#democoon

It's not exactly a secret that Odysseus and the other characters of The Iliad were killing machines. Morality in ancient Greece is a little more, shall we say, flexible, than in today's time. If you did something wrong, such as killing a friend, you, in turn would be killed for it. 

So when Leucus, Odysseus's friend, is tragically killed by Democoon, Odysseus wastes no time in avenging his dear friend.

"Enraged at his friend's death Odysseus sprang in fury,

helmed in fiery bronze he plowed through the front

and charging the enemy, glaring left and right

he hurled his spear - a glinting brazen streak -

and the Trojans gave ground, scattering back, 

panicking there before his whirling shaft - 

a direct hit! Odysseus struck Democoon,

Priam's bastard son come down from Abydos,

Priam's racing stables. Incensed for the dead,

Odysseus speared him straight through one temple

and out the other punched the sharp bronze point

and the dark came swirling thick across his eyes - 

down he crashed, armor clanging against his chest." (IV: 570-582)

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your view point, the times are a changing, and we know longer support the eye for an eye justice system. This was the crux of the problem in DC's newest animated release, Superman vs. The Elite. The Elite, while 'good guys', saw no problem with killing off criminals (which a disturbing amount of the populace was okay with). This all lead up to this climatic and terrifying scene

And, of course, Superman proved that letting the justice system do it's duty was the proper way to handle your problems.

However, that hardly means that avenging is gone from comics (there's a whole team and now billion dollar franchise devoted to it). Even brutal avenging, a death for a death, is seen, such as in this page from Thor 306 where the Firelord attempts to kill Thor for apparently killing the Firelord's ally Gabriel:

Everything gets sorted out, no one gets killed, and Thor and the Firelord go back to being allies themselves, which struck me as odd. Superman, and I'd venture to say even Captain America, would not have accepted this behavior from the Firelord and would have hence forth seen him as a threat. But Thor's just like 'Cool, thanks for not killing me since I didn't actually do anything wrong.', implying that the Firelord would have had the right to kill Thor had the latter actually done it.