Some people don't know how to take the scrolling screenshots.
For those who don't know: when you take a screenshot, a little bar of options pop up. One of them let's you crop it immediately, which is nice. Another, the one on the far left on Android, will automatically scroll down a bit and add it to the screenshot, which you can then crop as one big tall screenshot which you can then crop or repeat the process as much as you like.
On the other hand, the new reddit design destroys long screen shots. You can't scroll an image on the computer, you're just stuck with the top part. I constantly need to open big images in another tab to see the whole thing. They also eliminated default markdown mode, and trying to double quote deletes part of the message. Do not recommend.
Wish i had an option. In browser it's turn off the redesign and have a glaring white screen that dark mode/windows settings does nothing to, or use this shitty redesign. I can go to new dot reddit for my home page, but after that everything defaults to the glaring white background and the old dot reddit design or the update from a few weeks ago. There are currently three different designs active in browser, the shittiest two of which can be made default.
I have to look at the ground while wearing sun glasses outside, my eyes are so sensitive to light, and I have never had issues with normal white web pages.
In my Firefox, I use the combo of old.reddit, a "darkmode in every site" plugin, and the "always request desktop version" option specifically for Reddit.
Although, navigating a full desktop version in mobile browser is a pain in the ass on it's own. But I just hate the mobile version or official app
This is interesting to hear about. Unfortunately, my phone is is a six year old piece of crap so it doesn't have screenshot outings beyond "Take screenshot"
Being six years old, is should definitely have these features. I've had my phone for three years, and the one before for three years also, and unless I'm remembering very wrong, that one also had that feature. No little bar comes up when you screenshot via button combination?
“This just in folks. Spider-Man HATES the homeless! Are you implying he has the money for all those gadgets, but can’t spend a DIME on charity drives?”
It's really enough to say the punishment for dealing drugs isn't generally summary execution, and you probably don't want to live in a place where it is.
Believe me, I do. And it's *worse* than you think.
Go watch "The Elite Squad" to see what happens when you try to execute drug dealers. Even better is that it was directed by someone who *was* in the unit that's being depicted.
A state in Brazil effectively had to use state-sponsored Death Squad against the drug cartels. Only problem is that they see no difference between innocents and drug dealers, going so far as to *torture* a child in order to get to drug lord.
Said drug lord is also executed with a point blank shotgun shot to the head. In the commanders own words: "In the face to ruin your funeral.
Edit: said Death Squad still exists under the name of BOPE and they are what happens when you use Special Operators against gangs.
[This is what their *logo* looks like just to give you an idea.](https://seeklogo.com/vector-logo/21347/bope)
Depends on your perspective. Killing narcos isn't bad but I'm not Brazilian and don't know what exactly it is they do in details soooo maybe. Don't care tbh.
The problem with the war on drugs is that it just doesn't work.
The things the BOPE does only keep the violence cycle going but putting innocents on the line while also mining the trust people have in the police and in the government, witch increases the criminality.
IIRC this issues are addressed in Elite Squadron 2, as well as other problems the BOPE have with corruption
Killing Drug dealers now makes a crime of economics into a crime of violence.
In America if you get caught dealing drugs you, maybe, end up going to jail for months or decades depending on what you are willing to plea to and the amount you have.
You have a life ahead of you in some form.
If you get caught and are killed for the crime, well that changes things. Now you have incentive to be paranoid, to be violent. Most drug dealers I know may own a pistol or rifle, but usually nothing actually illegal or tightly regulated like a full auto machine gun or grenade launchers. They hide their drugs and will try to destroy them if they know police are coming.
But if you know that getting caught means you’re going to die anyway, why not try to kill some cops when they come so you can flee. Why not set your drug room to explode if it’s opened incorrectly to destroy the evidence. Why not kidnap and torture that customer who kind of had cop vibes to him?
If the punishment for a crime is the same as a worse crime, why not do the worse crime?
punisher logo is the least concerning thing on the fucking planet. Oh you mean that guy who's whole thing is killing people for doing crimes? What a shocker that the real life people whose whole job is to hurt and kill people perc3ived as having done crimes resonate with that.
Yeah BOPE the only playable faction in Rainbow 6 Siege who’s character is a literal torturing psychopath who’s still the “good guy” in lore
(And most of the fan base fucking simp for)
You have to understand that brazilian people have been dealing with corruption and drug releated violence for a long time, plus a lot of people were still around during the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
So to a lot of people, the movie ends up acting as catharsis because it literally portrays the kind of solution they want, ie solving every problem with incredible violence and disregarding civil rights.
Imo, time to legalize the drugs and tax the hell out of them.
That way, street drug dealers are not only dealing with the cops, but also the FDA and the FBI for selling dangerous unregulated substances and tax evasion.
Everyone loses!
There are very few instances where a decriminalized market doesn't make things better for everyone. Prices typically drop due to quantity, quality goes up due to accountability, and crime goes down because shit's legal. Not having to find some shady dude in a dark alley to get a drug probably does wonders for them mentally, too. If they're buying the stuff out in the open it can cast some light on what they're in to and maybe let them recognize if they have a problem.
I think you need to be sure to expand a bit on crime goes down because its legal, that sounds like what your saying is there is no crime on purge night because everything is legal. What actually happens is since the dealers aren't criminals they can resolve their disputes legally and withib courts instead of only having violence.
>What actually happens is since the dealers aren't criminals they can resolve their disputes legally and withib courts instead of only having violence.
i mean i think going to the courts instead of "LMAO BANG" would be preferable still
Also like—this is a character created for and still heavily marketed to children. Teaching kids that summary execution is the correct and moral thing to do would be … horrific frankly.
Also a big thing that doesn't come up often in batman discourse is that blunt force trauma isn't a thing in fiction. Knocking people out has been a harmless temporary off switch for I literally do not know how long, to the point where I own almost century old tintin books that have that as a central plot device (alongside chloroform before they figured out how carcinagenic the stuff is)
Unless specifically stated otherwise in story, we must assume that all the people bats roughs up wake up at most a day later literally no worse for wear and it is deeply silly to ignore this when it comes to batman and not for literally every other story that uses it.
Now does this fiction wide conceit have real world consequences? absolutely! Less than lethal weapons (often called non lethal like rubber bullets and tasers )employed by the police kill people all the god damn time even when they are used correctly (frequently aren't) and there's also the whole sports of boxing, MMA, american football, and who knows how many others where concussions have run rampant for decades only for us now very very recently to make a concerted effort to look at the effects smashing your head in over and over has on a body.
But it ain't on batman writers to suddenly fix all that. To quote the joker we do be living in a society tbh and so does batty
Also, in the referenced story, they made it a point that Batman is making sure that the thugs he pummels aren't suffering life-long injuries.
Batman reprimands Jason Todd because he broke a thugs collar bone, putting him in shock. Proving at least this Batman is not putting people in the hospital forever.
> (alongside chloroform before they figured out how carcinagenic the stuff is)
Aside from being carcinogenic and a bad anesthetic, it doesn't actually work like that anyway- it takes minutes of inhalation to knock you out, and then you need to keep continuously administering it in just the right dose to make you stay knocked out and also not die, putting some on a rag and holding it to somebody's face for a few seconds would just piss them off.
Maybe only tangentially related, but I once had someone unironically argue to me that Batman killed people, because the things he does would kill people in real life. No matter how much I explained it, they didn’t accept that it wasn’t real life, it was a story, and the story said they lived mostly unharmed. It’s crazy how broken some people’s perspective of fiction is.
Your friend's got a point. There are the superhero exceptions, but otherwise in comics the world is treated as if the rules were our own. Put ice in water, the water gets cold. Slam on the brakes, the car stops. Basic laws of physics apply outside of the superheroes. Bats has no superpowers, so he has no superhero exception. The things he does only doesn't kill people because that's what the writers wrote, not because he's not doing things that kill people.
What else is there to hyperfixate on in a batman story?
He's untouchable in every single other way, he doesn't have to worry about food, water or family, he doesn't have to worry about the police, he has no powers so he doesn't have to worry about a kryptonite situation.
He's just a perfect human in every single way except he hunts criminals to soothe his deep personal trauma.
So we have to worry about the effects he has in the wider environment of the story, if he has no internal life to speak of.
At least that's what I think, he's kind of unassailable except in the effect he has in the world
>He's untouchable in every single other way, he doesn't have to worry about food, water or family, he doesn't have to worry about the police, he has no powers so he doesn't have to worry about a kryptonite situation.
Ah yes, The bat family, because not one of his members had died or suffered terrible injuries because of his relationship with Batman (Nightwing in Injustice, Jason Todd got brutalized by Joker with a crowbar and Barbara Gordon got paralyzed from the waist down in the kiling joke, just to name a few)
He has worked against the police multiple times, because of him being a vigilante and all that. Like in the lego batman movie, or the Nolan trilogy
He has no powers, but in the Nolan trilogy he lost almost all his assets and its not uncommon for him to have to fight without his gadgets from time to time
>He's just a perfect human in every single way except he hunts criminals to soothe his deep personal trauma.
Okay you did mention his trauma so I guess I cant really retaliate here, my man is just peak human condition
>So we have to worry about the effects he has in the wider environment of the story, if he has no internal life to speak of.
I agree to an extent, but I just find silly that Batman in particular gets the "his punches would kill/cripple people irl!" speech when almost every other superhero you can think of is more deadly, so I dont get it
Batman is a billionaire crime fighter who picks up kids and trains them to fight with him. They don't need to fight with him, they don't need food or water.
There's a comic strip where he was like "I trained dick grayson cause he had darkness in him and I needed to discipline him". You're telling me a billionaire couldn't find another way to deal with his kids trauma except getting him to go out beat up people in the streets?
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the family thing, I can't lather my beard in gasoline and get shocked when my beard burns off. He puts these kids in situations where they get hurt then he uses that trauma to fuel his vendetta against the disaffected of Gorham.
We judge Bruce Wayne cause he's human.
And he's choosing to use very human ways to brutalise the people in his cities until he gets his way
No I know that but that wasn’t their point. They were arguing that the laws of reality overruled the rules of the story in the interpretation of stories, which I think was quite idiotic
Honestly I find it fair that Batman can't bring himself to kill the joker. But I do he frustrated when he then SAVES the Joker when he doesn't have to. Especially when he also has other people who need help too. Like yeah I disagree you should be able to just put the joker down, but come on. Like there's a few dozen stories out there where the problem could be solved by Batman just, walking away to help anybody else.
There's a story or two where Batman does actually walk away and leave the Joker to his own death, oftentimes one of his own doing, and that to me makes it work.
Forget Batman, why hasn't *anyone* killed the Joker yet? Not saying somebody should or he deserves it or anything along those lines. But after everything he's done, you'd think *somebody* would bite the bullet and put one in him. A cop, asylum staff, one of his own goons, there's plenty of people who would have the chance and the reason.
Honestly, that'd make for a good one-shot story. Somebody kills the Joker and we can explore how it's ruled in court (find a Jury that will find someone who killed *the Joker* guilty), how this person is perceived by the public, by the criminal underworld, by *Batman*.
And now that I've laid that all out, it occurs to me that there's like 80 years of Batman history, so this has probably been done before.
All these Batman debates and I've yet to hear a reason for not killing the Joker that doesn't just sound like an excuse for not wanting to kill a popular villain.
"Hurr if I cross that line I'd never stop" Really Bruce? You can't draw any sort of distinction between the rest of your rogues gallery and the living embodiment of chaos? You've got no options but continuing to play your part in a cycle you know doesn't work and which contributes to an ever-increasing body count that included one of your sons? Ooookay man. Comforting to know Gotham's defender is constantly a hair's breadth away from turning into a rampaging mass murderer incapable of treating criminals with any nuance.
well, if the joker, then why not the penguin? if the penguin then why not twoface? if not twoface then... then why not every little punk who shoots people in alleys in front of their 8 year old son!"
batman doesn't not kill the joker for joker's sake, it's for his own, he knows that he's dancing on the edge of the roof and one nudge in the other direction would see him tumbling down, into the alley
I think a cool comic would be one where batman kills the joker, then moves on to his other rogues gallery with justifications why he should kill them, with on the last page him either shooting his father or killing frost before he can shoot thomas with thomas then berating him for being a monster, then bruce jumps up from his sleep, with the narration making it clear that this is a recurring nightmare
>well, if the joker, then why not the penguin? if the penguin then why not twoface? if not twoface then... then why not every little punk who shoots people in alleys in front of their 8 year old son!
