What's your personal opinion on this idea? I tend to agree with Grant Morrison's thoughts. Thinking that Batman is in any way an insane person is a very surface level analysis that doesn't take into account the totality of the character. I feel like the awful portrayal in The Batman movie that depicted him as some reclusive peeping Tom has popularized this misconception again.
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>a man who dresses up as a giant bat to fight crime is mentally ill
he's either mentally unwell or a very proactive furry
>teehee memes make for good characterization
This is the type of homosexualry people like chip zdarsky and mark Russell have inflicted upon the entire industry.
Mental illness is hard enough to define IRL, let alone in a fictional setting split between dozens of authors with conflicting ideas, retconned to hell and back, and only still trucking forward because it's profitable.
>seething at shitposts
I shiggy diggy
I agree with this. I don't like iron man super genius batman. He is more interesting when he is mentally broken. He doesn't have to be a complete basket case, but at the very least, being somewhat ill makes him much more interesting.
I also dislike playboy Bruce Wayne. it's fine if that's his reputation, but practically, he should be a little weird- if nothing else he should be distant, reclusive, and probably tired during the day.
Super genius mentally stable Batman, also the JLA as a whole, is not terribly interesting conceptually to me.
I agree insofar as Batman exists in a world where Superheroing is acceptable and has been since WWII.
This post is the right answer. All the other comments are coming at the question as if we're talking about the real world, but in a world where super powered beings are real and dressing up in a costume and fighting crime is a widespread socially and legally accepted phenomenon what counts as sane behavior is drastically different. In such a world Bruce's actions make sense, not to mention that there are also costumed criminals and supervillains who are a legitimate reason for costumed heroes to exist.
The OP image doesn't understand what he's talking about. If Bruce Wayne has to dress up as a bat and get into fistfights with people in alleyways to keep his grief and anger in check, he's still mentally unwell. He just has a coping mechanism.
To argue otherwise is like saying that Buffalo Bill is perfectly sane because as long as he keeps kidnapping women to skin them and wear them like a suit he's happy. Thats a symptom of his psychosis, not a cure for it.
Literally every time Bruce is confronted with the death of his parents in some tangible way, he has a borderline breakdown. This is not a man who has gotten over or dealt with his issues.
Grant is projecting and is mentally ill like most of his fanbase
I like the joker more; he is an outlaw that doesn’t pretend to protect society and is improving it by criticizing it, unlike the batman that pretends to protect society, but in reality he only protects the status quo.
Lazy bait
Doesn’t change the fact that it is how it is
The batman merely maintains the status quo and is protecting the establishment and oligarchy (the one percent) , since that’s the social strata he was born into.
it's not the totality of the character (partly because capeheroes are inconsistent) but his most memorable and interesting versions all emphasise that he's a little bit off in the head.
It's just a distinguishing feature compared to other capeheroes, who all claim to be perfectly morally good and sane and never in the wrong for anything. Like in DKR, Bruce among the JL was always the odd one out because he's not a selfless hero, he's a loony who needs to be Batman to feel complete. It's way more interesting seeing Bruce fight the Mutant Leader out of Pride and Shame than because "durr you broke the law you're a BAD man me a GOOD man."
That's ironic becauseDKR atthe end of the dayismore preachy and self-righteous than the more "moralistic" portrayals of Batman. Those could still sometimes acknowledge he's wrong, at least by virtue of tragic circumstance. DKR Batman is ALWAYS right, and everyone who contradicts him is either stupid or malicious. He's just acknowledged to have petty human motivations, but those still ultimately always make him out to be the right.
But that's really more of a Miller thing and not necessarily a natural consequence of writing Batman as insane.
Batman's conflicts with batfamily or heroes have that stubborn self righteous behavior. Nightwing leaving Bruce in the 90s is due to problems with how Bruce is too stern and controlling, whereas they had a great relationship in Wolfman's Titans and other books from that era like Englehart's Batman.
DKR type Bruce is more likely to be alone and drive people away while earlier versions of Bruce were able to form healthy relationships sort of like the difference in early BTAS and the new version.
Batman shouldn't be a cure to Gotham's sickness, he's just a benign symptom.
Underrated as frick
Correct. Batman prolongs and maintains Gotham’s illness.
I prefer the early BTAS Bruce and O'Neil, Morrison,Englehart type Bruce who is more stable and well adjusted. Actually there's probably a number of writers who write a mentally sound Bruce.
DKR Bruce has just been incredibly influential that many writers build off of that Batman characterization. It made sense why he was like that for that story, whereas it feels off with other interpretations.
Any superhero in the genre can be deemed mentally ill for mostly being focused on wearing spandex and beating the shit out of people. It's become a major theme with Batman for many iterations and especially modern stories.
DKR Bruce is the retired Batman 66 future
Adam West has done DKR lines. I think from one of the two Batman 66 animated movies. A story with a more unhinged Adam West Batman with some of the modern or DKR tropes would be fun.
?si=uA4_s1e23e5-oodG
Now i am thinking of this scene with Adam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o96Qv90nYO0
i think the golden age and silver age writers also wrote batman as if he was pretty sane
then again, none of them really dug deep into his psychosis
Blame the writers, who write Batman as crazy and hypocritical, but insist he's making the 'right calls' (Shadow War is the most recent example of this)
The key part, right here:
>Bruce Wayne ... mentally unstable if he had NOT put on his scary bat-suit
The longer he's in the role, the more control he should have over his grief. Every night on the streets is one in which he's striking back against the mental image of CRIMINAL he made as a child: a towering, unstoppable force that can take everything from you regardless of how hard you fight back. Each success, each exposure to the criminal element that ends with justice served and no harm done, those moments should serve to stabilize him. Brave and the Bold understood this; whenever it flashed back to his solo years, he was brooding and defensive, in direct contrast to the "current day" Batman that went out of his way to work with others and mentor people away from their own darker impulses. He struggled through his trauma right up until he overcame it on the job, and then he didn't want anyone else to have to go through it alone. Ideally, Batman grows.
