You are Batman (RAR).

[The Romulan Republic]

Inspired by the thread on redeeming Batman's villains, and the comments on the inadequacy of Gotham, Arkham, and Batman at this task.

Pretty simple. You are Batman. You have all of Batman's memories, skills, and physical strength, while retaining your own mind and personality (and soul, if you believe in them).

You can pick which version of Batman you want, but you start off at the start of his career as Batman- ie he's just put on the cape and cowl for the first time.

So, with all of Batman's resources at your disposal, what would you do?

And yes, quitting to be a playboy dilatant full-time is an option, but when you consider how many times Batman has been necessary to save Gotham/the world, perhaps not a very long-term one.

[Batman]

You may want to narrow down on which versions of me we get to pick because some of them mean I have all of Clark's powers or even those of the entire JLA. AND a Power Ring.

[The Romulan Republic]

Okay:

You can choose from:

Standard current comics Batman.
Standard pre-New 52 comics Batman.
Burton/Keaton film Batman.
DCAU Batman.
Nolan Batman.
DCCU/Affleck Batman.

[Batman]

Much more sensible.

[The Romulan Republic]

For me, I think I'd pick either Nolan Batman (because then I don't have to deal with supernatural crap and I could retire if I wanted to without having to worry about Darkseid conquering the Earth or something) or maybe DCAU Batman because its not quite as bad as some of the other continuities, and hey, Justice League.

For Nolan Batman...

Honestly, I'm not sure Gotham is broken enough that it needs a vigilante. We see some corrupt officials at high levels, but is it really any worse than some real-world cities? Even if the local government is broken, I can probably use Wayne Enterprises to push for more Federal intervention, and back more honest politicians at the state and local level (though I might try to scupper Dent's campaign, given that I know he has tendencies towards mental instability).

I can also pour money into charitable organizations to offer a higher standard of psychiatric care than Arkham, and to alleviate poverty in Gotham, and so on.

The problem is that Ras is already on a collision course with Gotham at this point, and will target me. But once I take down Ras, I can probably safely quit the vigilante game. I'll also make every effort to take Ras alive. Hopefully that'll keep Talia from going full nut job. Maybe, if I get to them early enough, Talia and Bane can be rehabilitated. Hell, both could become valued Wayne Enterprises employees if I don't kill Talia's father and they get some therapy.

I basically need to do three things to sink Ras:

1. Have a trap set for him when he infiltrates Wayne Manor (say, twenty Wayne Enterprises private security guys).

2. Locate the stolen microwave weapon.

3. Find some way to draw the cops' attention to Crane sooner, and get to work on an antidote to his chemicals sooner.

Granted, there's a risk that Ras might expose me as a vigilante if taken alive, but I have a few options there. Convince him that with him taken down, I'm the only hope to restore balance. Find something to blackmail him with. Last resort: use Crane's toxin on him, which should reduce him to a mental state that will cause his testimony, if he's even capable of delivering any, to lack credibility.

Plus, if he does finger me, I have plenty of Wayne Enterprises money and lawyers at my disposal.

If the Joker's rampage still happens (its implied that he was one of those Ras let out of Arkham in Batman Begins, I believe), then I hope that the reforms I've implemented among Gotham's law enforcement and government, and the assistance Wayne Enterprises can offer them, will be enough to allow the cops to capture him.

Then I guess maybe I propose to Rachel and settle down. Will make Alfred happy too. Or maybe Talia, if reformed.

After that...

Well, I'll be a wealthy, politically-influential philanthropist if I play my cards right. If Nolan-verse politics follows real-world politics... well, I wonder what the results of Bruce Wayne endorsing Bernie Sanders for President would be?

DCAU is a different deal- superhero vigilantes are common and mostly accepted by society, and their are threats that require counters beyond what mundane methods can deal with. But by the same token, I'm not sure Batman is as necessary in a world with Superman. Of course, the counter-argument is that Superman and so on won't focus on Gotham specifically, and can't be everywhere at once.

And of course, the JL lacks accountability (see Waller's position). But I'm not sure what, if anything, the lesser evil to the JL is.

Still, I can employ much the same methods as above. Leverage my wealth and knowledge into scientific research, charity work, and political influence. Be the financier and logistical support for the Justice League, more than a front-line fighter (though I wonder if the JL would respect the input of someone who didn't fight on the front line).

Of course, at the start of my career the JL doesn't exist yet. So helping to piece it together early might be a good move.

Oh, and try not to end up a lonely old man like canon DCAU Bruce.

[FaxModem1]

What about the Arkham-verse, is that an option?