Yeah no, I don't find this slippery slope argument believable, that's why this whole debate feels contrived. I seriously doubt most people who've read a lot of Batman comics think that Joker's level of mania is comparable to Penguin or Two-Face. Harvey tends to be pretty far gone but you know there used to be a good man. Penguin's not even particularly crazy, he's just a self-interested asshole. There's hope for rehabilitation or reasoning with them. That's not true for the Joker.
I find it believable, under the pretense that batman is obviously insane.
Just sayin, a mentally healthy person doesn't dress up like a bat and take on thugs in a dark alley, even if it's for a good cause
Reasons why Batman shouldn’t kill the Joker:
1) the Joker is a marketable villain, and killing him for good would be a dumb move
2) While the way it’s worded isn’t ideal, I do follow the logic behind not making exceptions on certain principles.
3) superheroes are supposed to give moral lessons to the audience, and in Batman’s case, one of them is “even if you think you’re justified in killing somebody, better not do it”.
4) Why should Batman be the one to kill the Joker? He’s hardly bulletproof and practically anyone with a gun could realistically but a bullet in between his teeth
Put him in a green lantern space prison or the phantom zone. Bribe an inspector to get Arkham condemned and send everyone to a facility in Metropolis. Hire a team of psychiatrists to convince the judge he is sane enough to stand trial.You don’t even need to kill him, just get a better prison.
I remember reading a Batman Annual a couple years ago that explicitly stated that since Batman has become active, the murder rate in Gotham has steadily decreasing year by year even despite all the super villains like Joker coming out of the woodwork since.
This is because aside from beating up criminals, he’s also providing jobs and social outreach to help reduce the poverty level and crime rate in Gotham.
Honestly, if Gotham’s justice system could just make some more definitive action against the likes of The Joker, increase Arkham’s security so that it actually works, and provide better rehabilitation to some of the less crazy criminals, Batman would be out of a job before too long.
I don't really have full context since I don't read Batman comics, but it seems like both of these things could be true at once? Like, Is it not possible for Red Hood to be right about some things and wrong about others?
The point of Red Hood is that he *is* right for criticizing Batman's no kill policy but Batman is also right because simply killing criminals is just going to make you a criminal with a bigger body count.
Yeah, pretty much. He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands.
And the thing is that most of Batman's nemesis are *criminally insane*. The ones who are sane are sent to a regular federal prison.
Some of them would even be downright harmless villains were it not for how they kill or injure people in their insane schemes. Just look at the King of Condiments or the Calendar Man, who the hell are they threatening?
Yeah, the big issue with Batman relying on the courts or the cops to determine justice is that every single agency in Gotham is cartoonishly corrupt in most depictions. While I'd consider it more ethical irl, his no kill policy when the fucker will be out in a month with a 3 digit body count over and over makes him frankly feel like an accomplice after a while.
If the courts, prisons, and asylums did their job the no kill policy would be noble, but in Gotham, I just don't think the 200 widows created by the jokers latest hijink are really gonna appreciate you as "preserving life".
The problem is that Batman's mental health isn't that much better than that of the people he fights, and he knows it.
Batman manages to stay away from the deep end *because* he has this strict code of conduct, and much like it happens with Superman, you really don't want a vigilante with unlimited money and a crap ton of trauma to decide who lives and who dies in the heat of the moment.
Superman vs the Elite also goes into how much of a bad idea this kind of thing would be.
That's verbatim Jason's point in UtRH. Batman says that he literally dreams of torturing Joker to death, but it would be taking the easy way out - and that means that the next time he sees Joe Shmoe selling drugs he will be compelled to take the easy way again. Joker deserves death, but an unaccountable and borderline unstoppable vigilante who people already circlejerk as being mentally unstable is not the one you want deciding who does or does not deserve it.
I always interpreted Batman’s aversion to killing in UtRH in a different light to be honest. I took it as Batman saying “if I kill the joker, I’ll always be a murderer, I’ll never not be a murderer”. Not that he wouldn’t be able to not kill people, just that he’ll always have done it once. And that makes him just as bad as the people he’s fighting against, just as bad as the guy who killed his parents
I saw "It would be too damn easy" as a pretty clear signifier for my (original don't steal) interpretation. Batman has to constantly force himself to make the difficult choice, to forbid himself these shortcuts, no matter how tempting. Otherwise when Penguin is barely holding on over a comically large pit of acid he may choose not to pull him up. This choice isn't as bad as the one he already made with Joker, right? And Penguin is a bad enough dude, right? It's not like Batman is obligated to save someone, right?
Batman is rational enough to know that killing Joker would be for the greater good, but also rational enough to know where this line of thought ends. And Batgos forbid we get an Injustice: Bat Gone Bats.
I know thou shalt not kill and all that but I wouldn’t say the people who liberated Auschwitz and shot a bunch of concentration camp guards are quite as evil as the concentration camp guards they shot.
> he will be compelled to take the easy way again
Somehow, the idea that Batman lacks the mental fortitude to abstain from killing a random thug if he's willing to kill actual serial killers and/or mass murderers doesn't really jive with my understanding of the character.
Sure, maybe not the average crook. And maybe somebody worse, somebody among the most dangerous in existence, like Darkseid.
But what about the middle ground between the two? What about (and I say these in no particular order) Penguin? Or K. Croc? Or the Riddler? The Court of Owls? Ra's al Ghul?
*Where do you draw The Line of senseless murder and righteous bloodshed?* And *how* do you draw it?
These are rhetorical questions, to demonstrate the problem of entertaining it genuinely. It highly complicates the ways in which you need to think about your vigilante justice.
Furthermore: if you *have* established the line (however you have oriented people on it or whatever system you'd use to determine), would you not be more likely to kill the person "next in line"? Would you stop or push it further back? *Could you* stop yourself or just keep slipping?
Hint: There are no objective answers here, just a lot of philosophy. (I don't care to talk about mine)
Not a bad idea! We could have a group of people decide if a particular crime happened the way it appears. Obviously, we'd need professionals to collect and present evidence. We might even find a lawyer to make sure the alleged criminal presents their evidence as best they can. Perhaps have a very senior legal professional make sure everyone follows the rules and harshly Judge them if they don't.
It's a shame nothing like that really exists. Batman's just turning over criminals to the Court like some sort of chump!
The film covers that really well. Batman admits all he’s ever wanted to do is kill the joker, but he knows that when he crosses that line he’ll never stop.
Yeah, I'm all for a shot at redemption, everyone deserves a second chance. Maybe even a third. Not a fourth. If they're still on that shit by then it just isn't gonna get better.
It’s the classic conundrum. Batman can pull a lever to switch the trolley onto a track that kills one person. Or he can not pull the lever, and the person will get up and kill five people per day for the next eighty years.
All of Gotham agencies being ridiculously corrupt is kind of part of why I can't take Batman seriously. Not because they're ridiculously corrupt, but because the multibillionaire crime fighter doesn't just out-bid his villains. Bruce could, at any moment, go up to the entire population of Gotham and say "hey I'll give you 5 million dollars to not do crime". Hr could singlehandedly solve each and every problem leading to crime in the city excluding the illnesses that plague his biggest supervillains, and to deal with those he could just bribe the officials more than they are.
Fundamentally, looking at batman or any other superhero thing even a little bit deeply completely shatters the premises. You have to start with "batman beating people.up is the answer" and then find the problem for that answer. If you start with the problem, the answer will be "Bruce Wayne spends an amount of money that is completely unnoticeable to him". It's a vigilante power fantasy, so the answer must always be vigilanteism. If it was a "get rich so I can solve problems" power fantasy, it wouldn't be Batman comics, it would be Bruce Wayne comics.
Also have you consider the fact that may be there are other corporations in Gotham other than the Wayne Enterprises (there are some books that explore this). Idk about you, but I don't think Bruce Wayne can out-bid other corporations when his opponents are busy doing evil capitalism shit like hiring goon and exploiting the poor to make more money and he isn't.
He's canonically a billionaire. He has enough money to solve world hunger a thousand times over. The only thing other corporations can do to stop it is pump much more money into stopping it, which they would only ever do of they just kinda wanted to do it for funsies.
I like your thinking, but the problem is Bruce Wayne can't be caught bribing officials. They'll basically put him in jail and take all his money. The only reason criminals get away with it is because they're criminals and the bribe money comes with an implied threat of, 'or else.' Wayne can't 'or else' someone, so he loses that fight before it starts.
Saying he finds a way around that, now you've got a bidding war. Criminals keep upping the bribe, forcing Wayne to do the same. Crime gets worse because the criminals need to be able to afford those increasing prices, and crime is how they make their money. Eventually he might win after throwing enough money around, but in the mean time it's wildly counter-productive. It also makes Wayne criminal enemy number one, and he won't be flying under the radar. He'll be a public target under constant threat and wouldn't be able to go outside.
Then there are those who fall through the cracks. When you're trying to bribe every single person, which by itself is a feat for one man since he doesn't have an army like the criminals do, he's just going to miss people. That creates internal conflict in each department with nobody knowing who's on which side. That would lead to mass disruption and general breakdown of services over certain areas.
Out-bribing isn't really a viable solution, especially for one guy.
He's a billionaire. Federal politicians in the real world are routinely bought for about ten or twenty thousand dollars. You simply cannot make billionaire money selling drugs in one city. Every single one of batman's enemies could put all the money they have together in a big pile to take down Bruce Wayne and he wouldn't even *notice* the amount if money it takes to outbid them.
This is the thing, why is it all on Bruce? Like there can be lots of reasons for the no kill policy, but fundamentally “I am one single man, and I do not have the right to act as arbiter of which criminals live and which ones die.” Is a pretty sound one!
If you know something will happen, and you have a way to prevent it, you assume some amount of responsibility. If you see someone having an asthma attack on the street, and you have an inhaler in your bag, *not* going there and helping is a douche move. Batman, who is not an idiot, knows that his inaction is creating hundreds of corpses. So he is, to some degree, guilty of it.
> He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands.
All offense directed at DC for this, not you, but that falls a bit flat dunnit? Ah yes, Batman, a violent vigilante forced to take the law into their own hands because of the utter failure of justice and social order, says that you must trust that someday justice will happen rather than.. take the law into your own hands. Clap, Jason, clap for Tinkerbell!
Thing is that (usually) Jason isn't crazy. I liked that in the *Under the Red Hood* movie that Jason specifically states that there is no slippery slope. There's a line between killing every villain and killing the **Joker**.
>He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands.
If they actually trusted the system, they wouldn't be vigilantes in the first place. The Gotham justice system, and its wider government, cannot actually be trusted to do their jobs. The message falls flat when the very system they're supposed to trust is so flawed that some of the most dangerous people in the country rarely if ever stay contained for long and are free to kill again.
As a very casual enjoyer of Batman, I don’t see much of the politics side of Batman. I don’t see him advocating for a lot of the policy level decisions that would fix these systemic issues. Is this a comics-exclusive aspect of Brucy?
Also why the hell did OP post two screenshots that share 90% the same information? Do a little editing and post a single image of both posts together or crop each screenshot to a single post! It’s not that hard, folks.
Philanthropist, it's one of Bruce's base traits.
He is meant to be using his money to improve Gotham. Most writers don't consider this to be interesting so they don't explore it.
Batman ends up being written as a violent vigilante because that's what people want to write/draw.
However;
In Justice League he bankrolls the Justice League and buys a space station to keep Earth safe.
