it would take all of them to bring him down.

[Devonix]

Many have already said the reasons why those particular plans wouldn't work. But there is also the fact that even most of their enemies don't want them dead. Why you ask? Because without them the world would have been destroyed a hundred times over.

No regular guy or mafia group is gonna want to take out Wonder Woman, You would have a powerful nation's military, or Actual pantheon of gods coming for your neck. And then after you die you'd end up in Tartarus where Hades can torture you for all of eternity.

Aquaman. You piss him off too much or kill him and it's global war.

Superman, Even criminals mourned him when he died

Martain Manhunter, the guy's a shapeshifting Telepath

Flash, hell most incarnations have his enemies and him have working relationships.

Also a lot of the people with the most resources like these guys and work with them, Every single one of them is on friendly terms with most of the governments of the world and would hunt you down to the ends of the earth.


There really isn't much of an incentive to actively try to just kill them unless you're just some nut who doesn't care weather you live or die.

[LaZodiac]

There's actually a JLA direct to DVD movie about this (though it involves stealing Batman's plans to kill them all if they went rogue).

It covers both why this WOULD work...and then also why it wouldn't.

[Dienekes]

There was a whole animated film dedicated to this, with the most nonsensical twist ever - that Batman's contingency against himself going evil was the Justice League itself, as if it would take all of them to bring him down.

Huh? That doesn't make the twist nonsensical, that just means Batman's plan to take himself down was overkill, and well, considering how elaborate some of his plans are, overkill is kind of his middle name.

It's a pretty good movie, based on the Tower of Babel

[Infernally Clay]

Huh? That doesn't make the twist nonsensical, that just means Batman's plan to take himself down was overkill, and well, considering how elaborate some of his plans are, overkill is kind of his middle name.

Well, yeah, it does - it makes no sense and it's totally impractical. He implied it would take the entire Justice League to bring him down. It wouldn't.

[Dienekes]

Well, yeah, it does - it makes no sense and it's totally impractical. He implied it would take the entire Justice League to bring him down. It wouldn't.

No, he said the Justice League would take him down. It would. The words "It'll take all of you to stop me" never came into the conversation, just that the Justice League were what he planned would stop him if he went rogue.

[Shinken]

Even if they did kill them the universe would just reset itself.

Well, at least if they killed Batman, that's like 90% of their revenue.

This is so true I would like to make a T-shirt out of this comment.

[Devonix]

No, he said the Justice League would take him down. It would. The words "It'll take all of you to stop me" never came into the conversation, just that the Justice League were what he planned would stop him if he went rogue.

Yeah I saw it more as If I go rogue one of you'll take me down, just like if you when rogue I'd take you down.

[Finn Solomon]

Well, yeah, it does - it makes no sense and it's totally impractical. He implied it would take the entire Justice League to bring him down. It wouldn't.

Anyone read Irredeemable? The part I liked best was when the evil Superman-analogue basically squished the Batman-analogue into a fine red paste before he could even finish pleading for his life. That's what would happen if Superman really needed to take Batman down, not Frank Miller's masturbatory fantasy.

[DigoDragon]

Even if they did kill them the universe would just reset itself.

Killing them isn't the problem. I'm fairly sure all of them have died at least once.
Getting them to stay dead is the problem.

Yeah, death is pretty cheap in most comic book universes.

[lord_khaine]

There's actually a JLA direct to DVD movie about this (though it involves stealing Batman's plans to kill them all if they went rogue).

It covers both why this WOULD work...and then also why it wouldn't.

Yeah, while the idea behind the tower of babel story were fine enough, then the weakest part of the story certainly were the plans Batman had made to remove the other members of the league.

It involved such strokes of genious as hypnotising green lantern to believe he were blind while asleep, or shooting flash with a regular bullet that would paralyse him when he phased though it.

The only plan that were imo not retarded there were the one to take down superman, since it mainly revolved around a kryptonite isotope that were even more effective than usual.

[LaZodiac]

Yeah, while the idea behind the tower of babel story were fine enough, then the weakest part of the story certainly were the plans Batman had made to remove the other members of the league.

It involved such strokes of genious as hypnotising green lantern to believe he were blind while asleep, or shooting flash with a regular bullet that would paralyse him when he phased though it.

The only plan that were imo not retarded there were the one to take down superman, since it mainly revolved around a kryptonite isotope that were even more effective than usual.

