Batman at Eighty.

[Batman]

Far as I'm concerned Kevin Conroy is me and Mark Hamill is the Joker. And Batfleck as of BvS is easily the worst modern live action Batman though I think they atoned for that somewhat in JL.

[Gandalf]

I think the best thing they did with Batfleck in BvS was show that a few decades of being Batman utterly broke Bruce Wayne. He (seemingly) had won his war on crime and retired to enjoy his life. Then Superman shows up and awakens all of his old demons. Bruce Wayne may have created Batman with the purest of intentions, to bring a peace to his city and by extension himself, but over time the construct overtook him, creating the person we see in BvS.

Yet no one has walked up to him on his way to court and shot him in the head? His body count count has to be in the thousands, yet Batman still wrings his hands about the whole thing. Jesus, put him in a Mr. Freeze cryo-pod and lock him in the bottom of the Bat-Cave if you're that anti-death penalty. Whatever, the whole premise is dumb even if The Joker is supposed to be the Yin to Batman's Yang.

That's one of the best solutions I've ever heard for the Batman v Joker standoff.

[Solauren]

I agree, someone taking the law into their own hands and offing Joker is the best solution to the 'Batman/Joker' dance. Heck, it works for a lot of his rogue's gallery as well.

That could actually be a good multi-year arc to wrap up Batman, if you think about it.

Batman has mostly cleaned up crime and corruption in Gotham, to the point it's no worse then any other city. The removal of all the corruption has allowed the police department to be properly equipped, funded, and trained.

At the same time, Bruce Wayne's efforts have actually done more to help Gotham. More jobs, opprotunities, education, etc.
Heck, a few Supervillians, like Mr. Freeze, now work for Waynetech.

Then, as he is lead out of Court: Someone offs the Joker (blowing his head off), then commits suicide. Batman is shocked, etc. Investigation leads to the fact the shooter had lost several people he cared about to the Joker, and over the course of a few years. He leaves a note blaming Batman for stopping the Gotham police from dealing with him. "Everytime Batman toke down the joker, instead of a police sniper, Batman just protected the Joker to take more lives"

This leads to several of the worse of his Rogue's Gallery getting offed. One of them, say Victor Zaz of all people, turns himself into the police, in exchange for a life of solidary confinement, and a closed trial. "Batman actually made it safe to be a supervillian. He stopped you cops from killing us. Now, however, he's not working anymore!"

This shocks Batman, and he steps back and looks over his journals. He determines that yes, he saved some police officers lives when he took down some of the Supervillians, BUT, at the cost of civilian lives.

He also determines, if he'd instead just neutralized the supervillians defense/henchmen for the police to act safely, odds are, Joker would have had one or two rampages before he was taken down, and thousands of lives would be saved.

He realises he achieved his goal long ago, (or could of), but by running it 'to far and to long', he's now actually causing more harm then good.

Shocked, Batman decides it's time to step away from Gotham City, and instead move to supporting the other members of the Justice League.
THis could be linked to him also finally settling down with someone and having a normal life.

[Zixinus]

The problem with Batman is that he's an icon and thus cannot be changed. Change him and you potentially undercut the profit.

I mean look at the wedding. One comic, it's preperations for the wedding. Next comic, out of nowhere, the entire universe contorts itself for Batman to hate Catwoman. I stopped reading after that.

[The Romulan Republic]

The problem with Batman is that he's an icon and thus cannot be changed. Change him and you potentially undercut the profit.

I mean look at the wedding. One comic, it's preperations for the wedding. Next comic, out of nowhere, the entire universe contorts itself for Batman to hate Catwoman. I stopped reading after that.

What's sad is that my main reaction to the Selina/Bruce derail is "At least they didn't fridge Selina like I thought they would."

DC has really lowered expectations over the years.

[FaxModem1]

The implications of what Batman is, or why his battle never seems to go anywhere, are probably due to the change in audience. Originally, Batman was a funny book meant for kids in the Great Depression. As time went on, and his audience grew up but kept reading, more thought was put into Batman's war on crime. Though, in order for Batman to be meaningful, and not a case of a rich guy beating up poor guys, they've had to institute a multitude of reasons as to why he can't win. Whether it be corruption, the mafia, secret societies, calamities, magic, lazarus pools making everyone crazy, etc.