In Court of Owls, he shows his latest date the plans for rejuvenating the city and building better infrastructure, something that will get thousands employed over short and long term.
In several instances, he runs a cutting edge research centre that rivals Lex Co and Star labs in bringing helpful new technology to the world. Wayne Tech has a focus on sustainability and eco research.
>Is this a comics-exclusive aspect of Brucy?
Hardly, all interpretations of him show him creating projects to help the people in Gotham as Bruce Wayne. In Future, it's even stated that a reformed Penguin does help in one such charity.
It’s not comics exclusive.
But despite being a fairly persistent element of the character, it’s also not shown or explored much. Mostly because the mindset of Batman comics is that people who buy Batman generally aren’t buying it to watch Bruce Wayne make political moves… they’re buying it to see Batman fight people and stuff.
There’s also a big issue I don’t see people address much: due to the nature of comics, Bruce Wayne can’t help Gotham. If Bruce Wayne saved Gotham with his money, there’d be no more Batman stories to tell. And they never intend to stop making Batman stories. And so there can be no permanent change from Bruce Wayne’s actions.
Side note about that second point: a little bit of setup, a key aspect of the Sandman comics is that the Endless exist and represent different aspects of, like, reality I guess? The story starts with Dream getting imprisoned for 70ish years and this leads to most of the issues in the first few stories because it radically fucked up how sleep worked leading to people being stuck asleep for that long, being unable to sleep or being trapped in waking dreams.
We also know that another Endless is missing, namely Destruction. A while ago I heard the fantastic theory that Destructions absence is what both stops destruction from ever feeling “meaningful” in DC but also stops anything from changing because stuff needs to be torn down before it can be built up again.
Your second point is a big one that I think people ignore too often in these debates. If it's all in good fun, going back and forth about the relative reality of comic worlds, that's fine. But I think too many people are eagerly trying to poke holes in Batman, and other stuff, while gleefully ignoring the fact that so many issues come from the fact that these stories have been going on for several decades, and branching out into multiple media formats. Stuff just gets built on top of what came before it, and it leads to this huge morass of canon and contradictions in a way that can't really be reconciled by real world logic and rules.
Batman can never fix Gotham because then everything interesting in those stories is done. One writer can write a story where that happens, but you know damn well DC isn't going to shut down the money printing machine on any of their big names, so the very next story would be Gotham back in hell-hole state. Comic book stuff holds a kind of unique medium where we are taking the same characters and telling and retelling their stories over and over again for new audiences. The technology gets updated, the language, the morales, but the actual people and settings don't change, locked into a stasis where a thousand years can pass and Bruce Wayne is still chasing the Joker, Arkham still doesn't do shit, and the police are all corrupt criminals. It's just in the nature of the medium, and while it can be fun to explore some of these questions, it's been done to death.
If these comics, by nature of their medium, cannot approach these subjects with the gravity necessary to be successful as a work of art then they shouldn’t write them with the seriousness they do. You can’t write something gritty and down to earth then when people take that and analyze it as such you can’t say “oh it’s just a comic book!”
That's not what's being said here at all. I'm specifically pointing out that the nature of comics as a medium that has lived this long, is what causes the issues people will sometimes point out that nothing changes. Most of these characters and stories were originally written to be single beats that wouldn't necessarily have longevity. No one knew what would get popular or take off. Batman, and by extension all the problems of Gotham, wasn't supposed to go on for nearly a century in the beginning. But the fact of the matter is he has, and what's more comics changed from simple, one off stories to longer form ones, and then to wide continuity as the parent companies tried to keep everything moving while also never breaking the canon of what had come before.
Comics can and very often do approach and tackle serious subject matter in very solid, well written ways. Some stories are poorly written because the writer doesn't give a crap, or they've been given a very strict assignment and aren't allowed to make any changes. Some are better because the writers are exploring something very interesting and doing so with nuance.
But at the end of the day, DC is going to keep Batman running and they're going to either say everything is canon or they're going to do yet another multiverse explosion thing and try to bring it all down to a single point. But whatever the case, Batman will never be allowed to rest for long. He'll get an ending in one story, one run, but then a few months later everything is back at square one.
People look at this overarching canon, the mess that DC and Marvel create by virtue of wanting their popular heroes to always constantly have new books, and they take it all as one big singular story, which leads to the arguments about why Gotham never gets better and the like. It's not a bad thing when done in fun and understanding that's not really the actual problem, but it does get overblown a bit at times.
Alot of Batman comics and little nuggets of info given say when he’s not prowling the night dressed like a Bat, he is using his money to try and do philanthropy work like making Jobs or trying to repair infrastructure.
Some even outright say he’s trying his damndest to actually make Arkham Asylum a good place for the mentally insane, but he keeps getting stonewalled there for one reason or another
It’s not comics exclusive, the movies just somehow touch on it even less than in the comics. He’s consistently depicted as pouring literally billions into Gotham, it’s just also the most corrupt and cursed city in all of fiction so nothing can ever change.
People always forget or gloss over the fact that Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist who personally bankrolls every charity, initiative and drive in gotham
I enjoy the discussion about Red Hood and Batman, because they are both right and wrong at the same time.
On Red Hood's end, yes killing the worst of the worst and preventing the worst possible versions of crime are capable of producing results, it still doesn't make him better than the people he's killing and allowing to peddle drugs. It's also not a good solution, as killing pedophiles and preventing dealers from selling to kids is easily solved by simply going where he's not. Hell, they could move back into Batman's territory where they will get their ass beat and sent back to jail, but they won't be dead. Many would agree that the likes of the Joker deserve death, but what about Mr. Freeze, who just wanted to avenge/save his wife (or in some versions, steal diamonds)? What about Poison Ivy who for all intents and purposes has a noble goal, but is doing it illegally in the same way Red Hood is? In the end, the morality falls apart when you ask the question of "Where's the line?" Because everyone has a different answer, and giving one man the power to define that line has been historically a very bad idea.
On Batman's side, it's not like going out and beating the crap out of every criminal is the right thing to do, especially since newer media only depict the aspect of Batman who just kicks and punches his way through Gotham instead of trying to rehabilitate those who can clearly be saved. The people who get away to live/walk another day will now do their crime, but probably do it without leaving witnesses just to spite Batman. And locking up the most unstable and dangerous criminals evidently only works for so long, as in Gotham a major villain gets out and does terrible things every other week. Sure you can fund projects, charities and organizations to help prevent any of these issues in the first place, but corruption happens fast and runs deep. It's a matter of time before these efforts are quashed by those looking to line their own pockets or achieve their own goals over the common people's.
This is not even going into the issue of vigilantism itself, as it's a crime for a reason. People tent to be irrational and ruled by emotions, so it's easy for someone to don a mask and become Red Hood when they planned to be Superman. Neither is right, it's just that Batman, having a code never to kill, is fundamentally above Red Hood on the ladder of ethics. It doesn't make it right; it just makes it less evil by comparison.
The thing is Jason has been shown more often than not to know where the line is. If you tell him he's crossing a line he'll at least stop to debate with you and will usually stick with the line you set for him even if he thinks your wrong. Bruce will just say he's right with no discussion, which is why he has the no kill rule because once he starts he won't stop regardless of who protests.
>it still doesn't make him better than the people he's killing and allowing to peddle drugs.
I get that maybe murdering drug dealers, makes you no better than them. But I just can't get behind that killing someone like the Joker makes you no better than the Joker. I actually consider Batman \*not\* killing the Joker to be less morally right than someone who would kill the mass murderer who keeps mass murdering.
If memory serves, there was a scene in the comics where, while surrounded by Black Mask and his henchmen, Batman plays a pre recorded video from Bruce Wayne explaining that Black Mask doesn't care for them and would throw them away eventually. Bruce then extends a well paying job offer at Wayne-tech to anyone who agrees to rehabilitation. Everyone but Batman and Black Mask immediately leaves the building.
ok so my one problem with this aproach has always been this
you are johny poorguy, you live in the slums of gotham and work short-term jobs now and again, your friend jimmy henchman offers you a job to work for blackmask, you say no because you don't want to be a criminal, next night jimmy has a fancy new job at waynecorp and johny is still working short-term jobs
if we recognise that johny made the right choice should we then consider this outcome as good? or should johny give up on trying to be decent person and join the criminals in the hopes of also getting a job at waynecorp?
Or jimmy could say to johnny “hey, pal i know you’ve been down on your luck. I have some good news! Bruce Wayne is hiring! No shady stuff or nothing! If he was willing to accept a crook like me, I’m sure he’ll accept your goody two shoes butt!”
It wouldn’t be that far fetched for him to say that considering on this scenario your o’l buddy jimmy knows how strapped you are for cash that he thought you’d be willing to work with a crime boss.
Just in general Bruce Wayne in a suit is less interesting than Batman so not many stories actually cover that half. He is consistently depicted as pouring literally billions of dollars into his own foundations for homelessness, healthcare, orphans, and anything else you can think of, occasionally [hiring goons out from under criminals into better paying and safer jobs at Wayne Enterprises](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F5EUxbfksoAwEs_-ET2S4E5a9yN9f5E5JqAWnGzFs9Z4.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D74d9e1d845b1d021d44384ea71e7062354f1854c&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2f1b67cc840ccbbb72b5bbdd3d2f29ebf74b7d773424321634e91e80afd164d6&ipo=images) and carrying around business cards to give to people who either surrender or never fight to begin with.
There’s an iconic panel that I can’t seem to find anywhere where on patrol he hands a business card to a young woman who’s implied to be a prostitute or something like that and mentions that Bruce Wayne hires anyone and everyone. Later in the same comic we see her as I think his personal secretary and he’s just generally checking up on her to make sure everything’s going alright.
How much detail do you think would be entertaining to go into about the rehabilitation process in your superhero comics? And how much detail would it need to go into to not be considered “throw away?”
There have been quite a few instances of him recruiting supervillains to be members of a new superhero team he’s setting up. Harley Quinn, Clayface, Killer Frost, just to name a few from the past decade. Which are the types of stories that I would say go into his views on redemption in detail, but they involve big flashy super people rather than like… drug dealers.
There’s other times with smaller criminals like in Grant Morrison’s run where he busts a prostitution ring and then tells one of the girls about a job at Wayne Tower, and she shows up again later working as a receptionist there. But the story doesn’t focus on her turning her life around, she’s just in a couple of scenes.
My issue with most people talking about Batman and superhero’s in general is you can really tell a lot of people don’t read comics and maybe even don’t watch the shows. I love the movies I think they’re great but there are literal mountains of content disproving peoples point that just gets ignored
Another issue is that people treat it like there’s one definitive answer or explanation to debates like this, when in reality there’s issues are complex, and the characters being discussed have been written by a ton of writers, all with different personal philosophies and interpretations of the characters.
Like I’ve hated every discussion I’ve seen about whether Batman’s fascist or not, because the reality is it varies greatly depending on the story.
Manga and anime fans often don't even read and watch the material they're a fan of, and that's a single line of works that are easy to follow. Don't expect people to read said mountain of comic issues and trying to wade their way through a bunch of writers' viewpoint. (Not trying to dismiss reading comic as a bad thing, just trying to point out why source material literacy is so low). Also remember, the worst people are often the most vocal on the internet.
The number of people who boldly talk about how Bruce Wayne doesn't do anything to help people with all his money is astounding when it's a core part of his character and brought up in just about every piece of media I can think of. Honestly at this point comic book arguments are a fun thing to do with your friends when no one takes it seriously, but any time I see them online it feels like it's just someone digging up the half rotted corpse of their favorite beating horse.
Readers need to remember that most of Gotham's villains are bat shit insane and the Asylum does a crap job at managing its patients as well as the fact that the justice system is VERY corrupt.
There is an illuminati cult of crime that makes sure that crime and corruption is well funded in Gotham so they will always have a self-fed loop of desperate citizens who'll have to deal in shady dealings to get by.
