Maybe he’s just flawed. I dunno, it’s just a comic book character.
Being just a comic book character is not a valid excuse, especially given the history of our society holding the presumptions that a) comics are just for kids, and b) we can hold content for kids to a lower standard of quality than we hold our content for adults.
Batman may be just a comic book character but then Batman is a bad comic book character and could be a better one. It’s worse since most versions of Batman in the 20th and 21st centuries portray hold him up as a paragon of righteousness. World’s Greatest Detective, indeed.
Portraying Batman as an anti-villain or antihero, in which the narrative reflects awareness of Wayne’s flaws, is, absolutely, a viable direction for Batman stories to go. And it sometimes has been done that way to make it interesting. But too often Batman is portrayed as a hero, and doing so comes with a tuckfun of unfortunate implications. Most versions of Batman have not aged well, and the general concept of Batman, played unironically, has not aged well.
I’m reminded of a presumption that comes with Superman 1978; To quote Bob Chipman:
[Superman] and his world only work when approached from a place of optimism: …Superman only makes sense in the context of a worldview where good is the default setting of the universe and the job of a being of godlike power who aims to do good is to fix things when they break and thwart evil from spoiling the natural state of goodness.
Because if the universe is not good at its core then the moral responsibility of that same godlike being who wants to do good is to assume power absolutely and make the universe good by force.
And that’s not Superman.
note: I quote this originally (and cite sources) here talking about Supergirl, who is, in the TV series, thrust in a world that is not inherently good by definition. And then Supergirl is then hobbled by government agencies with kryptonite technology and forced into becoming an agent of state. Where Superman is allowed to be a benevolent god (sometimes, but not always, having to contend with challenging problems), Supergirl always has to be overwhelmed by the forces against her… I digress.
Batman as the World’s Greatest Detective only works in the same system, albeit at a sociopolitical level. He works when the system of state and social institutions are inherently good, and he’s fixing corrupting influences, rather than fighting the system itself because it is so corrupt that it needs to be changed via revolution (not necessarily violent revolution, but certainly the degree of extreme overhaul and reform that warrants revolution). And Bruce Wayne is not revolutionary, in fact would oppose revolutionary efforts – and has.
This, incidentally is a failure of the MCU avengers movies, which take place in a post 9/11 America in which the climate crisis is real and the response to it by institutional powers has been underwhelming and ineffective (and have doomed 7/8ths of the human population and counting). The Avengers only work in a world where society is intrinsically good and stable. Curiously a lot of the antagonists are revolutionary but have to include a STEP 4: Annihilate a couple billion people in their plan to show they are, in fact, villainous.
Anyway, comics are not just for kids, and this has absolutely been the case since the 1980s. And children deserve a higher quality of comic book than ones that posit that Batman is a force for good in a society that works.
Yes, like Chipman, I’ve thought about this at length, and was a big fan of Batman as a kid and young adult until I realized the society we live in isn’t the good, stable one. It’s something of a grudge.
These stories are not meant to be realistic, they’re not meant to be so in depth… there’s always going to be issues…
To me all that sounds like we shouldn’t have heroes. Because they could all be doing other, more “efficient” jobs. Except maybe for captain planet…altho I’m sure we can find improvements for that one as well.
And yes, successful villains all end up either people that want to destroy everything or people that want to make things better but doing it wrong. Anything less than that and they’re not important enough.
All these issues are usually features, not bugs, I think.
I’m not at all clear where you got that from what I was saying, which was not that we shouldn’t have heroes, but we can have better heroes, ones whose flaws are acknowledged by the narrative.
My bad, I must’ve tunnel visioned on some things. But in my defense, the original argument was that he wasn’t doing enough good, not that he wasn’t flawed enough. And with that we’re changing the subject and getting too much into subjectivity. He’s not perfect, far from it… he’s paranoid, his relationships with other characters are far from good or normal because of his issues… his handling of the joker… etc. Could there have been more focus on his flaws and issues? Sure, but that has nothing to do with the original discussion of “why isn’t he using his money to make Gotham a better place”. Which he is, despite what you might say or think. Just because they’re not giving us all the details that doesn’t mean that he isn’t. That’s an artistic choice. You might disagree with that choice, but that doesn’t change the canon.
If there’s one line in the first issue that says “when he’s not busy fighting bad guys, he spends his time investing in social programs and hires ex-convicts in his company in order to reform them and bla bla” and then never mentions it again for the next 300 issues? Then we have to assume that he’s still doing that, because that’s what the writer said. It’s the Batman comics, not the Bruce Wayne comics.
