cabbitzilla

A lot of those early mystery men, (pre Superman/Batman/etc) could be pretty deadly. The Spider, the Shadow, they both carried guns and weren't exactly hesitant in using them. As the mystery men gave way to the superheroes, such as Superman and Batman, they usually wouldn't kill, mainly because the stories were getting geared towards a much younger audience than the teens/adults of the pulp-novel stories, but they also weren't very likely to go out of their way to save a villain from his fate.