That's not what the movie used and thus is slightly better, for basically all of those except the one for Superman (though if I recall it was actually a kryptonite bullet with lead in it like suggested earlier in this thread).

[TeChameleon]

I seem to have given the impression that I don't like the JLA. Quite the opposite- I do quite like them, and superheroes in general, although I couldn't care less about DC's latest reboot. Kind of wish they'd get over the whole sliding time scale/illusion of change thing before they (along with Marvel) sink themselves and take most of the North American comics industry with them.

Anyhow, for the antagonists in this scenario, I was thinking more the Wade Eilings of the DCU than anything else- the crazy-paranoid black ops types who see metahumans as a clear and present danger and who get to throw around phrases like 'acceptable losses' without any qualms other than their souls shrivelling a little more, unnoticed. Also, I'm assuming that the JLA don't have plot armour for the duration of this. Oh, and that they're not going to just bail at the drop of a hat- usually, when civilians are endangered, they'll stick around and bounce the bullets or whatever.

Superman- like I said, the bullets themselves wouldn't be kryptonite, they'd be lead bullets with frangible kryptonite cores. No way for him to sense them as being kryptonite, and if you play it smart, he won't be able to sit in a coffee shop and take out all your gunmen, at least- snipers and/or other shooters at angles that he can't get at easily without being in the thick of things.

Batman- Not sure Deadshot is the best example for this- it's canonical (or at least it was pre-Nu52) that he pulls his shots around anyone he considers a 'true hero'- Batman included (specifically stated in Suicide Squad Vol. 1, issue 10). Also, like I said- have the shooter in Gotham for unrelated reasons, then courier him a note and a fresh clip of bullets on a random day in his stay to shoot Batman. There's a practical limit to how far Batman's paranoia can go.

Wonder Woman- no idea, anymore. She's been a goddess at least twice now (of 'truth' a while back, I think it was), and been retconned so often that it's a wonder she knows who she is now. That being said, it's been fairly heavily implied that there's a limit to how much fire she can deflect with her bracelets- if you can catch her at a bad angle or just overwhelm her, she's going to get shot. Whether or not that will do any actual good seems to be somewhat ambiguous now.

Martian Manhunter- the firebombs would be loaded onto the drone(s) and fired at the building, not in the building already. And I'm not sure how he'd sense the drones- there's no minds for him to sense, and I don't... think... he's got super-senses on his impossibly long laundry list of powers. At least, I don't recall him being portrayed as having super-hearing or anything like that.

Flash- uhm... I'm honestly a bit unclear as to how people think he's going to bypass the razor wire he's not likely to sense, aside from maybe his patented Speed Force funny-physics (or just abusing the word 'molecule' until the universe itself screams for mercy, depending on what era of Flash you're thinking of <.<). His being faster than the lasers is unlikely to be relevant if they're already firing perpendicular to his path in a steady stream (as opposed to being pulsed like a lot of security lasers and whatnot)- the destructive energies would already be there when he arrives- no matter how fast you are, you can't get someplace ahead of something that's there already unless you start mucking about with time travel, which Barry isn't likely to do just to cross a room. Although you never know with him, nowadays >.>

Then again, maybe we'd get lucky and he'd accidentally the universe again into something where fewer of the 'heroes' are out-and-out jerks.

Green Lantern... meh. Maybe you could just chant 'Mongul... Coast City... Parallax... Zero Hour... Mongul... Coast City... Parallax... Zero Hour...' at him until his brain implodes from retcon-plothole-stress >.<

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, death is pretty cheap in most comic book universes.

being the cackling mad evil villain for the purposes of this exercise, this is why you then have a soul-eating device handy. once you have made the sun go supernova, its time to suck up all those new ghosts so that they can power your time stabilizer, thus both preventing anymore resurrection and any bothersome universal resets that happen from time to time, enjoy the eternal screams of 7 billion souls in eternal pain, or at least as long as they last before their souls are destroyed and you have to go refuel the tank somewhere else.

[Eric Tolle]

Wouldn't it just be easier to destroy the universe in a 24-issue major crossover event? With holographic silver foil covers, don't forget.

[Lord Raziere]

Wouldn't it just be easier to destroy the universe in a 24-issue major crossover event? With holographic silver foil covers, don't forget.

but then you don't get to go on a conquering spree across the universe itself! and that is just getting silly besides, I mean by then, if you can destroy the universe, why bother even being near the JLA as pluto? set up shop near the supermassive blackhole at the center of the galaxy, if you can destroy the universe, a measly supermassive blackhole should be nothing to you, and then just blast them all to nothing from there with a fraction of your power, with those levels of power it should be easy by then. and if they come to you....well thats why your near a supermassive blackhole. everyone else less powerful than you probably can't withstand that.