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I should have remembered that one, since I've played Arkham City. You can go with that one too.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Gonna pick standard current comics batman.

Step 1. Learn sorcery.
Step 2. Batman sorcerer fights crime.

Seriously, always wanted magic and I have resources. Gonna learn magic. It will really help out with some of the shit done by my rogue's gallery.

Step 3. You know that rule about "no killing"? Yeah. It isn't fucking there anymore. The Joker dies. He dies hard. It might take me a little while to do it because in the long-term going to prison is a bad idea, so I want to make sure it is absolutely clear to any jury ever that the mere presence of the joker is enough trigger self-defense.

Step 4. Mr. Freeze? Fuck it, I am curing your god damn wife if DC universe magic can pull that off.

Step 5. I can probably head off the likes of Poison Ivy so she does not feel the need to engage in crime to protect the environment. Give her a budget and some guidelines....

More as I think of them.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, Arkham verse, starting off around Arkham Origins.

Grow a relationship with Gordon, making him an ally ASAP as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. Fund Victor Fries as Bruce Wayne before Ferris Boyle ruins his life. Give him whatever he wants money-wise, and instructions to Lucius Fox to make sure he's happy. Give him a full time staff of employees who can work around the clock on problems that come up in disease and cryogenics research. Hopefully, Victor and Nora can live a happy life together, and not one of the most tragic endings in the series.

Next, offer up a partnership to Enigma. Before he became the Riddler, he was a data broker who wanted to clean up the corruption in Gotham City. Give him his chance, and do it through honest reporters like Vicki Vale and Jack Ryder. With all the blackmail material he has on all the organized crime in the city, we'll be able to clean it up, while at the same time doing it more efficiently as Nygma is quite a data investigator. Working with both Dent and Gordon with this on the legal side, Hamilton Hill and his dirty administration will be gone. Cobblepott is going to be one of our biggest targets, and making sure to show all the hypocrisy he has, and putting down his arms, drugs, and other bad materials ASAP.

Quincy Sharp is going to be politically ruined, I'll have Edward see to that once we uncover the way he treats patients at Arkham. Arkham will also be fixed up to be a Mental Hospital, not a prison. That's what Blackgate is for. If needed, we'll have Wayne Enterprises refurbish it, or build another prison.

Speaking of construction projects, Waynetech just became 100 percent Green. We're going fully renewable by the end of next year. I have just hired Dr. Pamela Isley as head of development in making a greener Gotham, and to make a model that other cities can follow internationally. This is going to be a lot of construction and other infrastructure jobs for Gotham, giving people a second chance, and not creating entire ghettos of homeless people being displaced by gentrification, as shown in Arkham Knight. Maybe even have the original plants from Arkham Knight emerge a couple decades early to help clean up emissions in the city.

Create housing programs for the homeless, and help them get back on the right track. Wonder City is a good place for it, as it's dilapidated and abandoned. I'd keep Wonder Tower though, as I find it pretty. Maybe run for Mayor as the Gotham candidate, and clean up the city from the top-down. Set up education scholarships and lobby for increase education spending to the city council, as well as after school programs to give kids futures so that they won't be future gangbangers or minions for super villains.

My biggest issues are going to be Ra's al Ghul, Dr. Hugo Strange, and Amanda Waller. Sending Dr. Isley, Dr. Thompkins, and Dr. Fries to investigate and research the Lazarus Pool at the bottom of Wonder City. Can we use it? If not, make it inert enough to not keep driving Gotham citizens crazy through it's water supply. There, we've denied a valuable resource to the League of Assassins/Shadows, and made this city useless to their plans, they'll avoid it for the most part. Dr. Hugo Strange will be investigated and put through a review board for all of his conduct towards patients.

Amanda Waller is federal government, and trouble. Bringing dirt on her Suicide Squad projects and black ops as blackmail if she comes to Gotham without my permission, or if I or someone I care about end up with a case of 'falling down the stairs repeatedly while being stabbed' is one way to keep her in check. I'll mostly feed her info on the League of Assassins, and have each of them be each other's problem.

Then, once Gotham is getting back on it's economic feet, start introducing prison reforms. People like the Joker, Zsasz, Deadshot, or Calendar Man are going to be impossible to reform, but others, like the Ventriloquist, just need therapy, or people like the Two-Face bank robbers, are people desperately in need of job security and a second chance. Job programs, education, therapy, and basic human decency will do wonders for the criminal element of Gotham.