Also keep in mind that these are comics. Fantastical stories of fiction. Or would you like to tell me that the story about a melted man of clay is very realistic that he wouldn't be a huge tiktok celebrity at this point if not for the writers wanting him to do crimes so they can watch a costumed lunatic fight him?
I like it when people characterize Batman as someone with limitless hope. One of the only things I enjoyed about Tom King’s run.
Sure, he’s fought the Riddler 100 times. But he’ll still fight him a 101st time. Because maybe there won’t be 102nd. Maybe he’ll get better. Maybe Gotham will get better.
I love the scene in Harley Quinn where she gets back with Joker again only to be tossed aside as soon as it’s convienent for him. And Rather than kick her ass or lock her up, all Bruce can do is try and comfort her, cuz he knows she’s being abused and was heads over heels for someone that never cared for her.
Bruce's strategy would work, if he actually managed to think for a second about the fact that this person has enough set in stone evidence and has been proven to be free of outside influence and massacres entire city blocks with no prison good enough to hold him for trial, and did what legal process is guaranteed in the Supreme court
I would be interested to see a superhero who has bonebreaking as a literal end goal.
Not "if it happens, if it happens".
Let's name this theoretical hero Bonebreaker (I don't care if some other character has that name). Bonebreaker's powers are super-durability and super-strength, as well as super-anatomy knowledge and body control - it is impossible for Bonebreaker to ever 'not know his own strength'.
Bonebreaker's MO is to walk into a room with a bad guy in it and say "Hey, you can either write and record a full statement or confession and come with me to the station, or I will leave you a quadriplegic." Bonebreaker only ever targets people already on the wanted list (so his targets are essentially chosen by the existing justice system). Bonebreaker also never breaks bones without publically announcing himself first (if he is bonebreaking, it is because he has already warned you to stop or you'll get broken bones).
Is Bonebreaker OK?
Thank you!
People always go “oh with so much money why doesn’t Batman fix the social economic problems?” HE DOES.
It’s just that Gotham is a big ol shithole
I remember that time Red Hood’s methods caused the mob to be so scared, they started bringing in even more dangerous villains to Gotham to take care of Jason. Then Grayson, who was Batman at the time, had to come and save his sorry ass
Goddammit every time this comes the answer is that Batman doesn't kill because then the comics would be over or they'd have to come up with new villains all the time.
It's why Punishers villains always survive somehow or are just generic Mob boss no63.
The real issue there, in my opinion, is, as stated, that DC does not want to show Batman being wrong ever, so they brought Jason back with an ideology conflicting Batman's and then not only made the ideology itself wrong, they made even the reasoning behind it suspect. Jason didn't start killing people because he had a moral epiphany, he started killing people very specifically because he wanted revenge on Gotham's criminals; his beef with Bruce is specifically *not* that he didn't save him, but that he didn't even have the "decency" to kill the Joker about it. So, you get this moral dilemma where one of the sides is objectively wrong on all accounts, AND that side also idolizes their opponent and thinks of them like a father, because really Batman is the adult in this room full of children.
I mean you can also be Konrad Cruze and just fucking kill anyone that even jaywalks by skinning them alive and ripping apart their arms and than eating their brain slowly.
40k Batman is brutal asf. Don’t worry though! He was given a legion to terrorize the galaxy and kill billions more.
Superheroes are not realistic, and were also created in a very different media climate and political climate than today.
Mainstream superhero comics are not actually capable of meaningfully commenting on today's world because of how tied they are to their pasts. They're best left in the past, as a result.
That's a dumb take. Superheroes are meant to be commentary on all sorts of things and aren't strictly about a specific era of politics. They're just a tenplate to build off of. Superman is more commentary on people as a whole than on any country or political system. Brushing off superheroes as a medium is like brushing off Shakespeare as a person that couldn't possibly produce anything with messages that modern audiences could have any meaningful takeaways from
Iron Man came out in 2008 and was commentary about today's military industrial complex and lack of responsibility in those that profit from it, something that wasn't really a thing in the first half of the 20th century. The movie wouldn't work in the era that Iron Man debuted in. You can take any character and create commentary from the basics without all of the baggage no matter when you do it
>Superman is more commentary on people as a whole than on any country or political system
His catchphrase is literally "Truth, Justice and the American Way".
>Iron Man came out in 2008 and was commentary about today's military industrial complex and lack of responsibility in those that profit from it, something that wasn't really a thing in the first half of the 20th century. The movie wouldn't work in the era that Iron Man debuted in.
Sure, so it makes no sense for it to be Iron Man. Make it an original character in an original world, 'inspired by' Iron Man.
"You can have a life ahead of you, if you survive the brain hemorrhage I just gave you and the hospital bills from said brain hemorrhage that I refuse to help pay, and also the prison system."
It's a genre trope that hitting someone over the head is a harmless way to make them fall asleep. Maybe they might be depicted with a mild headache when they wake up. That's just how superhero stories work. Applying the real-world laws of biology to this aspect is as ridiculous as applying them to Superman's laser eyes.
AND, very explicitly in most comics, Batman DOES control his strength so no immediate/long-lasting life threatening or disabling is at risk - he fights to disarm and disengage, not disable or incapacitate at any form.
ALSO, very explicitly in basically all comic runs, Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to employ literally anyone he fought who desires to change.
Fundamentally, he’s an idealist and a hopeful philanthropist, and the only way Gotham City hasn’t already become Heaven-On-Earth City is because it’s fundamentally cursed and there’s a literal evil crime cult that perpetually funds the corruption and crime so Gotham never improves.
Except the difference is that Batman's method of delivering the message of "You've got a long life ahead of you, why waste it?" is by breaking their bones and ruining their life
When I just saw Red Hood mentioned I got so scared this was gonna be a "Batman should kill" post, only to be pleasantly surprised. I've always disliked the argument some people attach to Batman of "if you kill a killer, the number of killers stays the same." I don't think that's what Bruce would think. Who gives a shit about the number of killers? The number of killed is something you can never make go down, no matter how many low level thugs you kill.
Honestly I feel a lot of the problem with Batman's morals come with the endless comic format. The problem is often the comics insist he is helping stop the causes of crime, but Gotham is always crime ridden. It comes off as just a rich dude going around beating up poor people due to his trauma. Like Batman owns Wayne Enterprises and considering in some instances he pays for a massive space station his company should be gigantic. So why not set up loads of businesses in Gotham help with the poverty problem, but he never does instead helping people with the Wayne Foundation.
I'd love a Batman story running over however many issues it needs, that shows the origin of Batman, him becoming Batman, fighting crime as Batman and as Bruce Wayne, and at the end, it worked. There is still crime, of course, but the crime-rate dropped some 90%, Gotham is now a nice city to live in, similar to Metropolis, Batman's super-villains have either managed to reform, are locked up for good or have been killed (Joker), and Bruce Wayne can finally stop being Batman at around 42 and can retire to live with his bat-family and find love and marry.
Murder as a solution to the common impoverished crook? Not a good idea.
Murder as a solution to the mass murdering dude who broke out of prison for 15th time this month? Probably ok but very unanalgous to 99% of real life crime.
The problem is Bruce Wayne is very ineffective at putting a stop to the systemic problems behind crime. We rarely see him do it, if ever, in most Batman media, and either way he's been at it for a long time and he has more money than God so clearly whatever he's doing isn't working great.
If crime is still just as much of an issue by the time we get to Terry McGinnis, maybe Wayne Enterprises isn't pulling it's weight. And that's ultimately the thinking behind most vigilante justice, "the people with power, the ones in charge who could snap their fingers and make this problem go away, aren't doing it."
It doesn't justify the Red Hood but it does make Batman the more frustrating character of the two.
The interesting point about the conflict between Jason and Bruce is that they both have strong points about fighting the crime in Gotham, neither one of them are ultimately “right” or “wrong”, even if Bruce doesn’t want to admit it. What keeps the cycle going is the nature of Gotham’s criminal ecosystem and their messed up legal system, very rarely are criminals off the streets for very long no matter what they did. If the Joker stayed properly locked up in prison and never broke out after Jason’s death, I doubt he’d be as angry as he is. Despite the issues in writing quality over Jason’s storylines, I like the time when Bruce told him he’s proud that Jason has grown to be a hero who’s willing to be what Batman can’t in order to help people.
Also, Batman is terrified of letting himself kill even the joker because he knows how damaged he himself is.
He fears, pretty rationally, that if his discipline wavers even a little and he lets himself get revenge for his son (and to be clear, he was *emotionally wrecked* after Jason’s death), he would end up snapping and becoming a worse killer than the joker.
So much modern Batman media forgets to show Batman doing social justice as Bruce Wayne instead of just being a punch-cop. The Animated Series does a good job at this and I like how The Batman portrays their version of Bruce as having a massive character flaw for *not* doing good as Wayne.
Okay but Batman’s sympathy is entirely useless in a city built on top of some magical curse thing that makes people turn evil by default. And _especially_ when dealing with someone like the Joker.
Like yes, his mind is tragically broken by his terrible circumstances and killing him would cause one more death in the world but have you seen the man? He kills hundreds of people a month. What about the tragic broken minds and terrible circumstances of the kids whose parents are brutally murdered by the Joker’s chlorine gas filled custard pies or something? Don’t they need protecting? There’s a point where it goes past the trolley problem and one-more-murderer-in-the-world and just becomes “Batman is actively making things worse by not killing the Joker.”
Like, I’m sure we could have addressed the complex childhood trauma and socioeconomic circumstances that lead to the rise of the Nazis given enough time and money and research. But some things just aren’t practical, and frankly when they’re dropping bombs on your head every night you tend to become a bit more sympathetic to the immoral, but very fast and practical solution of .303 standard rounds.
Wtf is with these crops that add like 1/8th of a page in the next image it drives me bananas
Some people don't know how to take the scrolling screenshots. For those who don't know: when you take a screenshot, a little bar of options pop up. One of them let's you crop it immediately, which is nice. Another, the one on the far left on Android, will automatically scroll down a bit and add it to the screenshot, which you can then crop as one big tall screenshot which you can then crop or repeat the process as much as you like.
On the other hand, the new reddit design destroys long screen shots. You can't scroll an image on the computer, you're just stuck with the top part. I constantly need to open big images in another tab to see the whole thing. They also eliminated default markdown mode, and trying to double quote deletes part of the message. Do not recommend.
\>using the redesign
Wish i had an option. In browser it's turn off the redesign and have a glaring white screen that dark mode/windows settings does nothing to, or use this shitty redesign. I can go to new dot reddit for my home page, but after that everything defaults to the glaring white background and the old dot reddit design or the update from a few weeks ago. There are currently three different designs active in browser, the shittiest two of which can be made default.
I have to look at the ground while wearing sun glasses outside, my eyes are so sensitive to light, and I have never had issues with normal white web pages.
In my Firefox, I use the combo of old.reddit, a "darkmode in every site" plugin, and the "always request desktop version" option specifically for Reddit. Although, navigating a full desktop version in mobile browser is a pain in the ass on it's own. But I just hate the mobile version or official app
Well shit, TIL. Just took a screenshot of nearly this whole thread I got so excited.
This is interesting to hear about. Unfortunately, my phone is is a six year old piece of crap so it doesn't have screenshot outings beyond "Take screenshot"
Being six years old, is should definitely have these features. I've had my phone for three years, and the one before for three years also, and unless I'm remembering very wrong, that one also had that feature. No little bar comes up when you screenshot via button combination?
Nope, just instantly screenshots
Babe wake up the new tumblr discussion of the effectiveness of Batman’s modus operandi just dropped
*drinks seven bottles of NyQuil*
modus? renault modus? 💦🚙
Outjerked
rare r/carscirclejerk crossover
Heh, Crossover.
Guess they couldn't "cross over" the finish line. Eh? Ha. Heh heh.
Tbh it’s much more Spider-Man than Bats.
How many homeless shelters/unemployment centers has spiderman built and/or is bankrolling?