Gotham seems like the one place in the DC Earth that attracts all the world's crazy.

[Solauren]

Gotham attracts crazies the way way prostitutes attracts paying customers.

'Cause they know their, they can get away with it.

[Starglider]

Shamus Young wrote an excellent analysis of this four years ago, which really leaves little further to be said: part 1 part 2. It's an inherent narrative structural constraint that you can either suspend disbelief on or not. P.S. The Doing Batman Right article on the same site is worth a read as well.

[The Romulan Republic]

The implications of what Batman is, or why his battle never seems to go anywhere, are probably due to the change in audience. Originally, Batman was a funny book meant for kids in the Great Depression. As time went on, and his audience grew up but kept reading, more thought was put into Batman's war on crime. Though, in order for Batman to be meaningful, and not a case of a rich guy beating up poor guys, they've had to institute a multitude of reasons as to why he can't win. Whether it be corruption, the mafia, secret societies, calamities, magic, lazarus pools making everyone crazy, etc.

Gotham seems like the one place in the DC Earth that attracts all the world's crazy.

I hate the "rich guy beating up poor guys" characterization of Batman. I mean yeah, he does street patrols, and if he comes across some low-level crook harming an innocent person, he'll stop them, but he doesn't focus just on beating up random guys at the bottom of the ladder. That would be pointless, and counterproductive. Instead, he goes after much more powerful players.

Take Year One: he starts out going after low-level guys, then works his way up until, with Gordon's aid, he's taking down corrupt police officials. Or The Long Halloween, which is Batman vs. the mob as much as anything. That's how the modern incarnation of Batman started out- not beating up random poor guys, but systematically targeting corrupt political and organized crime networks. Then his focus shifted to super villains due to the insanity of Gotham and the DC universe in general, but even then, a lot of his supervillains aren't exactly lacking in resources. They run their own gangs, are mad scientists with access to super-tech, or control terrorist networks.

In short, Batman doesn't just go around beating up poor people. He goes after wealthy and powerful criminals: the Mob, corrupt politicos and cops, and terrorists.

As to Batman not being able to win... partly that's just due to the serial nature of comics, of course, and DC wanting to keep making money off Batman. However, frequent reboots and adaptations allow individual versions of the character to make more progress.

You could make the argument that Batman can't "win" in the same sense that the police can't "win", and for the same reasons. No matter how many criminals you catch, no matter how many lives you save, there will still be underlying problems in the world that one man can't fix no matter how wealthy and intelligent and well-intentioned he may be, and so there will always be new criminals popping up to replace the old ones. Even leaving aside the nature of a universe like DC, with resurrections and reality-alteration and so forth, there will never be a moment when Bruce can sit back, content in the knowledge that he has caught every criminal and there will never be another crime. And part of what makes him compelling is that he knows that very well, and tries anyway.

Because the impossibility of victory does not (unless one is very cynically-minded) mean that the fight is meaningless or futile- Batman may never end all crime, but his actions certainly do matter to the individuals he saves. I'll quote this scene, which (although from a different franchise) sums the point up quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlb6PpwCK5M

Buffy: "My mom... said some things to me about being the Slayer. That its fruitless. No fruit for Buffy."

Angel: "She's wrong."

Buffy: "Is she? Is Sunnydale any better than when I first came here? Okay so I battle evil. But I don't really win. The bad keeps coming back, and getting stronger. Like the kid in the story, the boy that stuck his finger in the duck."

Angel: "Dyke. Its another word for dam."

Buffy: "Oh. Okay, that story makes a lot more sense now."

Angel: "Buffy, you know I'm still figuring things out. There's a lot I don't understand. I do know its important to keep fighting. I learned that from you."

Buffy: "But we never-"

Angel: "We never win."

Buffy: "Not completely."

Angel: "Never will. That's not why we fight. We do it 'cause there's things worth fighting for."

[mr friendly guy]

What’s even worse is that he’s not even all that original as he’s more or less just the American version of Zorro.Though givenbpart of Western capitalism is shamelessly ripping off ideas I suppose it fits

Bob Kane didn't even give credit to BILL FINGER who created a lot of the Batman mythos, so yeah, he was good at ripping things off.