Joker. Joker is a huge problem. He's really the only person on the list who just needs to be stopped, period. Everyone else can either be appealed to by their better natures, or through sufficient leverage. I'm going to advocate he gets the death sentence, and be tried as legally sane. Him getting the gas chamber will be a little bit of poetic justice. Also make sure that Dr. Quinzel never gets assigned to him. She's going to have to work her way up to such a patient, by working on first time offenders at our new mental health facilities.

[The Romulan Republic]

Is there any reason that Joker specifically has to be killed (other than the retribution argument, i.e.- "he has it coming to him"), if you live in a Gotham with actually secure prisons/asylums?

Hell, why limit yourself to Gotham prisons? Why not ship him off to a Federal prison in another state?

I mean, in the comics, of course he'll get out so they can tell more Joker stories. But that also applies to him being resurrected if he's killed. And because the comics-verse is full of absolutely crazy shit that basically makes airtight security impossible.

More realistically... why can't they keep this particular scumbag locked up, besides incompetence or corruption?

Edit: Granted, the Joker is so randomly violent towards other people, including inmates and guards, that realistically the only practical options are probably execution or permanent solitary confinement (generally regarded as torture as I recall), so you can argue that execution might be kinder.

[Lord Revan]

Is there any reason that Joker specifically has to be killed (other than the retribution argument, i.e.- "he has it coming to him"), if you live in a Gotham with actually secure prisons/asylums?

Hell, why limit yourself to Gotham prisons? Why not ship him off to a Federal prison in another state?

I mean, in the comics, of course he'll get out so they can tell more Joker stories. But that also applies to him being resurrected if he's killed. And because the comics-verse is full of absolutely crazy shit that basically makes airtight security impossible.

More realistically... why can't they keep this particular scumbag locked up, besides incompetence or corruption?

Edit: Granted, the Joker is so randomly violent towards other people, including inmates and guards, that realistically the only practical options are probably execution or permanent solitary confinement (generally regarded as torture as I recall), so you can argue that execution might be kinder.

The thing is that the Joker (at least when written well) isn't so much random as acting by a different set of rules then most people, so he's capable of doing things like not randomly killing other inmates if that would land him in position where his escape would harder, but thing is that apart from the man himself only Batman and possibly Harley Quinn understand "joker logic" and to the rest the Joker just seems to be doing things without rime or reason.

[FaxModem1]

Arkham Joker, at least, has a 'taking down everyone with him' attitude, and knows how to play people to get what he wants. Unfortunately, what he wants is untold destruction of everyone and everything. He also almost always has minions and/or followers who help him coerce others into working for him. And while we're Batman, and don't have to play by the same stupid rules, the rest of Gotham still chugs stupid pills daily.

Expect federal prison to let the Joker out because they don't want to deal with him or something else equally silly. In the Arkham verse, the Nolan-verse, and the comics, this is the federal government that abandoned Gotham to it's own devices and let it fester as it's own city state in moments of crisis.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, most Batman continuities are basically a dystopia, when you get down to it.

Honestly, if Batman weren't... well, Batman, it might be tempting for him to simply seize power over the government. He couldn't possibly fuck it up worse than the people already in charge, could he?

Hell, he actually did this, with the rest of the Justice Lords, in the Justice League cartoon.

[Batman]

Yeah, and that worked out SO well. Even I thought we made a mess of it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I don't think canon Batman would make a good leader of a country. He doesn't have the experience or temperament for it.

[FaxModem1]

The problem is that Ras is already on a collision course with Gotham at this point, and will target me. But once I take down Ras, I can probably safely quit the vigilante game. I'll also make every effort to take Ras alive. Hopefully that'll keep Talia from going full nut job. Maybe, if I get to them early enough, Talia and Bane can be rehabilitated. Hell, both could become valued Wayne Enterprises employees if I don't kill Talia's father and they get some therapy.

Unfortunately, you're talking about a terrorist organization full of indoctrinated fanatics who have been given a purpose in life via the League of Shadows after suffering injustice due to corruption, years of indoctrination, and being chemically altered by the fear toxin into confronting their demons. They'll happily fall on their swords in order to achieve their objectives, or if their leader tells them to. Remember, their version of justice for a murderer is him being beheaded by their newest recruit, not any form of trial at all, as that is just 'corrupt bureaucrats'. You'd have better luck redeeming members of ISIS into joining Google's corporate team.

[The Romulan Republic]

Except that, from what I gather from the film, Bane and Talia were not part of Ras's gang that assaulted Gotham in Batman Begins. I always took Talia's actions as being down to personal vendetta because Bruce caused her father's death, and Bane tagging along out of loyalty to Talia, more than any grand commitment to League of Shadows ideology.

