And, reading the other responses has made me think of another solution, although it is really a varient of "Turn Loose." I'm thinking of Spider-Man's solution to the Black Cat and Batman's way of handling Catwoman:

"Do Her"

I think that also applies to GL / Thorne, and a few others.

Theno

I thought that the characterization was solid, and the question "how did these secrets stay secret so long" was a question which is worthy of a few attempts at answer...

Now, why any of the assorted villanous telepaths didn't either discover the wipes or independently discover the identities wasn't covered, but maybe that could be another series...

Reed Richards has a seat on the panel, and naturally the subject of erratic mood swings regarding interference in Latverian politics comes up. Wally West says at one point (referring to Doctor Doom): "Reed, I'm confused. You work to depose him, you work to reinstate him, you work to depose him, you take over his country yourself . . ."

If you want to see the rest of the discussion, just follow this link!

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=156130

Jeff R. -- at the moment, I can't remember just how Bizarro ended up on that cubical planet, way back when, although I'm fairly sure I once read a reprint of the story.

In Mongul's case, I'm inclined to think the end of "For the Man Who Has Everything" amounted to an example of #4, "Hold Him in Custody Yourself." After all, it wasn't like Mongul wanted to be trapped there, or even understood what was happening to him, since a mind-altering flower was being used to make him think he was in a dream world where he was the all-powerful, Superman-destroying, universally-obeyed conqueror or some such thing, right? (Which, I suppose, qualifies as a variation of the Brainwashing technique too, although -- unlike the examples cited in my original post -- instead of trying to change Mongul's basic personality, the heroes were simply making sure that evil personality was totally unaware of its actual surroundings!)

buttler -- my first reaction is to say that if the "hero" deliberately tortures a helpless captive, he's forfeiting his claim to "hero" status anyway. If you want to argue the point, you could try offering a specific example of a story in which a hero tortured the villain for information and then was able to use that information to save lives. (Similar to what Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School advocates doing with captured terrorists.) If you point me to a specific story, and if I can find it and read it to see exactly what happened and why, in context, then who knows? I may have to reconsider my position and add "torture him for information" to the list of options! But I'll want to see some specific examples first to help me decide if that approach ever does any good!

Michael -- I don't think the marriage of the Golden Age Green Lantern and the Golden Age Thorn really counts as a useful approach within the context of this list, because the way I remember it from Roy Thomas's "Infinity Inc." retcons, Alan had no idea he was marrying a villain! It wasn't like he captured her in a fair fight and then said to her: "Either you marry me, or else I send you up the river to the penitentiary!" (I wonder if any "hero" has ever done it exactly that way, though?)

Byrne's run on the Fantastic Four was/is so well spoken of, that I rather felt that only Chris Claremont and I were offended. He added a lovely scene into X-Men 167, with Lilandra admonishing Reed for his actions.

Byrne responded with the 'Trial of Reed Richards', but if it hadn't been Assistant Editor's Month, Reed would never have been found not guity.

Also around that time, Byrne had the Fantastic Four restore Doctor Doom to his throne - supposedly, Latveria wasn't ready for democracy. And a little later, He had them stop Nick Fury from killing Hitler.

http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons/archives/005911.html

Reading this, something significant suddenly occurred to me. If, as FF #262 claims, the purpose of Galactus is to test the strenght of worlds and weed out the weak by consuming them, then Earth cheated!

As I recall (correct me if I'm wrong) the ONLY reason that Galactus did not eat the Earth waaaaay back in Fantastic Four #50 is that the Watcher broke his oath of non-interferance and pointed the FF to the Ultimate Nullifier. So, if it was not for an outside, alien entity showing up, pointing out one of the ultimate weapons in existance, and informing them "This will stop galactus," then Earth would have been consumed. So, really, by the rational Byrne provided in FF #262, you can argue that Earth actually deserved to be destroyed by Galactus, and the only reason we weren't among those who failed Galactus' so-called "test" was that we received outside help. I.E. We cheated.

