Are Morally Infalliable Heroes Automatically Mary Sues?

[Grey Star]

Truly morally infalliable heroes. Disregarding incidents involving mind control, mind alteration, mood alteration, and anal skrulls. Take for example, Spider-Man from the 1980-1990s. Yes, he gets angry, and yes, he makes mistakes in terms of life choices and what to do at a particular moment. But even when faced with seriously strong temptation, he never attacks an innocent no matter how much they anger him, he never kills anyone no matter how bad he wants to stop them, and he never chooses to let an innocent be hurt over stopping the villain. But his life is never easy, he has to deal with mental, physical, and emotional stress, he's always on the losing end of fights with Super villains, and a lot of people make his life harder for whatever reason, or hate him for some reason. Another good example is Modern Age Superman, or most variations of Batman, or Pre-Second Imperial Civil War Luke Skywalker (Legends Canon.)

In short, does always living up to a more or less "perfect" moral code enough to be classified as a Mary Sue while completely sound of body and mind?

 

[ShineCero]

Because the term Mary Sue had lost it's definition for a while now, where people are mindlessly throwing around that term for anything they deem to dislike--leaving credible characters that actually fit the definition run around amucks. Although the term was adopted from Star Trek, it should be noted that the simplest explanation of what a Mary Sue is: an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character. Often this character is recognized as an author insert or wish-fulfillment.

Are morally infallible heroes mary sues because they have a strict moral code? It depends on the context and/or execution. In your example, I don't see Spider-man fitting that definition too much. It's more or less that he simply doesn't have the heart to let the things happen nor have the heart to kill someone. Batman and Superman do fall under that category though, that's the idea I do agreed. The idea that heroes [such as Superman and Batman] let go villain(s) who murdered countless of people on-screen for shit and giggles and will continue to do a murderous rampage regardless of being captured/imprisoned because they know that said heroes won't kill them, because heroes think "That'll make me bad as him". That grinds my gears :wagh:

EDIT: I moved this to the Metroham forum, since this pertains to more "western" kind of thing.

 

[LoopyPanda]

I don't believe morality should be the sole criteria of Mary Sue Syndrome, so no! Morally infallible characters aren't automatically Sues by this aspect alone.

However, let's say that thanks to this moral infallibility, every other character that meets them happens to naturally like them or always agree with them, and this character never faces any conflict with others about these morals or other aspects. Villains magically have a change of heart due to this. By virtue of infallible morality, this character faces no meaningful conflict because their morality is too busy converting everyone else to either stop being bad or suddenly worship the ground they walk on.

I'll be happy to provide my own examples if needed but it will take some time.

 

[Grey Star]

Does to be more of a Western thing because of the larger amount of straight Anti-Heroes in the East. Since American Anti-Heroes are more laughing stock nowadays.

Well Spiderman's code is in the comic verse considered to not only be absolute, but also perfect, such as why he was fated to be the mentor of Summer Hope, and I believe in one comic where he was wearing the black suit outfit (not the actual symbiote, I think) and some variation of Spider-Woman said his morality was the reason he was the best out of them all (assuming multiversal Spider-Men) and then it showed the life of Last Stand Spider-Man where he did start killing. Or maybe it was some variation of Last Stand Spider-Man.

As a side note I've always put the blame on America for letting super villains live, as really they apply the death penalty so inconsistently it's outrageous, and super heroes have a consistitional right against killing someone, so the Supreme Court should have a super villan killing method already.

 

[ShineCero]

I don't believe morality should be the sole criteria of Mary Sue Syndrome, so no! Morally infallible characters aren't automatically Sues by this aspect alone.

However, let's say that thanks to this moral infallibility, every other character that meets them happens to naturally like them or always agree with them, and this character never faces any conflict with others about these morals or other aspects. Villains magically have a change of heart due to this. By virtue of infallible morality, this character faces no meaningful conflict because their morality is too busy converting everyone else to either stop being bad or suddenly worship the ground they walk on.

I'll be happy to provide my own examples if needed but it will take some time.

Hmm, I can agree with this statement. If a character had such a perfect moral code, but such code is never questioned by any of the characters, even in the light where they had to break it in order to resolve a situation, their morality is just so damn good that it can overcome that, is a sigh of Mary Sue. Characters need conflict in a story, it would be hard to connect with them if they are constantly resolving problems all the time. 

I can definitely see it as a Western thing compares to Eastern heroes where villains regularly die by the masses.