For those who watched Batman v Superman, Bill Finger was finally given the credit he deserved as Batman's co creator. The documentary Batman and Bill documents how Marc Tyler Nobleman did all his research including chasing down descendants of Bill Finger to give him the credit he deserved in death which he never achieved in life.

[FaxModem1]

The implications of what Batman is, or why his battle never seems to go anywhere, are probably due to the change in audience. Originally, Batman was a funny book meant for kids in the Great Depression. As time went on, and his audience grew up but kept reading, more thought was put into Batman's war on crime. Though, in order for Batman to be meaningful, and not a case of a rich guy beating up poor guys, they've had to institute a multitude of reasons as to why he can't win. Whether it be corruption, the mafia, secret societies, calamities, magic, lazarus pools making everyone crazy, etc.

Gotham seems like the one place in the DC Earth that attracts all the world's crazy.

I hate the "rich guy beating up poor guys" characterization of Batman. I mean yeah, he does street patrols, and if he comes across some low-level crook harming an innocent person, he'll stop them, but he doesn't focus just on beating up random guys at the bottom of the ladder. That would be pointless, and counterproductive. Instead, he goes after much more powerful players.

Take Year One: he starts out going after low-level guys, then works his way up until, with Gordon's aid, he's taking down corrupt police officials. Or The Long Halloween, which is Batman vs. the mob as much as anything. That's how the modern incarnation of Batman started out- not beating up random poor guys, but systematically targeting corrupt political and organized crime networks. Then his focus shifted to super villains due to the insanity of Gotham and the DC universe in general, but even then, a lot of his supervillains aren't exactly lacking in resources. They run their own gangs, are mad scientists with access to super-tech, or control terrorist networks.

In short, Batman doesn't just go around beating up poor people. He goes after wealthy and powerful criminals: the Mob, corrupt politicos and cops, and terrorists.

Even then, the iconic image when Batman is fighting someone, is of Batman beating up street thugs. Note how the Animated series intro, trying to focus on his iconic stature, is of him stopping two bank robbers, not mafiosos or costumed criminals. And we get plenty of stories of Batman trying to stop the mafia, stop the costumed freaks, etc. But how many stories do we get of trying to stop those petty thugs and street toughs from being criminals? How many times do we see him giving them a choice between this life, and how many times are they just pretty much the regular enemies Batman goes through before he faces off against the boss? Because that's how those kind of people are in a Batman story, they're the little guys Batman needs to break the kneecaps of in order to get to the guy's boss. The only story I can think of wherein Batman tries to save the soul of someone who isn't part of his rogues gallery, or one of the big bosses(such as in It's Never Too Late), is in Batman Noel, where the entire point of the story is that modern Batman doesn't really try to help those guys who are so desperate for work, they'll work for the Riddler, Two-Face, the Ventriloquist, etc.

We get allusions to Bruce Wayne's charities, or with his bringing jobs to Gotham, but they seem to be so ineffectual that no one really seems to benefit from them, and often, are revealed to be fronts in Batman's war on crime, with some other purpose in place for him to keep taps on people or have information that will lead him to save the day. That's the issue. Batman's efforts seem singularly targeted towards the big costumed people, not to the regular people that prop them up. Maybe it's because it's how Bruce Wayne, as a billionaire, thinks, that he prefers the top-down approach in taking down crime in Gotham rather than fixing the problem at it's source and building up those who have very little choice. And yes, a lot of this is due to DC's wanting to tell the same story over and over, to keep their audience. It makes it frustrating for someone like myself, who has actually worked in the non-profit sector, and knowing that Batman doesn't seem to be approaching the problem correctly.

As to Batman not being able to win... partly that's just due to the serial nature of comics, of course, and DC wanting to keep making money off Batman. However, frequent reboots and adaptations allow individual versions of the character to make more progress.

You could make the argument that Batman can't "win" in the same sense that the police can't "win", and for the same reasons. No matter how many criminals you catch, no matter how many lives you save, there will still be underlying problems in the world that one man can't fix no matter how wealthy and intelligent and well-intentioned he may be, and so there will always be new criminals popping up to replace the old ones. Even leaving aside the nature of a universe like DC, with resurrections and reality-alteration and so forth, there will never be a moment when Bruce can sit back, content in the knowledge that he has caught every criminal and there will never be another crime. And part of what makes him compelling is that he knows that very well, and tries anyway.

