I saw a thread on Twitter and Reddit asking whether characters like Batman, Iron Man, and Iron Fist actually need to be wealthy for their stories to work. Some people were saying that, in the DCU, Batman doesn’t have to be rich—he could just be middle class and the story would still work. Similarly, if the MCU gets rebooted, Tony Stark wouldn’t necessarily need to be wealthy and could be working class instead.
A lot of people argued that this would make these characters more relatable and easier to root for. Personally, I’d say no. Elseworlds stories are fine, but if you’re adapting these characters into movies or TV shows, you should stay at least somewhat comic-accurate. Their wealth is a key part of who they are.
Stark Industries, Wayne Enterprises, and Rand Industries are characters in the story too, and they play important roles in shaping these heroes and their worlds.
It’s similar to how Clark Kent being a reporter or Peter Parker struggling financially are essential to their characters. Those traits help define their stories.
What do you think?
If you made Bruce or Tony middle or lower-class people, you could still make an adventure out of that. It’s just that all of the heavy infrastructure would need to be completely rewritten. Skills and abilities would allow them to do amazing things, but they just wouldn’t have million-dollar tech at their disposal.
The character would be the same, but the story would have to take a very different path.
Tony would be really cool. imagine if he had to rely on a community of people to built shitty-but-miraculously effective contraptions. And the focus would be on how he has to positively interact with people to allow him to be a guy who tinkers instead of getting a real job
Maybe Bruce too but his trauma is more of a barrier to social existence. It would take a way more creative writer to work out him working through his problems with anything other than money
Tony has amazing skills. He could name just about anything.
Bruce would probably end up being a bum or a weirdo. If you like redemption arcs, the story of Bruce could be interesting.
Bruce Wayne broke just becomes Rorschach
Would the characters be the same though? Isn’t Bruce Wayne being a billionaire playboy a big part of his personality?
It’s his cover for why he doesn’t have a real job. If Bruce isn’t wealthy enough to not have to work, then he has to work during the day, fight crime at night, and never sleep. Even Peter Parker has a job with flexible hours to accommodate his Spider-Man time.
However, Peter only has the one gadget, doesn’t even own a car, and barely makes ends meet. Bruce needs a vehicle to get around town and at least a few gadgets and body armor to deal with the fact that he’s outnumbered, even with just normal criminals and not considering supers like Mr Freeze or Poison Ivy. If you’re keeping supers out of the equation, you could probably strip Bruce down to things that you could make in your garage, like reducing the Batmobile to an ordinary car he’s tinkered with a bit, painted black, taken the license plate off of, and ground off the VIN.
You still need to deal with how the hell he funds everything, though. Even with minimal gear, he’s going to need a full time job to afford it all. And if he doesn’t want to advertise who he is and where he’s operating out of, he’s going to need a second location to store his bat-stuff so that his neighbors don’t notice the Batmobile parked in his driveway. You’re probably looking at a small house that he doesn’t live in and another house or an apartment that he does live in without any roommates or renters at either place. Even with this minimal setup, Bruce would need at least $100k a year in income. This means one of the following: a) a well-paying full-time job, which cuts into Batmanning; b) inherited wealth; c) lottery winnings; or d) an extremely successful Only Fans account. The first doesn’t seem viable, the second is what’s already being used, the third just feels contrived, and the fourth, while something I’d probably read for the novelty, is probably really difficult to market.
He would still behave in a similar way, but with a lower budget. That would force him to let go of some habits, adapt in interesting ways, and learn new ways. I think it could be interesting, but it would have a radically different flavour.