I could be wrong, but that's my impression based on my recollections of dialogue from Dark Knight Rises.

[FaxModem1]

Except that, from what I gather from the film, Bane and Talia were not part of Ras's gang that assaulted Gotham in Batman Begins. I always took Talia's actions as being down to personal vendetta because Bruce caused her father's death, and Bane tagging along out of loyalty to Talia, more than any grand commitment to League of Shadows ideology.

I could be wrong, but that's my impression based on my recollections of dialogue from Dark Knight Rises.

Maybe a different cell, but same organization. And since you stipulated this to be as when you first put on the cowl, Ras already has a vendetta against you for burning down his house, and even if you rescue him, he will probably not be persuaded to do other methods, and will spend the next decade or so doing what he can to destroy Gotham. Hope you're okay with spending the next decade foiling schemes done by Ra's.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I mean, if its a clear-cut "Ras or innocent bystanders"... sure, kill Ras.

But I'd prefer to take him alive and hand him over to the Feds so he can rot in GITMO or something, because that at least leaves a chance of averting Dark Knight Rises's plot.

The only real risk in doing so, to me, is that he might reveal my identity as Batman. But as I said, their are various angles for dealing with that, and if it comes down to it...

I'm Bruce fucking Wayne, Gotham's favourite son, with all the lawyers money can buy, and oh yes, I just saved the city from a terrorist attack. I'll take the revelation and apply for a Presidential pardon, if it comes down to that.

Won't keep the mob from coming after me and my associates, but I can also hire boatloads of private security. Its not a desirable outcome, but I think its a manageable one.

Edit: To clarify, my recollection of the film is that Bane and Talia were supposed to have been thrown out by Ras, and Talia only took control of the remnants of the League after Ras', death, to pursue a vendetta against Bruce Wayne. While Ban was motivated primarily by loyalty to her personally.

I could be wrong, but that's the basis of my argument here.

[FaxModem1]

Well, I mean, if its a clear-cut "Ras or innocent bystanders"... sure, kill Ras.

But I'd prefer to take him alive and hand him over to the Feds so he can rot in GITMO or something, because that at least leaves a chance of averting Dark Knight Rises's plot.

The only real risk in doing so, to me, is that he might reveal my identity as Batman. But as I said, their are various angles for dealing with that, and if it comes down to it...

I'm Bruce fucking Wayne, Gotham's favourite son, with all the lawyers money can buy, and oh yes, I just saved the city from a terrorist attack. I'll take the revelation and apply for a Presidential pardon, if it comes down to that.

Won't keep the mob from coming after me and my associates, but I can also hire boatloads of private security. Its not a desirable outcome, but I think its a manageable one.

Edit: To clarify, my recollection of the film is that Bane and Talia were supposed to have been thrown out by Ras, and Talia only took control of the remnants of the League after Ras', death, to pursue a vendetta against Bruce Wayne. While Ban was motivated primarily by loyalty to her personally.

I could be wrong, but that's the basis of my argument here.

Yes, but Talia and Bane used League resources, and tried to accomplish the League's original goal, destroy Gotham so that the world would step back from it's excesses and stop being a huge example of corruption. Hopefully you can clean up Gotham enough so that there isn't an army of poor people who will help them out. But I'm sure more social and economic reform can be accomplished by actually being Bruce Wayne than he was in the Dark Knight Rises by hiding in a mansion for a decade.

One of the my biggest griefs with that film is how much Bruce Wayne just seemed to stop giving a crap about the citizens of Gotham, only getting back into it when he was seemingly forced to, and the film sided with him for it.

-------

Arkham-verse addendum: I think I need to add that in the Arkham universe, mercenaries and privatization seem to be a real problem, as both Strange and Scarecrow hire whole entire armies of them. The simplest solution might be to simply buy the TYGER forces, and the people who developed the Arkham Knight army gear, and use them in a gentler capacity.

Deathstroke is a capable, tough, and tactical leader. I might use him as a general, same way the Arkham Knight and Scarecrow did, to fight off the League of Assassins. Have him teach my proteges as well. They will need the extra versions of combat to use.

Speaking of their training, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake With most of the villains rehabilitated or locked away, I will make sure to have them include training in how to rehabilitate criminals in addition to stopping them. Also, they will all have GPS trackers and transmitters in case of Joker-kidnappings or whatever. I do NOT want to have a bunch of dead proteges.

Regarding the League, see if I can support Nyssa's faction, and cause reform. We have similar goals, just different methods to carry them out, and she is the most honorable member of her family.