How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
Tell that to Bludhaven. Nightwing > Batman.
Nah, Batman is definitely cooler than Dick. Which makes sense, he’s been doing it for several more years. I don’t know too much about Bludhaven. But I’m pretty sure that it’s categorically less fucked up. Nightwing doesn’t have to be as effective as Batman imo.
Dick used his money to turn it from resembling Gotham to resembling Metropolis. Cool is irrelevant, Dick is ridiculously more efficient and solution focused than Bruce, who is just obsessed with punishment and subjugation of people who have done wrong, Dick is objectively a better superhero for his city, and is focused on solving problems rather than punishment, he’s also not an asshole or a fascist.
Batman brained a guy so bad he lost his mind and became Calander Man, he is not solution oriented.
Okay, that’s fair enough. Does he kill people?
Sadly, no, the no kill rule stuck with him.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I love Batman, I just think Dick has had the benefit of more modern writing and more progressive writers for his solo gig, Batman’s failings are more of a side effect of the era when he was created and the specific writers that have handled his canon more than anything else. Dick ended up being a lot more morally akin to Spider-Man than Batman, his reason for doing what he does is specifically to help people and improve things, as opposed to punishing villains and those who have done wrong. I see him as less of a crime fighter/authority figure and more of a public servant.
I see. I honestly think that the no kill rule could work. It’s just that Gotham is so corrupt, the infrastructure and social support so lacking, that villains have no shot at rehabilitation, and every chance of just breaking out and doing it again. Joker has broken out hundreds if not thousands of times in every single iteration. If he got a secure cell without corrupt guards and actual help after the first insane murder plot, he could probably get better. I think in some iterations, he has, at least temporarily, improved significantly. I agree with the outdatedness. He comes from a time when kids were hit to “fix” left handedness. He’s going to use punching as a solution every time. It’s like if people started punching and emotionally abusing high support needs autistic kids instead of actually helping them. Y’know, like they used to. And still do. Punching might stop the behavior in the immediate future, but it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse than acting with empathy. Which, at least in the 90s animated series, he does tend to show a bit, with his always calling them by their names and the one time he comforted the woman that was stuck as a small child.
TAS was peak Batman, for me, they did a comic run in that universe all in the style of Bruce Timm that was really good. I get the no kill rule for certain characters, and for the sake of writing, original villains that people enjoy seeing on the page aren’t easy to pull off consistently. And most of my favorite characters, as far as villains go, are the one’s that definitely should be killed (Carnage, The Joker, Doc Ock, Bullseye, Zsasz, should all be killed on sight, but I fucking love when they show up. Also, you just can’t kill Carnage, ao there’s that.) so i get why it’s part of comics.