Poll: Batman, The Visible Rot of DC

[Queen Michael]

...has not made a single dent in Gotham's crime rate. He's simply a grown man-child who embezzles money from his own company to partake in a hobby of beating up villains. He doesn't care about the innocent people, because he'd rather not kill at all, and therefore allow the villains nearly free reign to cause as much havoc as possible. So why is he liked? So why is he liked? Because Batman fans are illogical, and don't understand that he's a blight, and I hope someday, they nerf him or kill him off, and let one of the more logical Robins take his place for good.

1. Hasn't made a single dent? How did you check this? Besides, if he puts a robber in jail then that robber won't be out on the street comitting crimes. So logically, he lowers the crime rate that way.

2. Embezzles? He simply uses his own income to fund his war on crime.

3. You're saying that since he wants criminals kept behind bars instead of killed, he doesn't care for innocents? Not true. He just doesn't think it's his job to decide who lives and who dies.

4. You should give them at least a little credit for killing him and replacing him with Robin, though it wasn't permanent.

5. We don't like him because of some purported lack of logic. We think Batman is a pretty cool guy. Eh fights crime and doesnt afraid of anything.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Yeah. There's no point in trying to catch a petty thief when you clash with Doomsday in the morning and join Superman for a few lagers afterwards. :|

Still, what's the point of inventing new monsters and villains just for the sake of maintaining the series in motion ? I mean, other reason than greed ?

Well, I wouldn't say greed. It's more because if they were to keep using the same villains over and over, things would get pretty boring. I mean, take the Joker for example. I love the guy, but for a time he was REALLY overused. It got to the point where I was confident that I could skip a Joker-centric issue because, honestly, I'd seen everything he had to offer. It wasn't that I didn't like him; I just didn't feel it necessary to spend money on watching a slight variation on a caper I'd seen before.

But then a new villain is created! Someone new, dark, shadowy, intense. A real challenge for the Dark Knight! This is good stuff. It gets people interested, and it also provides new material for the writers to work with, which in turn leads to better stories. And better stories lead to more money. Back when Bane first came out, people were flipping their shit. He basically sold No Man's Land by himself. Ditto Hush (though he ended up being kinda lame). It's a risk, sure, but innovation has to happen somewhere. If you are comfortable where the hero is, why not just make some new challenges for him to face?

 

[wicket42]

You may find this article pretty interesting.

http://badassdigest.com/2011/12/21/film-crit-hulk-smash-what-the-f-is-it-about-batman/

HULK SMASH

 

[JohnDoey]

BTW : Does any hero of old still fight common evil ?

I saw a few modern Batman comics and each and every was about our favorite flying rodent fighting some supervillain. Good half of said villains were enemies closely tied to Batman's past, knowing his real identity and determined to break him mentally.

I was full of WTF*cks...

Most street level heroes spend at least some time on "patrol", taking down common crooks and averting minor disasters. They don't focus on it because there is no tension. No one would ever have Batman or Spider-Man beaten by some random run of the mill mugger, so their appearances are mostly just to reinforce the idea that, yes, Gotham and New York have crime outside of the supervillains.

OT: Your problem isn't with Batman, it's with superhero crossovers in general. Marvel has the same problem, particularly with Wolverine. He's got a lot of fans, and writers know that they will buy books with Wolverine in them, even if it's not his usual series. Hence why Wolverine was on the Avengers and SHIELD for a while. It's actually a pretty clever selling tool, and I've picked up some stories I normally would not have read because of cameos or tie-ins, but it does play holy hell with canon.

It's easier to just pretend that each hero lives in their own universe, or one soley populated by other heroes around the same power level. My problem isn't with Batman fighting Darkseid, that is just silly. My problem is with Batman wanting to clean Gotham, and then refusing help from guys like Superman or Captain Marvel who could do the job in a week, tops. When Batman is one man standing against all the crime and evil, it's a great concept. When I'm supposed to believe that that right next door is a guy who A. Will not kill and B. Is invulnerable and can move planets, it really makes Batman look like a dick for insisting on doing things the old-fashioned way and putting lives at risk.

I never understood why some people don't like in universe crossovers I always felt they lent a sense of community to the comics and the thing with Batman is he has a guilt complex that prevents him from calling for help unless the situation is dire.

 

[LordFisheh]

That's one of the reasons I never got into comics; they, including Batman, just seem to go so over the top at times. Especially when everything has to have continuity, leading to ludicrous deus-ex-machinas. So if Batman flies to the moon to fight magical Aztec aliens, then he's always 'the guy who flew to the moon to fight magical Aztec aliens', even after everyone realises how absurd that is.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

BTW : Does any hero of old still fight common evil ?

Doesn't Captain America kind of do that? I mean they were always sort of super-nazis in the sense they were stronger and faster than normal humans but they didn't have any outrageous superpowers in Hydra as far as i've seen...

OT: The only thing about Batman that's ever bothered me was the meme with "the goddamn Batman!" where he essentially was God, or to the scurge or the internet... Chuck Norris.

I don't really see any reason to hate on Batman other than that so if you want to hate on a superhero hate Superman instead because that's what i do. His entire character just bothers me a lot.

I will admit though that as crossovers go Superman and Batman can fill eachother out pretty nicely since Batman can be the brain while Superman is the brawn. It really does set some requirements for the villains though because if you make the character too strong to be a threat to Supermen, but not smart enough from Batman then Batman could probably just lay a trap of some kind and conversely if the villain is too smart, but too weak you'll end up wondering why Superman didn't just punch him half to death in their first encounter.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Yeah. There's no point in trying to catch a petty thief when you clash with Doomsday in the morning and join Superman for a few lagers afterwards. :|

Still, what's the point of inventing new monsters and villains just for the sake of maintaining the series in motion ? I mean, other reason than greed ?

Well, I wouldn't say greed.
(snip)

Wait, wait, please. I agree that there's finite amount of times we want to see Batman throws Joker to Arkham Asylum and we needed new faces. True, it worked for a while, but i think this "a while" is prolonged for too long.

Nowadays both enemies and scenarios they participate in are duplicates, mutations of themselves. It's like next generation of Pokemons.

My point is : when writers are unable to come up with something new and plausible, the series should be simply abandoned, heroes should either die or retire instead of becoming boring shadows of themselves. It isn't so, and i guess it's because of money, greed. You can't let Batman or similar icons die because there's money in it. :|

BTW : Does any hero of old still fight common evil ?

Doesn't Captain America kind of do that? I mean they were always sort of super-nazis in the sense they were stronger and faster than normal humans but they didn't have any outrageous superpowers in Hydra as far as i've seen...

I'm not sure, i haven't see any comic with Cap for a while. Sorry.

 

[Mr Somewhere]

I'll simply say I don't care for what they've done with them. I've always preferred the more human interpretation of the character.