Maybe he’s just flawed. I dunno, it’s just a comic book character.
Being just a comic book character is not a valid excuse, especially given the history of our society holding the presumptions that a) comics are just for kids, and b) we can hold content for kids to a lower standard of quality than we hold our content for adults.
Batman may be just a comic book character but then Batman is a bad comic book character and could be a better one. It’s worse since most versions of Batman in the 20th and 21st centuries portray hold him up as a paragon of righteousness. World’s Greatest Detective, indeed.
Portraying Batman as an anti-villain or antihero, in which the narrative reflects awareness of Wayne’s flaws, is, absolutely, a viable direction for Batman stories to go. And it sometimes has been done that way to make it interesting. But too often Batman is portrayed as a hero, and doing so comes with a tuckfun of unfortunate implications. Most versions of Batman have not aged well, and the general concept of Batman, played unironically, has not aged well.
I’m reminded of a presumption that comes with Superman 1978; To quote Bob Chipman:
[Superman] and his world only work when approached from a place of optimism: …Superman only makes sense in the context of a worldview where good is the default setting of the universe and the job of a being of godlike power who aims to do good is to fix things when they break and thwart evil from spoiling the natural state of goodness.
Because if the universe is not good at its core then the moral responsibility of that same godlike being who wants to do good is to assume power absolutely and make the universe good by force.
And that’s not Superman.
note: I quote this originally (and cite sources) here talking about Supergirl, who is, in the TV series, thrust in a world that is not inherently good by definition. And then Supergirl is then hobbled by government agencies with kryptonite technology and forced into becoming an agent of state. Where Superman is allowed to be a benevolent god (sometimes, but not always, having to contend with challenging problems), Supergirl always has to be overwhelmed by the forces against her… I digress.
Batman as the World’s Greatest Detective only works in the same system, albeit at a sociopolitical level. He works when the system of state and social institutions are inherently good, and he’s fixing corrupting influences, rather than fighting the system itself because it is so corrupt that it needs to be changed via revolution (not necessarily violent revolution, but certainly the degree of extreme overhaul and reform that warrants revolution). And Bruce Wayne is not revolutionary, in fact would oppose revolutionary efforts – and has.
This, incidentally is a failure of the MCU avengers movies, which take place in a post 9/11 America in which the climate crisis is real and the response to it by institutional powers has been underwhelming and ineffective (and have doomed 7/8ths of the human population and counting). The Avengers only work in a world where society is intrinsically good and stable. Curiously a lot of the antagonists are revolutionary but have to include a STEP 4: Annihilate a couple billion people in their plan to show they are, in fact, villainous.
Anyway, comics are not just for kids, and this has absolutely been the case since the 1980s. And children deserve a higher quality of comic book than ones that posit that Batman is a force for good in a society that works.
Yes, like Chipman, I’ve thought about this at length, and was a big fan of Batman as a kid and young adult until I realized the society we live in isn’t the good, stable one. It’s something of a grudge.
These stories are not meant to be realistic, they’re not meant to be so in depth… there’s always going to be issues…
To me all that sounds like we shouldn’t have heroes. Because they could all be doing other, more “efficient” jobs. Except maybe for captain planet…altho I’m sure we can find improvements for that one as well.
And yes, successful villains all end up either people that want to destroy everything or people that want to make things better but doing it wrong. Anything less than that and they’re not important enough.
All these issues are usually features, not bugs, I think.
I’m not at all clear where you got that from what I was saying, which was not that we shouldn’t have heroes, but we can have better heroes, ones whose flaws are acknowledged by the narrative.
Consider me thwarted.
My bad, I must’ve tunnel visioned on some things. But in my defense, the original argument was that he wasn’t doing enough good, not that he wasn’t flawed enough. And with that we’re changing the subject and getting too much into subjectivity. He’s not perfect, far from it… he’s paranoid, his relationships with other characters are far from good or normal because of his issues… his handling of the joker… etc. Could there have been more focus on his flaws and issues? Sure, but that has nothing to do with the original discussion of “why isn’t he using his money to make Gotham a better place”. Which he is, despite what you might say or think. Just because they’re not giving us all the details that doesn’t mean that he isn’t. That’s an artistic choice. You might disagree with that choice, but that doesn’t change the canon.
If there’s one line in the first issue that says “when he’s not busy fighting bad guys, he spends his time investing in social programs and hires ex-convicts in his company in order to reform them and bla bla” and then never mentions it again for the next 300 issues? Then we have to assume that he’s still doing that, because that’s what the writer said. It’s the Batman comics, not the Bruce Wayne comics.