this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Batman is the bad guy and I will die on that hill.
Batman fundamentally embodies social justice as an individual violent power fantasy. He's the ultimate reactionary: use violence to fix individual people's problems, never address (or even acknowledge) the violence inherent to the social system. (Some authors' occasional deviations from this core characterization do not make up for it).
At best Batman is enjoyable because anti-heroes are enjoyable (I've heard there are some self-aware issues of Batman). At worst it's painfully unaware, mask-off copaganda (such as the one and-and-a-half Nolan movies I slugged through).
The top comment is a fanfic about Batman explaining social systems to Poison Ivy. Great idea, except that such wokeness is antithetical to his entire worldview. He's basically a Republican who happens to be against the death penalty for personal/religious reasons.
Batman won't let you die. He'll just tie you up and send you to Arkham.
Joker is the good guy too.
No sarcasm allowed >:(
None used. Seriously
More and more I feel Batman in quite a few versions is just the DC Punisher going around punching poor and mentally ill people
Waynetech does huge amounts of charity work, it's just not very interesting in a comic book.
Gotham also has a literal curse that makes it perpetually dysfunctional. Its cop out comic book bullshit, but Gotham literally cannot be fixed.
Within the story yes there's "reasons" but I mean Batman as a literary/art piece commonly has very reactionary elements within it that puts it kinda on a pseudo Punisher level within the reactionary zietgiest, for example The Dark Knight Returns has a lot of critique towards commonly apped "liberal" tropes and the Robin of that universe went to go fight crime with Batman cuss her parents smoke pot.
The curse that makes Gotham dysfunctional is capitalism.
Yes, but it's also an actual curse because of comic books.
Yes, and you see... capitalism is an actual curse.
andrew carnegie literally wrote a book about how the point of doing philanthropy is to buy off rubes like you, and yet rubes like you still buy it. Amazing.
Dude, it's comic books. People fly around in their underpants and shoot lasers from their eyes. The conceit of Batman is that yes, he's nuts, but the Wayne's have always been intense philanthropists. Like, actually "good" billionaires, also very comic books and just as likely in our world as laser eyed underpants flying people.
The current conceit is that it doesn't matter what you do in Gotham, underwear or hundreds of billions in goodwill. It will consume you and any who exist in its domain.
Hahaha, no such thing. How did they get their billions?
Where did the billions come from? 
The writers pen.
A batman comic book does not have realistic economic systems. Its all hand-wavy bullshit in-service of Batman flying around doing whatever.
idk sounds like you're the one full of hand wavy bullshit
Ok. Doesn't sound like great world-building to me. There's a reason I don't like capeshit. But enjoy your crappy stories about a shitty billionaire and the unrealistic impossibly broken city he beats people up in.
Hey thanks, I will.
Sounds like pure ideology, you don't need to uncritically accept the conceits of a setting.
The settings conceits shift at a whim, and have done so for 80+ years. They exist, then don't. They all warp and change however is needed by whoever is needed.
At one point, a dude punches reality. Literally hits reality with his fists.
Its fine to argue about any art form, but I think the most pertinent critique of comics is that it's art for capital. Any story element or setting is for sale in our world. Taking the inner world at any face value while ignoring that is pointless.
Uhh yeah that is my point
I'm glad we agree?
Ive always hated this argument. How many master sorcerer's and litteral gods does this man know that could break the curse? Deep down batman knows that Gotham can be fixed, it's just not gonna be him that does it. That kills him
The curse doesnβt get fixed because the story is about Batman solving crimes and if the crimes stop thereβs no more story.
Yup. It's fucking stupid, but it's there to stop people asking about it.
Fixing Gotham is basically a macguffin that the editors want you to ignore to just enjoy the setting as is.
That seems like a bad excuse. They completely reboot the series all the time anyway. It's not like concluding a story for once would actually stop them from just coming back next month with the same story again.
Because usually when they reboot itβs very poorly planned and they donβt tell writers far enough in advance. Thatβs why the New 52 was so confusing with Green Lantern and Batman continuing their pre-reboot storylines while there was a brand new superman, brand new Wonder Woman, etc. If they gave a writer like two years to conclude the story of Batman before a reboot that would be cool, but will never happen because comic book publishing houses are run by petty, nepotistic hacks.
I read a lot of Batman and I don't know what you're referring to. I'm sure it's established canon, but I feel like a lot of people write Batman that don't consider "a curse on Gotham City" to be part of the mythology that they're contributing to.
I have a serious question, who in universe knows about this? Because if Batman knows the city is irreparably cursed (why is it irreparable btw? There might not be quite as many high fantasy wizards running around as in marvel but there are still some, surely somebody could fix it) and doesn't use his billions to relocate the population somewhere else, then he's still the bad guy. If someone else knows about it and doesn't tell Batman then they're the bad guy.
Constantine is DC. There are no excuses. Granted, he's probably more cursed than Gotham (being En*lish and all).
The excuse is that itβs a detective story thatβs been running for nearly 90 years and wants to keep running for 90 more.