Because the impossibility of victory does not (unless one is very cynically-minded) mean that the fight is meaningless or futile- Batman may never end all crime, but his actions certainly do matter to the individuals he saves. I'll quote this scene, which (although from a different franchise) sums the point up quite well:
*snip Buffy conversation*

Yes, a war on crime is a daunting prospect, especially as crime will always exist. But, crime can and has gone down in the real world. We've seen violence go down in the past century. This is part of why, in the real world, legislators have had to introduce minimum sentencing laws to keep the prison population demand up as a way to support the private prison industry, to help keep their profits, as opposed to going with saner law enforcement and dealing with things like drug offenses in rehabilitation methods. It's a big part of why Batman's war doesn't work. Unless Batman really believes that possession of marijuana is worthy of sending entire waves of people to jail, then he runs into ethical issues when we know the reality of how crime works.

We do see some of his attempts at rehabilitation, by having Wayne companies hiring on ex-convicts to try and help them get a fresh start, but it's such an after thought in portrayal and presentation that it's a fresh coat of paint on a rusty boat with holes in it. This is also part of why Batman's portrayal has had issues when dealing with the oppressed, as he is the one on the side of law and order. It's also why his approaches to it, when viewed from a pop culture standpoint, start making him seem like K.A. Pital's portray as a bored oligarch. Because there are better ways for him to use his money, such as boosting police salaries to prevent them from being easy to bribe, or as shown in the Dark Knight, desperate to pay family medical bills, as opposed to buying a bunch of Batboats.

The main focus of such a story, if Batman is laser targeted towards crime, is how much should Batman be doing towards eliminating the factors that lead to crime. Instead, DC has made it to where Gotham is just unfixable, because crazy people and there's just something plain wrong with the city that even a man that makes Jeff Bezos look middle class can't fix.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, this ties in to some degree with the other thread I started (in hindsight it could've fit here. Oh well). There's no real reason why Gotham can't be fixed. It may be very difficult, it may be the result of crime families and the wealthy deliberately screwing up the city to the point where it's a playground for supervillains, but for someone with the power and influence of Bruce Wayne, the crimefighting skills of Batman, and perhaps the occasional visit from guest superheroes, never mind the whole Bat-Family? Given sufficient time, Gotham should have been whittled down to a point where the primary crimes that occur are either random crimes of opportunity, crimes of passion, or white-collar shit like fraudulent bookkeeping. We see a glimpse of this in Kingdom Come, where it's implied that peace is kept in Gotham at night via a small army of Batman robots descending upon any criminals caught in the open... and Batman is approached by Lex Luthor to oppose Superman's coalition of heroes. So, YMMV.

Frankly an 'ideal' Batman story would be pretty closed-ended. Starts career foiling petty crime; climbs the ladder towards attacking the mob families; the families bring in supervillains/supervillains spring up via circumstance, to oppose him; start working with Gordon and a few select cops like Bullock, Montoya, etc. to clean up the force; and finally retire after a few decades, leaving Dick to take up the mantle, or if you want to go full Timmverse, Terry McGinnis.

[NeoGoomba]

I did enjoy the fact that in "The Dark Knight Rises" Alfred keeps hammering Bruce that punching crime is bullshit and that what the world needs is Bruce Wayne far more than Batman. And it is somewhat alluded to that if Bruce HAD gone down the route Alfred was trying to push him years earlier, most of the problems in the film (not the actual film itself, ZING) could have easily been headed off.

[The Romulan Republic]

Even then, the iconic image when Batman is fighting someone, is of Batman beating up street thugs. Note how the Animated series intro, trying to focus on his iconic stature, is of him stopping two bank robbers, not mafiosos or costumed criminals.

True, and that's probably partly because its a very simple, quick, easy way to convey the concept "He fights crime". Though I will point out that guys who are hitting a bank with explosives are probably not at the very bottom of the criminal ladder, and are probably not just a couple of guys below the poverty line trying to feed themselves either.

