This reads like he was real at some point in the past.
And politicians. Clearly corrupt republican politicians who are trying to destroy democracy for some reason.
No he won’t. Batman wasn’t the good guy
You’re aware he is a CEO of a company?
I thought Lucius Fox was the CEO. Bruce Wayne is chair of the board.
Huh, maybe. Although my point was more batman is part of that class (albeit begrudgingly) so expecting batman in a position of great power and influence to actively take that from other people is just very hypocritical. Not that he shouldn’t (or someone shouldn’t). Just a very weird position.
In Batman Beyond, Batman’s nemesis is a CEO. He’s a villain called Blight, who killed Batman’s father.
Yeah, but in that Batman is basically Spider-Man with ex-Batman as a mentor.
He’s still Batman. He does detective stuff, doesn’t have superpowers, Gotham is appropriately grimdark, etc. Terry doesn’t have to learn that with great power comes great responsibility like Peter does. The only similarity is that he’s a working class wisecracking teenager with a somewhat agility based fighting style. Peter Parker was never a burly hoodlum before he got his powers, and he doesn’t see being a superhero as a way to make up for mistakes he made as a normal. He also didn’t steal his powers. Terry is a much more mature and slightly darker character than Peter at the start of his journey. He’s not an academically minded geek, he’s someone who’s experienced the real world and understands it. He’s got street smarts, he can fight, and he can lie.
Depends on the particular telling I think. DC has IIRC gone both ways with that.
Batman could have done more good as Bruce Wayne and instead dressed up like a bat to beat up street level thugs. If he was real, I don’t think it would make a difference what time period he was in, he’d still be traumatized by his parents death and decide to dress up like a bat to beat up street level thugs.
Who you want is Rorschach as others have pointed out Batman is part of the problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_(character)
FUCK NO!
Rorschach is a fascist, he only works in absolutes and while the Batman tries not to kill, Rorschach has no such regard for human life. He detests the junky as much as the murderer, for him there is only pureness and evil, every little bit of amoral behavior will be punished and at the same time he considers his own vigilantism as above the law.
He’s a misogynist who thinks that the Comedian raping Silk Spectre was just a “moral lapse”. He holds even for his time outdated socially conservative views and strongly opposes what we would call (gender and sexual) minority rights.
Rorschach is unbending and uncompromising, he is beholden only to his conservative rigid views of black and white morality with no room for shades of grey. That might not sound so bad at first, but if you think about it, that is definitely not someone who you want as a judge of people.
On top of that he’s a far-right believer, he’s not a government man in the same way the alt-right are not. His thinking is deeply conspiratorial and paranoid with a huge dollop of delusion. He’s better described as an Ayn Rand paleolibertarian.
Thinking about it he definitely would fit right in with today’s alt-right with the only difference that (if - and only if - he would not buy into their conspiracy theories - and he’s very much likely to do so) he would detest Trump for his lying.
But Rorschach is definitely the kinda guy who’d shoot up a pizza place looking for tortured kids in the basement.
I love him as a character, he’s one of the best written vigilante “heros” out there but what’s so fascinating - to me at least - is that his principled moral conviction is contrasted by how immensely unlikeable this man is and how his moral uprightness relies on the moral compass of a deranged 11 year old with a gun.
Aye. Anyone who idolizes Rorschach is the same person who idolizes Tyler Durden — they’ve missed the entire point of the character in the story.
When I was a kid watching Watchmen, I thought Rorschach was badass with his fight scenes and detective work, like breaking into Dr. Manhattan’s compound. His fight scenes with the swat guys was badass.
Then they make a point to show you multiple times throughout the movie, this gross, shabby looking dude carrying around a “the end is near” sign, following people and giving them the creeps. They definitely didn’t go into the comic enough though.
Didn’t the whole TV sequel be about how the Rorschach fanboys became a bunch of nazi terrorists?
I didn’t watch that, only the movie and the original comic book
Rorschach is Batman but worse in every single way. All the childhood trauma and mental illness without any of the money, good manners, or training, and with several extra doses of far right conspiranoia and misogyny.
If you read Rorschach as the good guy in Watchmen, you completely misinterpreted what Moore was trying to say. If there’s any good guys in Watchmen (or at least not bad guys), and that’s a big if, it’s the folks around the newsstand, obviously not counting Kovacs.
“They’re the same picture.”
Why do you people make up such obviously false head cannon. This is degenerate shit lol.
In sans serif fonts, it can be hard to distinguish capital i from lowercase L.
Yes!
Watch The Boys
Batman is a CEO, right?
He just goes after the ones he can beat without much backlash from the public/system.