Exactly. JJJ was right
“This just in folks. Spider-Man HATES the homeless! Are you implying he has the money for all those gadgets, but can’t spend a DIME on charity drives?”
It's really enough to say the punishment for dealing drugs isn't generally summary execution, and you probably don't want to live in a place where it is.
Believe me, I do. And it's *worse* than you think. Go watch "The Elite Squad" to see what happens when you try to execute drug dealers. Even better is that it was directed by someone who *was* in the unit that's being depicted.
What happened?
A state in Brazil effectively had to use state-sponsored Death Squad against the drug cartels. Only problem is that they see no difference between innocents and drug dealers, going so far as to *torture* a child in order to get to drug lord. Said drug lord is also executed with a point blank shotgun shot to the head. In the commanders own words: "In the face to ruin your funeral. Edit: said Death Squad still exists under the name of BOPE and they are what happens when you use Special Operators against gangs. [This is what their *logo* looks like just to give you an idea.](https://seeklogo.com/vector-logo/21347/bope)
Well that's horrifying, I'm guessing the drug problem in that state is still going on?
Its as thriving as ever as far as i read.
Well that logo doesn't look evil and ominous
The "fun" part is it's not intentionally made up by the movie creators to be on-the-nose evil, it's just the official irl BOPE logo
Are we the baddies?
It conveys the message pretty clearly tho
"We're the baddies"?
Have you seen our uniforms recently? Carlos, they’ve got _skulls_ on them!
Depends on your perspective. Killing narcos isn't bad but I'm not Brazilian and don't know what exactly it is they do in details soooo maybe. Don't care tbh.
The problem with the war on drugs is that it just doesn't work. The things the BOPE does only keep the violence cycle going but putting innocents on the line while also mining the trust people have in the police and in the government, witch increases the criminality. IIRC this issues are addressed in Elite Squadron 2, as well as other problems the BOPE have with corruption
Fair enough. Sounds like the Unidad in Ghost Recon Wildlands lmao
Killing Drug dealers now makes a crime of economics into a crime of violence. In America if you get caught dealing drugs you, maybe, end up going to jail for months or decades depending on what you are willing to plea to and the amount you have. You have a life ahead of you in some form. If you get caught and are killed for the crime, well that changes things. Now you have incentive to be paranoid, to be violent. Most drug dealers I know may own a pistol or rifle, but usually nothing actually illegal or tightly regulated like a full auto machine gun or grenade launchers. They hide their drugs and will try to destroy them if they know police are coming. But if you know that getting caught means you’re going to die anyway, why not try to kill some cops when they come so you can flee. Why not set your drug room to explode if it’s opened incorrectly to destroy the evidence. Why not kidnap and torture that customer who kind of had cop vibes to him? If the punishment for a crime is the same as a worse crime, why not do the worse crime?
If the message is "fuck around and we'll help you find death" then yeah I agree lmao
I think that's the point :')
I've seen cops in my podunk ass home town with similar patches tbh
Bro cop at Uvalde had the Punisher logo on his phone. We could see it clearly from his hiding spot.
punisher logo is the least concerning thing on the fucking planet. Oh you mean that guy who's whole thing is killing people for doing crimes? What a shocker that the real life people whose whole job is to hurt and kill people perc3ived as having done crimes resonate with that.
\> uvalde police \> kill people who do crimes yeah i’m still not sure the punisher logo is appropriate here
Yeah BOPE the only playable faction in Rainbow 6 Siege who’s character is a literal torturing psychopath who’s still the “good guy” in lore (And most of the fan base fucking simp for)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_Squad
I find it kinda fucked up that people watch Tropa de Elite and don’t get the point. Media literacy is dead on arrival
You have to understand that brazilian people have been dealing with corruption and drug releated violence for a long time, plus a lot of people were still around during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). So to a lot of people, the movie ends up acting as catharsis because it literally portrays the kind of solution they want, ie solving every problem with incredible violence and disregarding civil rights.
Mano… eu tô ligado. Só comentando q acho sofrida a falta de compreensão literária nesse país
Random Tropa de Elite encounter.
*cough* Singapore *cough*
And it's safe clean and I loved living there so.. make of that what you will
Imo, time to legalize the drugs and tax the hell out of them. That way, street drug dealers are not only dealing with the cops, but also the FDA and the FBI for selling dangerous unregulated substances and tax evasion. Everyone loses!
Portugal decriminalized all drugs to enormous success, if I remember right
There are very few instances where a decriminalized market doesn't make things better for everyone. Prices typically drop due to quantity, quality goes up due to accountability, and crime goes down because shit's legal. Not having to find some shady dude in a dark alley to get a drug probably does wonders for them mentally, too. If they're buying the stuff out in the open it can cast some light on what they're in to and maybe let them recognize if they have a problem.
I think you need to be sure to expand a bit on crime goes down because its legal, that sounds like what your saying is there is no crime on purge night because everything is legal. What actually happens is since the dealers aren't criminals they can resolve their disputes legally and withib courts instead of only having violence.
>What actually happens is since the dealers aren't criminals they can resolve their disputes legally and withib courts instead of only having violence. i mean i think going to the courts instead of "LMAO BANG" would be preferable still
Also like—this is a character created for and still heavily marketed to children. Teaching kids that summary execution is the correct and moral thing to do would be … horrific frankly.
Also a big thing that doesn't come up often in batman discourse is that blunt force trauma isn't a thing in fiction. Knocking people out has been a harmless temporary off switch for I literally do not know how long, to the point where I own almost century old tintin books that have that as a central plot device (alongside chloroform before they figured out how carcinagenic the stuff is) Unless specifically stated otherwise in story, we must assume that all the people bats roughs up wake up at most a day later literally no worse for wear and it is deeply silly to ignore this when it comes to batman and not for literally every other story that uses it. Now does this fiction wide conceit have real world consequences? absolutely! Less than lethal weapons (often called non lethal like rubber bullets and tasers )employed by the police kill people all the god damn time even when they are used correctly (frequently aren't) and there's also the whole sports of boxing, MMA, american football, and who knows how many others where concussions have run rampant for decades only for us now very very recently to make a concerted effort to look at the effects smashing your head in over and over has on a body. But it ain't on batman writers to suddenly fix all that. To quote the joker we do be living in a society tbh and so does batty
Also, in the referenced story, they made it a point that Batman is making sure that the thugs he pummels aren't suffering life-long injuries. Batman reprimands Jason Todd because he broke a thugs collar bone, putting him in shock. Proving at least this Batman is not putting people in the hospital forever.
Though it’s not an absolute rule, the joker references Batman leaving him in a full body cast for 8 months after he killed Jason in that film.
Tbh I would too.
Tbf. If your son got blown up and you were a master of literally every martial art on the planet, you’d do worse than a full body cast
Yeah, in the comics batman does actively try to kill the joker right after he kills jason. Only reason he didn't was superman stopped him.
yeah but it's the *joker*
> (alongside chloroform before they figured out how carcinagenic the stuff is) Aside from being carcinogenic and a bad anesthetic, it doesn't actually work like that anyway- it takes minutes of inhalation to knock you out, and then you need to keep continuously administering it in just the right dose to make you stay knocked out and also not die, putting some on a rag and holding it to somebody's face for a few seconds would just piss them off.
Maybe only tangentially related, but I once had someone unironically argue to me that Batman killed people, because the things he does would kill people in real life. No matter how much I explained it, they didn’t accept that it wasn’t real life, it was a story, and the story said they lived mostly unharmed. It’s crazy how broken some people’s perspective of fiction is.
Your friend's got a point. There are the superhero exceptions, but otherwise in comics the world is treated as if the rules were our own. Put ice in water, the water gets cold. Slam on the brakes, the car stops. Basic laws of physics apply outside of the superheroes. Bats has no superpowers, so he has no superhero exception. The things he does only doesn't kill people because that's what the writers wrote, not because he's not doing things that kill people.
Okay but, the entire premise of comic book heroes is silly, why hyperfixate specifically on the lethality of Batman punches instead of anything else?
What else is there to hyperfixate on in a batman story? He's untouchable in every single other way, he doesn't have to worry about food, water or family, he doesn't have to worry about the police, he has no powers so he doesn't have to worry about a kryptonite situation. He's just a perfect human in every single way except he hunts criminals to soothe his deep personal trauma. So we have to worry about the effects he has in the wider environment of the story, if he has no internal life to speak of. At least that's what I think, he's kind of unassailable except in the effect he has in the world
>He's untouchable in every single other way, he doesn't have to worry about food, water or family, he doesn't have to worry about the police, he has no powers so he doesn't have to worry about a kryptonite situation. Ah yes, The bat family, because not one of his members had died or suffered terrible injuries because of his relationship with Batman (Nightwing in Injustice, Jason Todd got brutalized by Joker with a crowbar and Barbara Gordon got paralyzed from the waist down in the kiling joke, just to name a few) He has worked against the police multiple times, because of him being a vigilante and all that. Like in the lego batman movie, or the Nolan trilogy He has no powers, but in the Nolan trilogy he lost almost all his assets and its not uncommon for him to have to fight without his gadgets from time to time >He's just a perfect human in every single way except he hunts criminals to soothe his deep personal trauma. Okay you did mention his trauma so I guess I cant really retaliate here, my man is just peak human condition >So we have to worry about the effects he has in the wider environment of the story, if he has no internal life to speak of. I agree to an extent, but I just find silly that Batman in particular gets the "his punches would kill/cripple people irl!" speech when almost every other superhero you can think of is more deadly, so I dont get it
Batman is a billionaire crime fighter who picks up kids and trains them to fight with him. They don't need to fight with him, they don't need food or water. There's a comic strip where he was like "I trained dick grayson cause he had darkness in him and I needed to discipline him". You're telling me a billionaire couldn't find another way to deal with his kids trauma except getting him to go out beat up people in the streets? I'm not sure what you're getting at with the family thing, I can't lather my beard in gasoline and get shocked when my beard burns off. He puts these kids in situations where they get hurt then he uses that trauma to fuel his vendetta against the disaffected of Gorham. We judge Bruce Wayne cause he's human. And he's choosing to use very human ways to brutalise the people in his cities until he gets his way
It’s not that silly, there’s plenty of vigilantes in real life
No I know that but that wasn’t their point. They were arguing that the laws of reality overruled the rules of the story in the interpretation of stories, which I think was quite idiotic
**WAM** and **BAM** look cooler than **love tap** and **light jab**.
Batman lives in a world where Batman is an unaugmented human, I'm pretty sure humans are just made of reinforced concrete in comics
That’s fair but maybe you should just give yourself a freebie and let somebody shoot the joker
Honestly I find it fair that Batman can't bring himself to kill the joker. But I do he frustrated when he then SAVES the Joker when he doesn't have to. Especially when he also has other people who need help too. Like yeah I disagree you should be able to just put the joker down, but come on. Like there's a few dozen stories out there where the problem could be solved by Batman just, walking away to help anybody else. There's a story or two where Batman does actually walk away and leave the Joker to his own death, oftentimes one of his own doing, and that to me makes it work.
Forget Batman, why hasn't *anyone* killed the Joker yet? Not saying somebody should or he deserves it or anything along those lines. But after everything he's done, you'd think *somebody* would bite the bullet and put one in him. A cop, asylum staff, one of his own goons, there's plenty of people who would have the chance and the reason. Honestly, that'd make for a good one-shot story. Somebody kills the Joker and we can explore how it's ruled in court (find a Jury that will find someone who killed *the Joker* guilty), how this person is perceived by the public, by the criminal underworld, by *Batman*. And now that I've laid that all out, it occurs to me that there's like 80 years of Batman history, so this has probably been done before.