And we get plenty of stories of Batman trying to stop the mafia, stop the costumed freaks, etc. But how many stories do we get of trying to stop those petty thugs and street toughs from being criminals? How many times do we see him giving them a choice between this life, and how many times are they just pretty much the regular enemies Batman goes through before he faces off against the boss? Because that's how those kind of people are in a Batman story, they're the little guys Batman needs to break the kneecaps of in order to get to the guy's boss. The only story I can think of wherein Batman tries to save the soul of someone who isn't part of his rogues gallery, or one of the big bosses(such as in It's Never Too Late), is in Batman Noel, where the entire point of the story is that modern Batman doesn't really try to help those guys who are so desperate for work, they'll work for the Riddler, Two-Face, the Ventriloquist, etc.

We get allusions to Bruce Wayne's charities, or with his bringing jobs to Gotham, but they seem to be so ineffectual that no one really seems to benefit from them, and often, are revealed to be fronts in Batman's war on crime, with some other purpose in place for him to keep taps on people or have information that will lead him to save the day. That's the issue. Batman's efforts seem singularly targeted towards the big costumed people, not to the regular people that prop them up. Maybe it's because it's how Bruce Wayne, as a billionaire, thinks, that he prefers the top-down approach in taking down crime in Gotham rather than fixing the problem at it's source and building up those who have very little choice. And yes, a lot of this is due to DC's wanting to tell the same story over and over, to keep their audience. It makes it frustrating for someone like myself, who has actually worked in the non-profit sector, and knowing that Batman doesn't seem to be approaching the problem correctly.

Fair enough.

I think what we need, frankly, is more writers and executives who are willing to take risks to tell a wider variety of stories, which they can honestly afford to do with what is probably DC's safest property ever. Batman has pretty clearly shown that he can weather a wide variety of different interpretations, and even ones that were sneered at in the past (like camp '60s Batman) often have their defenders and passionate fans.

And it is frustrating, yes. It frustrates me as a writer and a fan, because there is so much that can be done with Batman that either doesn't get done, or does get done but then gets largely ignored in favor of the same-old-same-old.

Yes, a war on crime is a daunting prospect, especially as crime will always exist. But, crime can and has gone down in the real world. We've seen violence go down in the past century. This is part of why, in the real world, legislators have had to introduce minimum sentencing laws to keep the prison population demand up as a way to support the private prison industry, to help keep their profits, as opposed to going with saner law enforcement and dealing with things like drug offenses in rehabilitation methods. It's a big part of why Batman's war doesn't work. Unless Batman really believes that possession of marijuana is worthy of sending entire waves of people to jail, then he runs into ethical issues when we know the reality of how crime works.

Has Batman (or at least the modern incarnations) ever addressed the War on Drugs? 'Cause if some dip shit wrote an issue where Batman goes around beating up random people for possessing pot, I'm going to be angry. Morality and practicality of the War on Drugs aside, that's just a waste of resources for a guy who can take on Darkseid, but who's always going to be facing more crime than he has time to deal with. Prioritize.

We do see some of his attempts at rehabilitation, by having Wayne companies hiring on ex-convicts to try and help them get a fresh start, but it's such an after thought in portrayal and presentation that it's a fresh coat of paint on a rusty boat with holes in it. This is also part of why Batman's portrayal has had issues when dealing with the oppressed, as he is the one on the side of law and order. It's also why his approaches to it, when viewed from a pop culture standpoint, start making him seem like K.A. Pital's portray as a bored oligarch. Because there are better ways for him to use his money, such as boosting police salaries to prevent them from being easy to bribe, or as shown in the Dark Knight, desperate to pay family medical bills, as opposed to buying a bunch of Batboats.

The main focus of such a story, if Batman is laser targeted towards crime, is how much should Batman be doing towards eliminating the factors that lead to crime. Instead, DC has made it to where Gotham is just unfixable, because crazy people and there's just something plain wrong with the city that even a man that makes Jeff Bezos look middle class can't fix.

The biggest criticism of Batman has to be that the DC writers put his city on a vortex of supernatural evil, and he deals with that by going out and fighting the criminals every night, instead of calling in his thousand or so favors from the Justice League and having some of the magic heavy-hitters in this 'verse do the mother of all exorcisms.