[GloatingSwine]

being the cackling mad evil villain for the purposes of this exercise, this is why you then have a soul-eating device handy.

It'll only explode and let them all out, probably due to meddling from the sidekick that got away or their alternate universe counterpart. Or yours. Or both. (cf. this was basically the plot of Forever Evil)

[Aotrs Commander]

A better question would be to reverse it and ask why the heck the super-villains are still alive.

Given the PLETHORA of government dity-black ops secret organisations, dubious super-solider programs and organisations of dubious "ends justifies the means/answers to no-one" organisations... You have to ask why no-one has ever used a few of those resources to, instead of get in the superheroes' way have someone put a sniper bullet in Lex Luthor/the Joker/Poison Ivy (etc etc). (Okay, maybe in the middle case it might not work, but it'd work on a fair number of villains, would it not? At leats worth a try, right?)

Just because the JLA have a general "don't kill" policy doesn't mean everyone else has to, especially for all them government workers and whatnot. Hell, killing the supervillains off or at least making a spirited attempt makes MORE sense than someone trying to off the superheroes, since it's actually in the public interest, not just in the mind of some criminal/jealous nutcase who doesn't like the idea of not being able to solve crime himself/politician who feels threatened by their power (etc etc).

Yet no, every time we see something like Cadmus, it's getting into a genitalia sizing match with the superheroes if not outright Being Evil itself.

[Ramza00]

OP you are think about this wrong. The same logic you applied to the Justice League can be applied with the thousands of ways you can do thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths in real life via terrorism.

It is so easy to kill someone, it is so easy to kill a dozen people. It is very logistically hard to kill a thousand people let alone a million. Effectively you need not just 1 person to perpetrate all this but instead a conspiracy a larger group of men that works together as a team with a shared common vision.

Conspiracy's fall apart very often for two reasons
1) They fall apart for you can't get everyone in the group on the same page, and the more people you add to the conspiracy the harder it is to keep it going before it falls apart.
2) The more complicated and far reaching the plan is, the more logistically hard the plan gets. You have to get all the parts to work together precisely and at the right times, not too early not too late. Eventually the plan is not a plan but instead a gambit. And when you have a gambit look where you end up Tv Tropes Gambit Index

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So in your scenario if it works perfectly you may kill 1 or even a dozen superheros but you can't kill them all at once. Eventually the league will figure out someone is trying to kill superheros, and you really do not want someone like wonder woman, martian manhunter, batman hunting you down and prepared to cause bodily harm to you to make you stop killing their friends.

Spoiler: Even superman when he is pissed is extremely scary. See here youtube link

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Killing them isn't the problem. I'm fairly sure all of them have died at least once.

Getting them to stay dead is the problem.

lol so true.

A better question would be to reverse it and ask why the heck the super-villains are still alive.

Given the PLETHORA of government dity-black ops secret organisations, dubious super-solider programs and organisations of dubious "ends justifies the means/answers to no-one" organisations... You have to ask why no-one has ever used a few of those resources to, instead of get in the superheroes' way have someone put a sniper bullet in Lex Luthor/the Joker/Poison Ivy (etc etc). (Okay, maybe in the middle case it might not work, but it'd work on a fair number of villains, would it not? At leats worth a try, right?)

Nods so true, a government or a company would have lots of logistical abilities. Furthermore they will have a common glue, a reason that binds them all together and makes them act with one vision, ridding the world of mad men is quite an easy goal to get around.

[comicshorse]

A better question would be to reverse it and ask why the heck the super-villains are still alive.

Given the PLETHORA of government dity-black ops secret organisations, dubious super-solider programs and organisations of dubious "ends justifies the means/answers to no-one" organisations... You have to ask why no-one has ever used a few of those resources to, instead of get in the superheroes' way have someone put a sniper bullet in Lex Luthor/the Joker/Poison Ivy (etc etc). (Okay, maybe in the middle case it might not work, but it'd work on a fair number of villains, would it not? At leats worth a try, right?)

There was a storyline where that happened in the DC universe. Black Ops organization rounds up the super villains and uses super advanced technology to dump them all on an uninhabitated planet
( Big surprise : It doesn't work)