Imagine if he takes down a CEO. He’d not be able to play batman. Gordon and batman sympathisers would be affected, so Batman’s human connection in the police would be lost. He can hack stuff, but might not always be enough.
He can do other stuff, but he can only do it gradually and much more tactfully.
He did take down Lau in the dark knight tho.
Lau laundered money for the mob and also was Chinese.
I don’t think the public/mainstream would have issues there, where he goes after the non-native guy who laundered money for the mob.
Like Lex Luthor, who hes fought on several occasions? Or more like the Court of Owls, one of his recurring set of villains?
Also the Penguin
Penguin is a mobster first and wealthy second, as a result of being a successful mobster.
And the difference between Penguin and a billionaire is about a billion dollars.
I once read that Superman was a humble man who faces big exploitative businessmen, while Batman is a big exploitative businessman who stands up to homeless people. The implications of Batman being more popular than Superman today and what this says about our society is enough for a complete essay.
Or Batman’s more popular because he’s a more interesting character. Superman can only experience kryptonite so many times before you start to suspect he never actually left the planet Krypton.
Maybe, or maybe they have bad writers because they are not able to imagine credible stories in which Superman’s strength is useless in the face of the corruption of the system and the businessmen who abuse their power, no one would believe stories like that, you need to add kryptonite to make it realistic
useless in the face of the corruption of the system and the businessmen who abuse their power
You could put any superhero in that situation and have a story. But if it’s just a white-collar crime setting, would Supe then be any different from any other Tom Dick or Harry? Is it even a superhero comic at that point? It would be interesting to some, but I can see why the writers wouldn’t want to take that risk.
Well, I’m not a big comic reader but that’s what the story with Lex Luthor is about, right? how all of Superman’s immense power is useless against the intelligence of a rich and evil man. I think that is the most famous antagonist and that has transcended the comics the most for a reason. Maybe for fans it’s doomsday or zod, but for casual readers and the general public it is lex and it is for good reason.
what the story with Lex Luthor is about
I dunno, seems to end with a big fight and / or kryptonite almost as often anyway. Then again, doesn’t that kinda undermine your original point?
Then again, doesn’t that kinda undermine your original point?
I don’t understand why that should be done, the character stops being popular, so good writers stop having interest in working on it, they try to revitalize it with different stories, etc. whether the loss of popularity precedes the bad stories or not is not something that I am in a position to determine. In any case it wasn’t my point, I’m not a big fan of comics, I read it there and in movies/television, which if I continue a little more, it makes some sense
You’re thinking of Poison Ivy.
No he won’t, batman fulfills every billionaires fantasy of dressing up in a costume and beating up poor people.
Yes. Not one really questions why Gotham has such a high crime rate, but where there’s poverty there’s crime. I think we need a working man’s batman.
Someone whose super power isn’t having infinite resources.
You mean like daredevil?
He works as a lawyer? Typically not a billionaire but not exactly struggling financially either.
That’s the internet pop-psychologist interpretation, but the people actually writing him often have him doing his best to better the Gotham around him. A lot of the petty thugs he catches are given chances to redeem themselves via Wayne based welfare programs.
The former richest man in the world gave away much of his fortune and continues to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Wealth_and_philanthropy
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He’s in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.
No. Unequivocally no. This might make sense on its face but it misunderstands Batman at a fundamental level- Batman is a hero who cannot make sense. He is severely mentally ill and craves change physically and instantly wrought by his own two hands.
If a CEO were doing something outlandishly and visibly evil then they might find themselves on Batman’s radar, but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about. Would it make sense for Batman to do something about it? Yes. Absolutely. Would the crazy 100 kg gymnast dressed like a giant bat, who has made a nightly ritual of shattering the spines of impoverished criminal dockworkers do that? No.
Now daredevil, daredevil might find himself beating the ass off a shady Manhattan CEO. But daredevil is sane, reasonable, and goal oriented and Batman is just not.
but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about
In fact, being a mega-rich himself, he’s probably best buddies with those CEOs so long as they don’t do something so outlandishly evil that he has to go after them for publicity reasons.
Yeah, doesn’t the dude consider Batman his true identity and Bruce Wayne the costume?
Depends on the continuity and who’s writing it, but often yes. He was notably portrayed this way in the Justice League cartoon.
This fact was revealed in Batman Beyond, in which Batman’s nemesis is an evil CEO called Blight.
In most modern versions, yes. He’s just survivor’s guilt held together by a ceaseless run of violent distractions and related obsessions. Not the one to call on your union busting boss.
Yeah, dude’s the night, not the IRS or the better business bureau.