For the rest... I get why they wouldn't want to focus on that stuff all the time. People want to see Batman in costume fighting supervillains. But you can do more, add more layers, more depth, to the story, and I get the feeling that DC neglects that. Its sad, really- they seem desperate to be taken seriously, to show how mature comics are, and they go about it in precisely the wrong way, by constantly trying to be as dark and edgy and bleak and gratuitously sexualized as possible, instead of by actually writing stories with greater depth of theme and characterization.

[/quote]

Yeah, this ties in to some degree with the other thread I started (in hindsight it could've fit here. Oh well). There's no real reason why Gotham can't be fixed. It may be very difficult, it may be the result of crime families and the wealthy deliberately screwing up the city to the point where it's a playground for supervillains, but for someone with the power and influence of Bruce Wayne, the crimefighting skills of Batman, and perhaps the occasional visit from guest superheroes, never mind the whole Bat-Family? Given sufficient time, Gotham should have been whittled down to a point where the primary crimes that occur are either random crimes of opportunity, crimes of passion, or white-collar shit like fraudulent bookkeeping. We see a glimpse of this in Kingdom Come, where it's implied that peace is kept in Gotham at night via a small army of Batman robots descending upon any criminals caught in the open... and Batman is approached by Lex Luthor to oppose Superman's coalition of heroes. So, YMMV.

Frankly an 'ideal' Batman story would be pretty closed-ended. Starts career foiling petty crime; climbs the ladder towards attacking the mob families; the families bring in supervillains/supervillains spring up via circumstance, to oppose him; start working with Gordon and a few select cops like Bullock, Montoya, etc. to clean up the force; and finally retire after a few decades, leaving Dick to take up the mantle, or if you want to go full Timmverse, Terry McGinnis.

This is basically what the Nolan trilogy did, minus some of the more fantastical villains and with a fairly awkward last-minute introduction of Robin.

I did enjoy the fact that in "The Dark Knight Rises" Alfred keeps hammering Bruce that punching crime is bullshit and that what the world needs is Bruce Wayne far more than Batman. And it is somewhat alluded to that if Bruce HAD gone down the route Alfred was trying to push him years earlier, most of the problems in the film (not the actual film itself, ZING) could have easily been headed off.

He makes the same point in Batman v Superman, even- pointing out to Bruce that he can get info he needs by attending Lex's shindig as Bruce Wayne, rather than breaking in as Batman.

I like this point, in part because it shows that Bruce has the capacity to be a hero even without the Bat. Its who he is that makes him a hero, not what costume he wears. It ties in with my irritation at DC's seeming belief that Bruce has to be miserable to be a hero- it cheapens the character. I fully believe that if his parents had made it out of that alley, Bruce would have ended up doing something heroic sooner or later. Probably later, and it probably wouldn't have been as all-consuming an obsession. He'd probably be a happier and more well-adjusted person. But I don't see Bruce, any Bruce, as someone who when the chips were down and innocent people were in danger, would have been content to sit on the sidelines in his comfy mansion.

[ray245]

Batman is shock therapy. A way of waging war on crime when a system has become utterly corrupt. But like any shock therapy, it's not meant to be a long-lasting measure.

The fans on the other hand, don't care about such things because they want Batman to never retire and Gotham is never allowed to be better.

[The Romulan Republic]

Batman is shock therapy. A way of waging war on crime when a system has become utterly corrupt. But like any shock therapy, it's not meant to be a long-lasting measure.

The fans on the other hand, don't care about such things because they want Batman to never retire and Gotham is never allowed to be better.

Alternatively, Batman's focus needs to get bigger over time, less local. Let him save Gotham- and in the process realize that while Gotham may no longer need him, there are larger threats to deal with.

If I were writing a Batman continuity from scratch, I might do it something like this:

Have him spend his first year working his way through the Mob, as per usual. The fact that an masked vigilante is beating up the city's rich and powerful, and doing a better job of law enforcement than the actual cops, is enough of an embarrassment to get large scale state/federal intervention in Gotham. Bruce is a folk-hero to a lot of the poor of Gotham, but the government cannot condone his vigilante acts, though they're embarrassed enough by Batman and how nuts a major city has gotten to finally get their shit together and start fixing Gotham.