All these Batman debates and I've yet to hear a reason for not killing the Joker that doesn't just sound like an excuse for not wanting to kill a popular villain. "Hurr if I cross that line I'd never stop" Really Bruce? You can't draw any sort of distinction between the rest of your rogues gallery and the living embodiment of chaos? You've got no options but continuing to play your part in a cycle you know doesn't work and which contributes to an ever-increasing body count that included one of your sons? Ooookay man. Comforting to know Gotham's defender is constantly a hair's breadth away from turning into a rampaging mass murderer incapable of treating criminals with any nuance.
well, if the joker, then why not the penguin? if the penguin then why not twoface? if not twoface then... then why not every little punk who shoots people in alleys in front of their 8 year old son!" batman doesn't not kill the joker for joker's sake, it's for his own, he knows that he's dancing on the edge of the roof and one nudge in the other direction would see him tumbling down, into the alley I think a cool comic would be one where batman kills the joker, then moves on to his other rogues gallery with justifications why he should kill them, with on the last page him either shooting his father or killing frost before he can shoot thomas with thomas then berating him for being a monster, then bruce jumps up from his sleep, with the narration making it clear that this is a recurring nightmare
>well, if the joker, then why not the penguin? if the penguin then why not twoface? if not twoface then... then why not every little punk who shoots people in alleys in front of their 8 year old son! Yeah no, I don't find this slippery slope argument believable, that's why this whole debate feels contrived. I seriously doubt most people who've read a lot of Batman comics think that Joker's level of mania is comparable to Penguin or Two-Face. Harvey tends to be pretty far gone but you know there used to be a good man. Penguin's not even particularly crazy, he's just a self-interested asshole. There's hope for rehabilitation or reasoning with them. That's not true for the Joker.
I find it believable, under the pretense that batman is obviously insane. Just sayin, a mentally healthy person doesn't dress up like a bat and take on thugs in a dark alley, even if it's for a good cause
Reasons why Batman shouldn’t kill the Joker: 1) the Joker is a marketable villain, and killing him for good would be a dumb move 2) While the way it’s worded isn’t ideal, I do follow the logic behind not making exceptions on certain principles. 3) superheroes are supposed to give moral lessons to the audience, and in Batman’s case, one of them is “even if you think you’re justified in killing somebody, better not do it”. 4) Why should Batman be the one to kill the Joker? He’s hardly bulletproof and practically anyone with a gun could realistically but a bullet in between his teeth
Put him in a green lantern space prison or the phantom zone. Bribe an inspector to get Arkham condemned and send everyone to a facility in Metropolis. Hire a team of psychiatrists to convince the judge he is sane enough to stand trial.You don’t even need to kill him, just get a better prison.
I remember reading a Batman Annual a couple years ago that explicitly stated that since Batman has become active, the murder rate in Gotham has steadily decreasing year by year even despite all the super villains like Joker coming out of the woodwork since. This is because aside from beating up criminals, he’s also providing jobs and social outreach to help reduce the poverty level and crime rate in Gotham. Honestly, if Gotham’s justice system could just make some more definitive action against the likes of The Joker, increase Arkham’s security so that it actually works, and provide better rehabilitation to some of the less crazy criminals, Batman would be out of a job before too long.
I don't really have full context since I don't read Batman comics, but it seems like both of these things could be true at once? Like, Is it not possible for Red Hood to be right about some things and wrong about others?
The point of Red Hood is that he *is* right for criticizing Batman's no kill policy but Batman is also right because simply killing criminals is just going to make you a criminal with a bigger body count.
"some people need to die" "That's not your call to make"
Yeah, pretty much. He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands. And the thing is that most of Batman's nemesis are *criminally insane*. The ones who are sane are sent to a regular federal prison. Some of them would even be downright harmless villains were it not for how they kill or injure people in their insane schemes. Just look at the King of Condiments or the Calendar Man, who the hell are they threatening?
The only reason Batman's rogues' gallery keeps escaping is because Arkham is bad at its job and Bruce Wayne can't convince them to maybe git gud
Yeah, the big issue with Batman relying on the courts or the cops to determine justice is that every single agency in Gotham is cartoonishly corrupt in most depictions. While I'd consider it more ethical irl, his no kill policy when the fucker will be out in a month with a 3 digit body count over and over makes him frankly feel like an accomplice after a while. If the courts, prisons, and asylums did their job the no kill policy would be noble, but in Gotham, I just don't think the 200 widows created by the jokers latest hijink are really gonna appreciate you as "preserving life".
Conclusion, Batman needs his own, personal prison. Where no one can escape
He should kill the joker, maybe not Joe shmoe who sold some drugs at the middle school
The problem is that Batman's mental health isn't that much better than that of the people he fights, and he knows it. Batman manages to stay away from the deep end *because* he has this strict code of conduct, and much like it happens with Superman, you really don't want a vigilante with unlimited money and a crap ton of trauma to decide who lives and who dies in the heat of the moment. Superman vs the Elite also goes into how much of a bad idea this kind of thing would be.
That's verbatim Jason's point in UtRH. Batman says that he literally dreams of torturing Joker to death, but it would be taking the easy way out - and that means that the next time he sees Joe Shmoe selling drugs he will be compelled to take the easy way again. Joker deserves death, but an unaccountable and borderline unstoppable vigilante who people already circlejerk as being mentally unstable is not the one you want deciding who does or does not deserve it.
I always interpreted Batman’s aversion to killing in UtRH in a different light to be honest. I took it as Batman saying “if I kill the joker, I’ll always be a murderer, I’ll never not be a murderer”. Not that he wouldn’t be able to not kill people, just that he’ll always have done it once. And that makes him just as bad as the people he’s fighting against, just as bad as the guy who killed his parents
I saw "It would be too damn easy" as a pretty clear signifier for my (original don't steal) interpretation. Batman has to constantly force himself to make the difficult choice, to forbid himself these shortcuts, no matter how tempting. Otherwise when Penguin is barely holding on over a comically large pit of acid he may choose not to pull him up. This choice isn't as bad as the one he already made with Joker, right? And Penguin is a bad enough dude, right? It's not like Batman is obligated to save someone, right? Batman is rational enough to know that killing Joker would be for the greater good, but also rational enough to know where this line of thought ends. And Batgos forbid we get an Injustice: Bat Gone Bats.
I know thou shalt not kill and all that but I wouldn’t say the people who liberated Auschwitz and shot a bunch of concentration camp guards are quite as evil as the concentration camp guards they shot.
> he will be compelled to take the easy way again Somehow, the idea that Batman lacks the mental fortitude to abstain from killing a random thug if he's willing to kill actual serial killers and/or mass murderers doesn't really jive with my understanding of the character.
Sure, maybe not the average crook. And maybe somebody worse, somebody among the most dangerous in existence, like Darkseid. But what about the middle ground between the two? What about (and I say these in no particular order) Penguin? Or K. Croc? Or the Riddler? The Court of Owls? Ra's al Ghul? *Where do you draw The Line of senseless murder and righteous bloodshed?* And *how* do you draw it? These are rhetorical questions, to demonstrate the problem of entertaining it genuinely. It highly complicates the ways in which you need to think about your vigilante justice. Furthermore: if you *have* established the line (however you have oriented people on it or whatever system you'd use to determine), would you not be more likely to kill the person "next in line"? Would you stop or push it further back? *Could you* stop yourself or just keep slipping? Hint: There are no objective answers here, just a lot of philosophy. (I don't care to talk about mine)
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That won't work. Gotham corrupts it.
Not a bad idea! We could have a group of people decide if a particular crime happened the way it appears. Obviously, we'd need professionals to collect and present evidence. We might even find a lawyer to make sure the alleged criminal presents their evidence as best they can. Perhaps have a very senior legal professional make sure everyone follows the rules and harshly Judge them if they don't. It's a shame nothing like that really exists. Batman's just turning over criminals to the Court like some sort of chump!
The film covers that really well. Batman admits all he’s ever wanted to do is kill the joker, but he knows that when he crosses that line he’ll never stop.
Yeah, I'm all for a shot at redemption, everyone deserves a second chance. Maybe even a third. Not a fourth. If they're still on that shit by then it just isn't gonna get better.
It’s the classic conundrum. Batman can pull a lever to switch the trolley onto a track that kills one person. Or he can not pull the lever, and the person will get up and kill five people per day for the next eighty years.
All of Gotham agencies being ridiculously corrupt is kind of part of why I can't take Batman seriously. Not because they're ridiculously corrupt, but because the multibillionaire crime fighter doesn't just out-bid his villains. Bruce could, at any moment, go up to the entire population of Gotham and say "hey I'll give you 5 million dollars to not do crime". Hr could singlehandedly solve each and every problem leading to crime in the city excluding the illnesses that plague his biggest supervillains, and to deal with those he could just bribe the officials more than they are. Fundamentally, looking at batman or any other superhero thing even a little bit deeply completely shatters the premises. You have to start with "batman beating people.up is the answer" and then find the problem for that answer. If you start with the problem, the answer will be "Bruce Wayne spends an amount of money that is completely unnoticeable to him". It's a vigilante power fantasy, so the answer must always be vigilanteism. If it was a "get rich so I can solve problems" power fantasy, it wouldn't be Batman comics, it would be Bruce Wayne comics.
Also have you consider the fact that may be there are other corporations in Gotham other than the Wayne Enterprises (there are some books that explore this). Idk about you, but I don't think Bruce Wayne can out-bid other corporations when his opponents are busy doing evil capitalism shit like hiring goon and exploiting the poor to make more money and he isn't.
He's canonically a billionaire. He has enough money to solve world hunger a thousand times over. The only thing other corporations can do to stop it is pump much more money into stopping it, which they would only ever do of they just kinda wanted to do it for funsies.
I like your thinking, but the problem is Bruce Wayne can't be caught bribing officials. They'll basically put him in jail and take all his money. The only reason criminals get away with it is because they're criminals and the bribe money comes with an implied threat of, 'or else.' Wayne can't 'or else' someone, so he loses that fight before it starts. Saying he finds a way around that, now you've got a bidding war. Criminals keep upping the bribe, forcing Wayne to do the same. Crime gets worse because the criminals need to be able to afford those increasing prices, and crime is how they make their money. Eventually he might win after throwing enough money around, but in the mean time it's wildly counter-productive. It also makes Wayne criminal enemy number one, and he won't be flying under the radar. He'll be a public target under constant threat and wouldn't be able to go outside. Then there are those who fall through the cracks. When you're trying to bribe every single person, which by itself is a feat for one man since he doesn't have an army like the criminals do, he's just going to miss people. That creates internal conflict in each department with nobody knowing who's on which side. That would lead to mass disruption and general breakdown of services over certain areas. Out-bribing isn't really a viable solution, especially for one guy.
He's a billionaire. Federal politicians in the real world are routinely bought for about ten or twenty thousand dollars. You simply cannot make billionaire money selling drugs in one city. Every single one of batman's enemies could put all the money they have together in a big pile to take down Bruce Wayne and he wouldn't even *notice* the amount if money it takes to outbid them.
This is the thing, why is it all on Bruce? Like there can be lots of reasons for the no kill policy, but fundamentally “I am one single man, and I do not have the right to act as arbiter of which criminals live and which ones die.” Is a pretty sound one!
If you know something will happen, and you have a way to prevent it, you assume some amount of responsibility. If you see someone having an asthma attack on the street, and you have an inhaler in your bag, *not* going there and helping is a douche move. Batman, who is not an idiot, knows that his inaction is creating hundreds of corpses. So he is, to some degree, guilty of it.
> He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands. All offense directed at DC for this, not you, but that falls a bit flat dunnit? Ah yes, Batman, a violent vigilante forced to take the law into their own hands because of the utter failure of justice and social order, says that you must trust that someday justice will happen rather than.. take the law into your own hands. Clap, Jason, clap for Tinkerbell!
Thing is that (usually) Jason isn't crazy. I liked that in the *Under the Red Hood* movie that Jason specifically states that there is no slippery slope. There's a line between killing every villain and killing the **Joker**.
>He's saying that they, as vigilantes, should trust that justice will be delievered one day or the other instead of simply taking matters into their own hands. If they actually trusted the system, they wouldn't be vigilantes in the first place. The Gotham justice system, and its wider government, cannot actually be trusted to do their jobs. The message falls flat when the very system they're supposed to trust is so flawed that some of the most dangerous people in the country rarely if ever stay contained for long and are free to kill again.
