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 Melissia wrote:
But normally batman is presented as just "haha super skill guy beats up villains hahahahah look at unskill power guy he stupid needs skill alpha man to guide his way".

As you said, bad authors are bad authors. You can't read comics based in the Superhero because that way you end reading a lot of crap and garbage. You need to go for the good works of good Authors, like The Dark Knight, or Arkham Assylum, one of the best and darkest comics of all time (Of superheroes, obviously)

But sorry OP! I don't rerrail the thread with comics any longer!

 Melissia wrote:
I'm not arguing in bad faith at all. I'm simply admitting that this is a difference of opinion. Not that you seem to give a damn.

I think you need to read things more carefully before you start typing yourself. You clearly haven't noticed that I preface virtually every value judgment I espouse with things like, "personally," or "for me," or "in my opinion."

You also seem not to have noticed that you're not actually debating with me so much as you're debating with yourself and ascribing the least desirable aspects of that exchange to my name, which is something done in bad faith indeed. And I'll kindly ask you to stop doing it.

 Galas wrote:
As you said, bad authors are bad authors. You can't read comics based in the Superhero because that way you end reading a lot of crap and garbage.

That's kinda the point I was making, though. The same logic applies to 40k.

Considering that I am a human, anything that exists to protect humanity and preserve it is good. The Imperium is wholly justified and qualifies under Consequentialist ethics as well.

Vulkan is a really good guy, he defends people on planets, for exemple during the beast, he was alone against thousands of orks, and he stands against a whole army by himself to protect those people.

Uh... Hans... are we the baddies?

Little-killer wrote:
Vulkan is a really good guy, he defends people on planets, for exemple during the beast, he was alone against thousands of orks, and he stands against a whole army by himself to protect those people.

I think salamanders are a bit like Eldar in that sense. Eldars will often try to defend their own, but don't mind sacrificing countless lives from other species to help the cause of their own.
Salamanders help common humans, where most people of power within the imperium use them as tools. But they would still gladly kill xenos by the rhino-load.

To me 40K is divided between factions that will kill you to further their agenda, and factions that will kill you because they hate who you are/just for fun.
So the T'au empire will (probably) let you leave if you pledge allegiance to the greater good (and obviously it's the T'au leaders who decide what the greater good is), whereas the imperium will just slaughter you if you're not human.
I guess a dictator is better than a butcher, but I wouldn't call him good.

Good?
Bad?
They're the guys with the guns and the chainswords.

 Purifier wrote:
Uh... Hans... are we the baddies?

"Our caps have got skulls on them" takes on an entirely new level of significance where GW is concerned...

nareik wrote:
Horus is the real hero. He who made the ultimate sacrifice of soul and body to dethrone a tyrannical despot. This ancient monster had fixated on enslaving all of humanity with the diabolic plan of evolving the whole race into witches.

Sadly Horus' sacrifice was in vain, and the zombie liche continues to contrive his fickle plans against humanity's future.

It is only Horus' greatest son, Ezekiel, that can see how his father failed and how to avenge humanity and permanently kill the zombie king.

Horus's sacrifice wasn't in vain so long as Abbadon continues his Black Crusade. The scars the 'traitor' legions suffer enduring the warp and the gods of Chaos will be worth it to bring the galaxy to a level of prosperity not seen since the Dark Age of Technology.

I believe it was Yul Brinner who was asked if he like playing heroes or villains more. He replied it didn't matter as they were the same. They both think they are righteous. I always felt that just having bad to worst guys in a setting is merely one small step up from good vs. evil. It makes adolescents feel like they are being more mature as they no subscribe to the cartoon show nature of good vs. evil of younger children. At the same time, this outlook is still very morally rudimentary. It is a perfectly acceptable pretense for a wargame because if their were more reasonable factions, it would difficult for them to solve their issues outside of war, or at very least consolidate with other more reasonable factions.

Bottom line, Warhammer 40K is not a setting I would expect anything but the shallowest of moral quandaries given that the setting's universal principles to solve problems do not work the same in our reality.

... out of all of the factions of 40k, the factions of Chaos have the least room to talk about being "good". Not only do they participate in regular blood sacrifice, spread suffering and death around for its own sake, they also explicitly gradually abandon their moral centers for the sake of extremism and excess. In fact, they even celebrate being evil, quite literally.

Some quotes from Chaos, all of them from Chaos books and novels:

Let no good deed go unpunished.
Let no evil deed go unrewarded.

Shackle the soul and forge the flesh. Bind the machine and butcher the rest.

Destroy, for the sake of Destruction
Kill, for the sake of Killing

If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy.

Let the galaxy burn.

The denizens of Chaos celebrate selfishness, murder, and destruction. And they find "good" to be worthless and "evil" to be celebrated-- by their own words. And this includes both Horus and Abbadon. They who claim to "endure" chaos for the sake of good will always inevitably fall to its corruption.

 Melissia wrote:
Yes. Individual people are "good guys". Factions are not.

That is probably the closest you will get to good guys'. In fluff and such there are individuals that can be defined as a good person but overall there are no real good guys in 40k. For example Grey Knights fight and kill daemons and such, however they also kill any civilians who have been exposed to chaos and daemons.

Not sure if the GKs are really good guys. I would say no. They are driven by their fighting doctrine and their view of the world is very different from the normal human in the 40k universe.