Year two, we start seeing the super villains coming out of the wood work, specifically those with a focus on Batman or who he inadvertantly had some role in the creation of. Possibly have Luthor run his Presidential campaign on fixing Gotham, even. This starts drawing Batman into awareness of the larger DC Universe, and the supernatural side of things. It also starts to put him in contact with other super-powered individuals. End of year two, Bruce helps foil a major super villain attack with some of his new friends, and helps form the Justice League. If you want to go with the "Gotham is a supernatural vortex of evil" idea, have the finale for year two/film two/season two be pulling of an exorcism of Gotham City. During this crisis, Batman's identity is revealed publicly, but he receives a pardon for past criminal acts in recognition of his actions in helping to protect Gotham/the world.

Year three, Bruce is no longer focused on fighting street crime in Gotham, where a combination of his actions and subsequent federal intervention has substantially improved things. Instead, he's trying to deal with the fallout of his identity becoming public, lawsuits against his company, etc. Since he employs a lot of people in Gotham, things start to go temporarily downhill in the city again. Basically, Batman won the war, but now he's losing the peace. Nonetheless, things are, overall, better than they were in Gotham. Maybe Bruce even loses his company and wealth, and goes back to traveling the world in obscurity for a time.

Year four, Batman joins fully with the League. Gotham doesn't need him any more. Gotham has moved on. But Gotham won't be safe if the whole world, or universe, dies, and Batman now has bigger things to deal with than the Mob. Not, primarily, with fisticuffs, because he's a mortal man, not superman. But with his resources, connections, experience, and brains. Have Batman take on a role as a trainer, mentor, and behind-the-scenes support for the JL. Sort of make him to DC what Nick Fury is in the MCU (especially post-Winter Soldier). The old man in the shadows who has all the secrets, who brings the heroes together and shows up now and then to offer advice or support when needed, usually while running his own game in the background.

[FaxModem1]

And we get plenty of stories of Batman trying to stop the mafia, stop the costumed freaks, etc. But how many stories do we get of trying to stop those petty thugs and street toughs from being criminals? How many times do we see him giving them a choice between this life, and how many times are they just pretty much the regular enemies Batman goes through before he faces off against the boss? Because that's how those kind of people are in a Batman story, they're the little guys Batman needs to break the kneecaps of in order to get to the guy's boss. The only story I can think of wherein Batman tries to save the soul of someone who isn't part of his rogues gallery, or one of the big bosses(such as in It's Never Too Late), is in Batman Noel, where the entire point of the story is that modern Batman doesn't really try to help those guys who are so desperate for work, they'll work for the Riddler, Two-Face, the Ventriloquist, etc.

We get allusions to Bruce Wayne's charities, or with his bringing jobs to Gotham, but they seem to be so ineffectual that no one really seems to benefit from them, and often, are revealed to be fronts in Batman's war on crime, with some other purpose in place for him to keep taps on people or have information that will lead him to save the day. That's the issue. Batman's efforts seem singularly targeted towards the big costumed people, not to the regular people that prop them up. Maybe it's because it's how Bruce Wayne, as a billionaire, thinks, that he prefers the top-down approach in taking down crime in Gotham rather than fixing the problem at it's source and building up those who have very little choice. And yes, a lot of this is due to DC's wanting to tell the same story over and over, to keep their audience. It makes it frustrating for someone like myself, who has actually worked in the non-profit sector, and knowing that Batman doesn't seem to be approaching the problem correctly.

Fair enough.

I think what we need, frankly, is more writers and executives who are willing to take risks to tell a wider variety of stories, which they can honestly afford to do with what is probably DC's safest property ever. Batman has pretty clearly shown that he can weather a wide variety of different interpretations, and even ones that were sneered at in the past (like camp '60s Batman) often have their defenders and passionate fans.

And it is frustrating, yes. It frustrates me as a writer and a fan, because there is so much that can be done with Batman that either doesn't get done, or does get done but then gets largely ignored in favor of the same-old-same-old.

Yes, a Gotham city version of The Wire, with entire subplots focusing on how bad education, politics, police work, justice, etc. works in a city like Gotham would be great. I can imagine Gordon having a scene like this with Renee Montoya:



It's especially frustrating as Gotham, the Fox tv show that could have been about this, decided to run with the wacky cartoony version of Gotham without really examining the hard hitting parts of why Gotham is like this. But then, I guess that part is true to the comics.