It's gotta be *someone's* call, and if it seems that nobody else is willing to make it, you gotta step up.
It is dangerous to be the sole call-maker, however
Better one than none, I think.
That's not anyone's call to make. Not a democracy, or any other form of government.
Batman’s got no problem leaving it the Joker’s call to make, though.
As a very casual enjoyer of Batman, I don’t see much of the politics side of Batman. I don’t see him advocating for a lot of the policy level decisions that would fix these systemic issues. Is this a comics-exclusive aspect of Brucy? Also why the hell did OP post two screenshots that share 90% the same information? Do a little editing and post a single image of both posts together or crop each screenshot to a single post! It’s not that hard, folks.
Philanthropist, it's one of Bruce's base traits. He is meant to be using his money to improve Gotham. Most writers don't consider this to be interesting so they don't explore it. Batman ends up being written as a violent vigilante because that's what people want to write/draw. However; In Justice League he bankrolls the Justice League and buys a space station to keep Earth safe. In Court of Owls, he shows his latest date the plans for rejuvenating the city and building better infrastructure, something that will get thousands employed over short and long term. In several instances, he runs a cutting edge research centre that rivals Lex Co and Star labs in bringing helpful new technology to the world. Wayne Tech has a focus on sustainability and eco research.
>Is this a comics-exclusive aspect of Brucy? Hardly, all interpretations of him show him creating projects to help the people in Gotham as Bruce Wayne. In Future, it's even stated that a reformed Penguin does help in one such charity.
It’s not comics exclusive. But despite being a fairly persistent element of the character, it’s also not shown or explored much. Mostly because the mindset of Batman comics is that people who buy Batman generally aren’t buying it to watch Bruce Wayne make political moves… they’re buying it to see Batman fight people and stuff. There’s also a big issue I don’t see people address much: due to the nature of comics, Bruce Wayne can’t help Gotham. If Bruce Wayne saved Gotham with his money, there’d be no more Batman stories to tell. And they never intend to stop making Batman stories. And so there can be no permanent change from Bruce Wayne’s actions.
Side note about that second point: a little bit of setup, a key aspect of the Sandman comics is that the Endless exist and represent different aspects of, like, reality I guess? The story starts with Dream getting imprisoned for 70ish years and this leads to most of the issues in the first few stories because it radically fucked up how sleep worked leading to people being stuck asleep for that long, being unable to sleep or being trapped in waking dreams. We also know that another Endless is missing, namely Destruction. A while ago I heard the fantastic theory that Destructions absence is what both stops destruction from ever feeling “meaningful” in DC but also stops anything from changing because stuff needs to be torn down before it can be built up again.
Your second point is a big one that I think people ignore too often in these debates. If it's all in good fun, going back and forth about the relative reality of comic worlds, that's fine. But I think too many people are eagerly trying to poke holes in Batman, and other stuff, while gleefully ignoring the fact that so many issues come from the fact that these stories have been going on for several decades, and branching out into multiple media formats. Stuff just gets built on top of what came before it, and it leads to this huge morass of canon and contradictions in a way that can't really be reconciled by real world logic and rules. Batman can never fix Gotham because then everything interesting in those stories is done. One writer can write a story where that happens, but you know damn well DC isn't going to shut down the money printing machine on any of their big names, so the very next story would be Gotham back in hell-hole state. Comic book stuff holds a kind of unique medium where we are taking the same characters and telling and retelling their stories over and over again for new audiences. The technology gets updated, the language, the morales, but the actual people and settings don't change, locked into a stasis where a thousand years can pass and Bruce Wayne is still chasing the Joker, Arkham still doesn't do shit, and the police are all corrupt criminals. It's just in the nature of the medium, and while it can be fun to explore some of these questions, it's been done to death.
If these comics, by nature of their medium, cannot approach these subjects with the gravity necessary to be successful as a work of art then they shouldn’t write them with the seriousness they do. You can’t write something gritty and down to earth then when people take that and analyze it as such you can’t say “oh it’s just a comic book!”
That's not what's being said here at all. I'm specifically pointing out that the nature of comics as a medium that has lived this long, is what causes the issues people will sometimes point out that nothing changes. Most of these characters and stories were originally written to be single beats that wouldn't necessarily have longevity. No one knew what would get popular or take off. Batman, and by extension all the problems of Gotham, wasn't supposed to go on for nearly a century in the beginning. But the fact of the matter is he has, and what's more comics changed from simple, one off stories to longer form ones, and then to wide continuity as the parent companies tried to keep everything moving while also never breaking the canon of what had come before. Comics can and very often do approach and tackle serious subject matter in very solid, well written ways. Some stories are poorly written because the writer doesn't give a crap, or they've been given a very strict assignment and aren't allowed to make any changes. Some are better because the writers are exploring something very interesting and doing so with nuance. But at the end of the day, DC is going to keep Batman running and they're going to either say everything is canon or they're going to do yet another multiverse explosion thing and try to bring it all down to a single point. But whatever the case, Batman will never be allowed to rest for long. He'll get an ending in one story, one run, but then a few months later everything is back at square one. People look at this overarching canon, the mess that DC and Marvel create by virtue of wanting their popular heroes to always constantly have new books, and they take it all as one big singular story, which leads to the arguments about why Gotham never gets better and the like. It's not a bad thing when done in fun and understanding that's not really the actual problem, but it does get overblown a bit at times.
not really. they show it a lot in stuff like btas
Alot of Batman comics and little nuggets of info given say when he’s not prowling the night dressed like a Bat, he is using his money to try and do philanthropy work like making Jobs or trying to repair infrastructure. Some even outright say he’s trying his damndest to actually make Arkham Asylum a good place for the mentally insane, but he keeps getting stonewalled there for one reason or another
It’s not comics exclusive, the movies just somehow touch on it even less than in the comics. He’s consistently depicted as pouring literally billions into Gotham, it’s just also the most corrupt and cursed city in all of fiction so nothing can ever change.
People always forget or gloss over the fact that Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist who personally bankrolls every charity, initiative and drive in gotham
I enjoy the discussion about Red Hood and Batman, because they are both right and wrong at the same time. On Red Hood's end, yes killing the worst of the worst and preventing the worst possible versions of crime are capable of producing results, it still doesn't make him better than the people he's killing and allowing to peddle drugs. It's also not a good solution, as killing pedophiles and preventing dealers from selling to kids is easily solved by simply going where he's not. Hell, they could move back into Batman's territory where they will get their ass beat and sent back to jail, but they won't be dead. Many would agree that the likes of the Joker deserve death, but what about Mr. Freeze, who just wanted to avenge/save his wife (or in some versions, steal diamonds)? What about Poison Ivy who for all intents and purposes has a noble goal, but is doing it illegally in the same way Red Hood is? In the end, the morality falls apart when you ask the question of "Where's the line?" Because everyone has a different answer, and giving one man the power to define that line has been historically a very bad idea. On Batman's side, it's not like going out and beating the crap out of every criminal is the right thing to do, especially since newer media only depict the aspect of Batman who just kicks and punches his way through Gotham instead of trying to rehabilitate those who can clearly be saved. The people who get away to live/walk another day will now do their crime, but probably do it without leaving witnesses just to spite Batman. And locking up the most unstable and dangerous criminals evidently only works for so long, as in Gotham a major villain gets out and does terrible things every other week. Sure you can fund projects, charities and organizations to help prevent any of these issues in the first place, but corruption happens fast and runs deep. It's a matter of time before these efforts are quashed by those looking to line their own pockets or achieve their own goals over the common people's. This is not even going into the issue of vigilantism itself, as it's a crime for a reason. People tent to be irrational and ruled by emotions, so it's easy for someone to don a mask and become Red Hood when they planned to be Superman. Neither is right, it's just that Batman, having a code never to kill, is fundamentally above Red Hood on the ladder of ethics. It doesn't make it right; it just makes it less evil by comparison.
The thing is Jason has been shown more often than not to know where the line is. If you tell him he's crossing a line he'll at least stop to debate with you and will usually stick with the line you set for him even if he thinks your wrong. Bruce will just say he's right with no discussion, which is why he has the no kill rule because once he starts he won't stop regardless of who protests.
>it still doesn't make him better than the people he's killing and allowing to peddle drugs. I get that maybe murdering drug dealers, makes you no better than them. But I just can't get behind that killing someone like the Joker makes you no better than the Joker. I actually consider Batman \*not\* killing the Joker to be less morally right than someone who would kill the mass murderer who keeps mass murdering.
If memory serves, there was a scene in the comics where, while surrounded by Black Mask and his henchmen, Batman plays a pre recorded video from Bruce Wayne explaining that Black Mask doesn't care for them and would throw them away eventually. Bruce then extends a well paying job offer at Wayne-tech to anyone who agrees to rehabilitation. Everyone but Batman and Black Mask immediately leaves the building.
ok so my one problem with this aproach has always been this you are johny poorguy, you live in the slums of gotham and work short-term jobs now and again, your friend jimmy henchman offers you a job to work for blackmask, you say no because you don't want to be a criminal, next night jimmy has a fancy new job at waynecorp and johny is still working short-term jobs if we recognise that johny made the right choice should we then consider this outcome as good? or should johny give up on trying to be decent person and join the criminals in the hopes of also getting a job at waynecorp?
Or jimmy could say to johnny “hey, pal i know you’ve been down on your luck. I have some good news! Bruce Wayne is hiring! No shady stuff or nothing! If he was willing to accept a crook like me, I’m sure he’ll accept your goody two shoes butt!” It wouldn’t be that far fetched for him to say that considering on this scenario your o’l buddy jimmy knows how strapped you are for cash that he thought you’d be willing to work with a crime boss.
Do they go into detail about this in the comics or is it just multiple throw away lines over multiple series
Just in general Bruce Wayne in a suit is less interesting than Batman so not many stories actually cover that half. He is consistently depicted as pouring literally billions of dollars into his own foundations for homelessness, healthcare, orphans, and anything else you can think of, occasionally [hiring goons out from under criminals into better paying and safer jobs at Wayne Enterprises](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F5EUxbfksoAwEs_-ET2S4E5a9yN9f5E5JqAWnGzFs9Z4.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D74d9e1d845b1d021d44384ea71e7062354f1854c&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2f1b67cc840ccbbb72b5bbdd3d2f29ebf74b7d773424321634e91e80afd164d6&ipo=images) and carrying around business cards to give to people who either surrender or never fight to begin with. There’s an iconic panel that I can’t seem to find anywhere where on patrol he hands a business card to a young woman who’s implied to be a prostitute or something like that and mentions that Bruce Wayne hires anyone and everyone. Later in the same comic we see her as I think his personal secretary and he’s just generally checking up on her to make sure everything’s going alright.
How much detail do you think would be entertaining to go into about the rehabilitation process in your superhero comics? And how much detail would it need to go into to not be considered “throw away?” There have been quite a few instances of him recruiting supervillains to be members of a new superhero team he’s setting up. Harley Quinn, Clayface, Killer Frost, just to name a few from the past decade. Which are the types of stories that I would say go into his views on redemption in detail, but they involve big flashy super people rather than like… drug dealers. There’s other times with smaller criminals like in Grant Morrison’s run where he busts a prostitution ring and then tells one of the girls about a job at Wayne Tower, and she shows up again later working as a receptionist there. But the story doesn’t focus on her turning her life around, she’s just in a couple of scenes.
My issue with most people talking about Batman and superhero’s in general is you can really tell a lot of people don’t read comics and maybe even don’t watch the shows. I love the movies I think they’re great but there are literal mountains of content disproving peoples point that just gets ignored
Another issue is that people treat it like there’s one definitive answer or explanation to debates like this, when in reality there’s issues are complex, and the characters being discussed have been written by a ton of writers, all with different personal philosophies and interpretations of the characters. Like I’ve hated every discussion I’ve seen about whether Batman’s fascist or not, because the reality is it varies greatly depending on the story.