Thinking about this, I'm not at all surprised that subsequent writers who used the Big G pretty much decided to quietly ignore all of the stuff in FF #262.

As for exile, it's just imprisonment by the hero in a different form. He's picked a place to keep the villain away from society. He's just not doing a good job keeping an eye on him.

Reform, as he stated above is a long term thing and in the moment is tantamount to letting him go. Whether the villain actually reforms is an act of the villain, not the hero.

Brainwashing was once totally common, and thus there's something very off about Meltzer having superheroes regard it with shock and opposition. I recall a Secret Society of Super-Villains Special where the SSoSV learns the identities of DC's major heroes, "kills" each of them one at a time but preserves them just before the moment of their death (so that all of the SSoSV members will participate in subsequent attacks until all their individual archfoes are dead) and are defeated at the end only because Captain Comet shows up to rescue Superman. Afterwards, Comet telepathically removes the memory of the secret identities and there isn't even the slightest problem about that.

There is a type of resolution that doesn't fit any of these categories: I guess you'd call it "removal by accident", where the villain is involved in solving the hero's dilemma--say, where the villain suicides or does something dramatic in order to avoid being caught/killed/exiled.

On the specific case of Rhodey and Living Laser -- I may well have read that story, once upon a time, but if I did then I've forgotten the details. Did Rhodey beat/I> Living Laser in a fight before he started talking about finding an honest job for the guy? Remember: On this list, I'm only interested in cases where the Hero clobbers the Villain and temporarily achieves total control of the situation, and then has to decide what comes next! If Rhodey and Living Laser simply sat down and negotiated terms of a cease-fire, then that sort of thing wouldn't belong on my list at all!

As for the Stainless Steel Rat, I don't think he's a shining example of the "give the crook a job to rehabilitate him" strategy actually working! After becoming secret agents, Slippery Jim and his wife Angelina still went around robbing banks from time to time just for kicks, didn't they? Without necessarily having the authorization of Inskipp at the Special Corps to stage a bank robbery as part of a cover story? (For that matter, I seem to recall that the first book in the series ended with the Corps having used the Brainwashing option on Angelina in order to curb her murderous tendencies. Just offering her a job as a secret agent obviously wasn't going to be enough to make her behave herself!)

On Thenodrin's "Reform" idea -- a point I just made to Thok applies here too. In this piece, I was trying to list things the Hero may choose to do immediately after capturing the villain, during the window of opportunity when the Hero could be said to have total control over the villain's fate, at least for the next five minutes! Whether or not the villain will "reform" is a long-term question that the hero usually can't control at all -- unless he tries some variation of the Brainwashing option, I suppose.

Remember, I mentioned that I once read at least one story in which The Black Fox promised to reform, but didn't mean a word of it! Spidey couldn't control whether or not that promise would be kept; he could only choose to either let the guy off with a warning - or do something else instead!

It's been years since I last read the trial you refer to, but I remember that one of the things that bothered me was the elaborate (and, I thought, rather shaky) philosophical arguments that Reed offered for why Galactus ought to be left alone to keep devouring planets were completely new in that sequence -- those arguments had not been mentioned, probably not even hinted at, in the previous story arc in which Reed had persuaded his fellow heroes to help save the Big G's life and move him to some far-off place where another suitable planet was available.

In other words, Byrne was retconning like crazy in an attempt to pretend that Reed had actually had something vaguely resembling a good rationalization for his actions at the time -- even though, in the original story, Reed didn't seem to have any of that rationalization showing! Just a vague idea that every life was sacred, and Galactus's life (by implication) was much more sacred than those of all his future victims combined possibly could be!

My personal favorite: The Elongated Man learns Green Lantern's secret identity during a case, and asks to have it erased at the end, because he might want to try to deduce it someday, and it's boring just "being told". Now that's a strong, heartfelt commitment to amnesia.

By the way-- comics sound really, really dumb when you write out all the plot points. I really liked the Green Goblin series.