Has Batman (or at least the modern incarnations) ever addressed the War on Drugs? 'Cause if some dip shit wrote an issue where Batman goes around beating up random people for possessing pot, I'm going to be angry. Morality and practicality of the War on Drugs aside, that's just a waste of resources for a guy who can take on Darkseid, but who's always going to be facing more crime than he has time to deal with. Prioritize.

I'm proud, wait, no, morbidly fascinated to present to you, Batman: Leaves of Grass. Watch as Poison Ivy plots to conquer the world by making everyone have the munchies and watch Spongebob Squarepants.

The biggest criticism of Batman has to be that the DC writers put his city on a vortex of supernatural evil, and he deals with that by going out and fighting the criminals every night, instead of calling in his thousand or so favors from the Justice League and having some of the magic heavy-hitters in this 'verse do the mother of all exorcisms.

I think this is the real origin of Batman's deep hatred of magic and his distrust of it. Not because it's too unpredictable or anything, but because it would actually solve too many problems for him, and they can't have Magic Batman.

For the rest... I get why they wouldn't want to focus on that stuff all the time. People want to see Batman in costume fighting supervillains. But you can do more, add more layers, more depth, to the story, and I get the feeling that DC neglects that. Its sad, really- they seem desperate to be taken seriously, to show how mature comics are, and they go about it in precisely the wrong way, by constantly trying to be as dark and edgy and bleak and gratuitously sexualized as possible, instead of by actually writing stories with greater depth of theme and characterization.

Again, read Gotham Central. It's as close as they get to it. But they could have gotten a lot farther.

[K. A. Pital]

Wow; Batman the Anti-Pot Knight. What a load of laughable bullshit.

Real hero!

And this shit is far from harmless kid stories. People have been actually killed by cops all over thr world for smoking some weed.

[Tribble]

IIRC there’s also the time that Batman got addicted to doping a pre-Bane version of Venom. IIRC this came about due to him failing to save a girl from drowning and rather than have the JL on speed dial he thought he’d be better off using Venom instead? Something like that

[The Romulan Republic]

IIRC there’s also the time that Batman got addicted to doping a pre-Bane version of Venom. IIRC this came about due to him failing to save a girl from drowning and rather than have the JL on speed dial he thought he’d be better off using Venom instead? Something like that

Honestly, half of Bruce's problems at least could probably be solved by just picking up the damn Batphone and speed-dialing the JL.

[Batman]

Make that 127%.
And me not calling the League is something I could half accept. It has been long established I have a massive egotistical streak and 'my way or the highway' attitude towards fixing Gotham (I'm not saying that's a smart way to go about things but that's how I'm presented in the comics). What's really baffling is when the powers guys show up to help unbidden and I tell them to go away, they go away. What, exactly, am I going to do if they decide to stay?

[Batman]

The smart thing for me to do would be to pay Wally (sorry, he's still my Flash) a million or so once a month to clean out street crime and call in Clark (who'd likely do it for free) or whoever is available to take out the few supers I have to deal with (on my end, even the supervillains tend to be pretty small fry by League standards). The most powerful one I can think of is Dr Isley, and while she's gotten the better of the powerhouse Leaguers at times, that was through mind manipulation. Force on force she's a pushover for Clark, Dianna, JJ or the ringbearers.

[NeoGoomba]

At least in Kingdom Come Batman finally just said, "You know what, fuck it! Giant Bat Robots will do my job. I've got a comfy chair to sit in."

[Majin Gojira]

I love how a lot of this discussion has gone.

I had an idea for a thread roughly as "Superheroes suddenly ported to the real world" and I realized that it wasn't Batman and Superman who would be the most dangerous beings in there, changing the world with their very presences.

It would be Bruce Wayne and Clark and Lois Kent.

A man that rich who is that involved in charities and donations, and a pair of the greatest reporters in fiction, one of whom who is invulnerable with superhuman senses?

Without villains to fight, they would be more potent than their costumed alter egos.

And a lot of the discussion in this thread confirms that idea for me.

[Tribble]

At least in Kingdom Come Batman finally just said, "You know what, fuck it! Giant Bat Robots will do my job. I've got a comfy chair to sit in."

To be fair, IIRC a lot of that may have been due to the fact that he was pretty crippled by that point. Wasn’t he wearing an exo-suit or something just so that he could move normally?