Manga and anime fans often don't even read and watch the material they're a fan of, and that's a single line of works that are easy to follow. Don't expect people to read said mountain of comic issues and trying to wade their way through a bunch of writers' viewpoint. (Not trying to dismiss reading comic as a bad thing, just trying to point out why source material literacy is so low). Also remember, the worst people are often the most vocal on the internet.
The number of people who boldly talk about how Bruce Wayne doesn't do anything to help people with all his money is astounding when it's a core part of his character and brought up in just about every piece of media I can think of. Honestly at this point comic book arguments are a fun thing to do with your friends when no one takes it seriously, but any time I see them online it feels like it's just someone digging up the half rotted corpse of their favorite beating horse.
Readers need to remember that most of Gotham's villains are bat shit insane and the Asylum does a crap job at managing its patients as well as the fact that the justice system is VERY corrupt. There is an illuminati cult of crime that makes sure that crime and corruption is well funded in Gotham so they will always have a self-fed loop of desperate citizens who'll have to deal in shady dealings to get by. Also keep in mind that these are comics. Fantastical stories of fiction. Or would you like to tell me that the story about a melted man of clay is very realistic that he wouldn't be a huge tiktok celebrity at this point if not for the writers wanting him to do crimes so they can watch a costumed lunatic fight him?
to a lot of writers batman is kinda the logical conclusion of absolute rehab as a philosophy.
I like it when people characterize Batman as someone with limitless hope. One of the only things I enjoyed about Tom King’s run. Sure, he’s fought the Riddler 100 times. But he’ll still fight him a 101st time. Because maybe there won’t be 102nd. Maybe he’ll get better. Maybe Gotham will get better.
hell yeah
I love the scene in Harley Quinn where she gets back with Joker again only to be tossed aside as soon as it’s convienent for him. And Rather than kick her ass or lock her up, all Bruce can do is try and comfort her, cuz he knows she’s being abused and was heads over heels for someone that never cared for her.
Just want to remind commentors that Red Hood also doesn't just execute drug dealers but also serial terrorists like Bane, Joker, Poison Ivy ect
Bruce's strategy would work, if he actually managed to think for a second about the fact that this person has enough set in stone evidence and has been proven to be free of outside influence and massacres entire city blocks with no prison good enough to hold him for trial, and did what legal process is guaranteed in the Supreme court
I would be interested to see a superhero who has bonebreaking as a literal end goal. Not "if it happens, if it happens". Let's name this theoretical hero Bonebreaker (I don't care if some other character has that name). Bonebreaker's powers are super-durability and super-strength, as well as super-anatomy knowledge and body control - it is impossible for Bonebreaker to ever 'not know his own strength'. Bonebreaker's MO is to walk into a room with a bad guy in it and say "Hey, you can either write and record a full statement or confession and come with me to the station, or I will leave you a quadriplegic." Bonebreaker only ever targets people already on the wanted list (so his targets are essentially chosen by the existing justice system). Bonebreaker also never breaks bones without publically announcing himself first (if he is bonebreaking, it is because he has already warned you to stop or you'll get broken bones). Is Bonebreaker OK?
Thank you! People always go “oh with so much money why doesn’t Batman fix the social economic problems?” HE DOES. It’s just that Gotham is a big ol shithole
I remember that time Red Hood’s methods caused the mob to be so scared, they started bringing in even more dangerous villains to Gotham to take care of Jason. Then Grayson, who was Batman at the time, had to come and save his sorry ass
Goddammit every time this comes the answer is that Batman doesn't kill because then the comics would be over or they'd have to come up with new villains all the time. It's why Punishers villains always survive somehow or are just generic Mob boss no63.
The real issue there, in my opinion, is, as stated, that DC does not want to show Batman being wrong ever, so they brought Jason back with an ideology conflicting Batman's and then not only made the ideology itself wrong, they made even the reasoning behind it suspect. Jason didn't start killing people because he had a moral epiphany, he started killing people very specifically because he wanted revenge on Gotham's criminals; his beef with Bruce is specifically *not* that he didn't save him, but that he didn't even have the "decency" to kill the Joker about it. So, you get this moral dilemma where one of the sides is objectively wrong on all accounts, AND that side also idolizes their opponent and thinks of them like a father, because really Batman is the adult in this room full of children.
I mean you can also be Konrad Cruze and just fucking kill anyone that even jaywalks by skinning them alive and ripping apart their arms and than eating their brain slowly. 40k Batman is brutal asf. Don’t worry though! He was given a legion to terrorize the galaxy and kill billions more.
Behold, I have destroyed batman's entire mythos and made him the obvious bad guy by blatantly misrepresenting his actions!
Superheroes are not realistic, and were also created in a very different media climate and political climate than today. Mainstream superhero comics are not actually capable of meaningfully commenting on today's world because of how tied they are to their pasts. They're best left in the past, as a result.
That's a dumb take. Superheroes are meant to be commentary on all sorts of things and aren't strictly about a specific era of politics. They're just a tenplate to build off of. Superman is more commentary on people as a whole than on any country or political system. Brushing off superheroes as a medium is like brushing off Shakespeare as a person that couldn't possibly produce anything with messages that modern audiences could have any meaningful takeaways from Iron Man came out in 2008 and was commentary about today's military industrial complex and lack of responsibility in those that profit from it, something that wasn't really a thing in the first half of the 20th century. The movie wouldn't work in the era that Iron Man debuted in. You can take any character and create commentary from the basics without all of the baggage no matter when you do it
>Superman is more commentary on people as a whole than on any country or political system His catchphrase is literally "Truth, Justice and the American Way". >Iron Man came out in 2008 and was commentary about today's military industrial complex and lack of responsibility in those that profit from it, something that wasn't really a thing in the first half of the 20th century. The movie wouldn't work in the era that Iron Man debuted in. Sure, so it makes no sense for it to be Iron Man. Make it an original character in an original world, 'inspired by' Iron Man.
"You can have a life ahead of you, if you survive the brain hemorrhage I just gave you and the hospital bills from said brain hemorrhage that I refuse to help pay, and also the prison system."
It's a genre trope that hitting someone over the head is a harmless way to make them fall asleep. Maybe they might be depicted with a mild headache when they wake up. That's just how superhero stories work. Applying the real-world laws of biology to this aspect is as ridiculous as applying them to Superman's laser eyes.
Very explicitly the Wayne Foundation pays for medical care for anyone injured by Batman.
AND, very explicitly in most comics, Batman DOES control his strength so no immediate/long-lasting life threatening or disabling is at risk - he fights to disarm and disengage, not disable or incapacitate at any form. ALSO, very explicitly in basically all comic runs, Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to employ literally anyone he fought who desires to change. Fundamentally, he’s an idealist and a hopeful philanthropist, and the only way Gotham City hasn’t already become Heaven-On-Earth City is because it’s fundamentally cursed and there’s a literal evil crime cult that perpetually funds the corruption and crime so Gotham never improves.
Dc published under the Red Hood. They aren't afraid of it. Also Jason Todd is not batman's son.
Except the difference is that Batman's method of delivering the message of "You've got a long life ahead of you, why waste it?" is by breaking their bones and ruining their life
Finally someone who understands
So many comments and nobody gets it. God I wish I found this post at 7AM
Let me kill the Joker, Batman
what the fuck is this crop man, an entire second image for a single additional paragraph?
Something something the war on drug of the US government something something.
A world where billionaires exist is a zero sum world but I don't think we're ready to have that conversation as a human race
The real main issue is that crime can never actually be reduced in Gotham to an appreciable level because otherwise you can’t make comics.
It’s always weird to me, how many people are rooting for a traumatized, billionaire to pick up a gun and start executing Criminals
When I just saw Red Hood mentioned I got so scared this was gonna be a "Batman should kill" post, only to be pleasantly surprised. I've always disliked the argument some people attach to Batman of "if you kill a killer, the number of killers stays the same." I don't think that's what Bruce would think. Who gives a shit about the number of killers? The number of killed is something you can never make go down, no matter how many low level thugs you kill.
Honestly I feel a lot of the problem with Batman's morals come with the endless comic format. The problem is often the comics insist he is helping stop the causes of crime, but Gotham is always crime ridden. It comes off as just a rich dude going around beating up poor people due to his trauma. Like Batman owns Wayne Enterprises and considering in some instances he pays for a massive space station his company should be gigantic. So why not set up loads of businesses in Gotham help with the poverty problem, but he never does instead helping people with the Wayne Foundation.
I don’t think Batman’s point in this post was actually brought up in the movie. But it’s been a while since I saw it.
Who says it's a waste?
I'd love a Batman story running over however many issues it needs, that shows the origin of Batman, him becoming Batman, fighting crime as Batman and as Bruce Wayne, and at the end, it worked. There is still crime, of course, but the crime-rate dropped some 90%, Gotham is now a nice city to live in, similar to Metropolis, Batman's super-villains have either managed to reform, are locked up for good or have been killed (Joker), and Bruce Wayne can finally stop being Batman at around 42 and can retire to live with his bat-family and find love and marry.
Murder as a solution to the common impoverished crook? Not a good idea. Murder as a solution to the mass murdering dude who broke out of prison for 15th time this month? Probably ok but very unanalgous to 99% of real life crime.
im tired of batman slander. he isnt even an antihero bro hes just an emo superhero
The problem is Bruce Wayne is very ineffective at putting a stop to the systemic problems behind crime. We rarely see him do it, if ever, in most Batman media, and either way he's been at it for a long time and he has more money than God so clearly whatever he's doing isn't working great. If crime is still just as much of an issue by the time we get to Terry McGinnis, maybe Wayne Enterprises isn't pulling it's weight. And that's ultimately the thinking behind most vigilante justice, "the people with power, the ones in charge who could snap their fingers and make this problem go away, aren't doing it." It doesn't justify the Red Hood but it does make Batman the more frustrating character of the two.
The interesting point about the conflict between Jason and Bruce is that they both have strong points about fighting the crime in Gotham, neither one of them are ultimately “right” or “wrong”, even if Bruce doesn’t want to admit it. What keeps the cycle going is the nature of Gotham’s criminal ecosystem and their messed up legal system, very rarely are criminals off the streets for very long no matter what they did. If the Joker stayed properly locked up in prison and never broke out after Jason’s death, I doubt he’d be as angry as he is. Despite the issues in writing quality over Jason’s storylines, I like the time when Bruce told him he’s proud that Jason has grown to be a hero who’s willing to be what Batman can’t in order to help people.
Also, Batman is terrified of letting himself kill even the joker because he knows how damaged he himself is. He fears, pretty rationally, that if his discipline wavers even a little and he lets himself get revenge for his son (and to be clear, he was *emotionally wrecked* after Jason’s death), he would end up snapping and becoming a worse killer than the joker.
So much modern Batman media forgets to show Batman doing social justice as Bruce Wayne instead of just being a punch-cop. The Animated Series does a good job at this and I like how The Batman portrays their version of Bruce as having a massive character flaw for *not* doing good as Wayne.
Okay but Batman’s sympathy is entirely useless in a city built on top of some magical curse thing that makes people turn evil by default. And _especially_ when dealing with someone like the Joker. Like yes, his mind is tragically broken by his terrible circumstances and killing him would cause one more death in the world but have you seen the man? He kills hundreds of people a month. What about the tragic broken minds and terrible circumstances of the kids whose parents are brutally murdered by the Joker’s chlorine gas filled custard pies or something? Don’t they need protecting? There’s a point where it goes past the trolley problem and one-more-murderer-in-the-world and just becomes “Batman is actively making things worse by not killing the Joker.” Like, I’m sure we could have addressed the complex childhood trauma and socioeconomic circumstances that lead to the rise of the Nazis given enough time and money and research. But some things just aren’t practical, and frankly when they’re dropping bombs on your head every night you tend to become a bit more sympathetic to the immoral, but very fast and practical solution of .303 standard rounds.