Does DC have an ideology?

No. DC seemed more violent than Marvel to me.

 

We got Jason Todd beaten by a crowbar, Bane Breaking Batman's back, a whole issue of Superman and Doomsday beating each other to death, Kyle Rayner's girlfriend stuffed into a fridge, Lobo punching Santa Claus' eyeball out, Aquaman's hand eaten by piranhas. That's just a few examples. The 2000's got even more violent for DC.

 

To his point, however, DC comics were and still are more dark and violent, however the heroes tend to have more moral uprightness and in general adhere to the no kill code with more regularity than Marvel.

This is a tough question because I see both sides. The heroes do tend to be more idealistic, but the comics are certainly not light, sanitized or kid-friendly at all.

 

I don't see much of a difference in moral code when comparing Marvel and DC. For the most part, the heroes in both companies have high morals.

 

I mostly read Marvel in the 90's and not as much since. But would you say that the "no kill code" is as central to many Marvel heroes as it is to Batman and Superman?

 

I haven't really read Marvel since the late 70s/early 80s so I can't really call on a comparison but DC haven't shied away from violence in their stories, certainly not since the 80s - just look at Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and The Killing Joke. Then in the 90s we had Superman beaten to death and Batman's back broken - two events that were shown graphically in every sense of the word, and in the early 00's by way of just one example look at the beating that Batman gives the Joker in Hush - one of the most brutal beatings I've seen in a comic. None of which IMO makes anything less "admirable"; DC's heroes are often regarded by fans as more 'godlike' than Marvel's - but they're fallible 'gods' in many ways despite their best efforts.