Parents: *die*
Normal people: go to therapy and move on
Batman: invest billions in tools and equipment to fight gangs and serial killers by himself
>Normal people: go to therapy and move on
Do most people actually do that though
no
That's healthier than modern therapy.
>modern therapy
As opposed to the 1950s therapy "shut the frick up and go work some more you lazy bum! it's all in your head! *punches you in the face*"
Barry Allen watched his mom get murdered in their home, his dad accused of the crime, his eyewitness testimony ignored, his dad sentenced to life in prison, and he grew up to be a well-adjusted person. Bruce is a little messed up and that's okay.
most twitter like post ive seen all day, go back
He's "insane" but his detective skills(which is something they should make use of more) and crime fighting antics are his way of coping. It comes at the cost of being extremely anti-social at an interpersonal level depending on who writes him.
He's also a sociopath whenever he goes out in public as his Bruce Wayne persona while on a fake date with one of his beards.
One of the core themes of the character is that he doesn't even know whether Wayne or Batman is the 'real' person anymore.
That only became a theme because of Frank Miller. Morrison is rejecting all Millerisms.
Thanks for reminding me why the Miller series is the best Batman series.
Sure, enjoy your Miller.
kidnapping a 12 year old boy and making him eat rats is one of the signs of being mentally ill
Nobody liked All-Star Batman and for good reason.
This is the same homie that started the Zur En Arrh norman bates shit in the first place, he’s an absolute fricking spastic to try and take this side
He beats up criminals as a bat because of trauma that he received from his dead parents. Of course he isn't mentally well.
Capeshitters are mentally ill so it’s fits that one of their idols is a moron.
What's your excuse for being more mentally ill than capeshitters then
Batman is pretty much objectively mentally unwell. The problem with this discussion is that a lot of people conflate “mentally unwell” with “insane” and argue about the wrong thing entirely. Batman is both perfectly sane and extremely unwell. Being psychotic is not the only way someone can be unwell. His unhealthy coping mechanisms, trauma, persistent crushing shame and grief, saviour complex, obsessiveness, and severe trust issues are all signs that he is mentally unwell. Dressing up as a bat is by far the least interesting exploration of his psyche and only moronic pseud writers delve into “hurrdurr you dress up as a bat you as crazy as joker durr”. This is why I love Dennis O’Neil’s Venom story arc, where Batman isn’t able to save a girl from drowning because he can’t lift a heavy rock, and afterwards becomes addicted to Venom, starts lifting like a maniac, and becomes an aggressive roidhead pretty much due to his guilt.
One of the issues with the mainstream popularity of superheroes is that everyone and their mother has an opinion on Batman/Superman/Aquaman/whoever without ever reading a comic. They base these opinions off of memes and movies and then act like they know what the frick they're talking about.
Anon the guy in OP most definitely read more Batman than you.
Reading comprehension is hard. I'm agreeing with Grant you moron.
Nothing in your post mentions Morrison. Blame me for assuming, but not for not reafing your stuff right.
>They base these opinions off of memes and movies and then act like they know what the frick they're talking about.
What the fricking frick are you on about? The mainstream versions are the characters. This sounds like absolute cope that no one cares about your shitty dying comicbooks.
>Cinemaphile
>No argument
Sure, Sure. You can tell Warnerbros who owns DC all about it.
>outrage bait
Why are you here?
>They base these opinions off of memes and movies and then act like they know what the frick they're talking about.
Not even movies. It's just memes and popular cultural perception because the average human has the media literacy of a slug these days. Superman in particular is EXTREMELY prone to being misinterpreted this way, because he's literally been distilled down to a symbol for our consumption. To so many people, Superman is just "PERFECTION" personified, and the second they are forced to see any aspect of his character that might not be "PERFECTION", or perhaps suggest that he's just a person prone to making mistakes, struggling, or even just doubting himself, they lose their fricking minds.
>or perhaps suggest that he's just a person prone to making mistakes, struggling, or even just doubting himself, they lose their fricking minds.
Trust me I've noticed. Came across too many casuals online and in real life react and lose their shit if Superman struggles with anything. You have no idea how many people I've met who think Superman is faster or as fast as the Flash.
People don't actually want to learn or understand anything. They want to be able to distill it down to a single idea or belief and stow it away in an archive of things they consume that they desperately hope can be substituted for an actual personality.
No one gives a frick about your poorly written comicbooks though. Only the mainstream matters.
Except people don't even get the mainstream shit. The number of folks who thought it was okay for Captain America to do what he did at the end of Endgame is astronomical. Even just based on the MCU movies, the moment was wildly out-of-character and frankly baffling, but a majority of MCU fans just clapped because Steve got his happy ending and it gave them the feel goods.
Mainstream doesn't even matter to the people who only consume mainstream. It's like thinking that your pigs care what kind of slop you feed them, lmao.
>Except people don't even get the mainstream shit.
No they do.That's just you seething your bad comics aren't being read.
Disagree about needing comics. I'd trust someone's opinion on Superman/Batman if all they saw was TAS and Justice League. Everything else is spot on.
>I must rid Gotham of criminals
>Except Catwoman tho she's hot
>. I feel like the awful portrayal in The Batman movie that depicted him as some reclusive peeping Tom has popularized this misconception again.
Yeah, I'm not sure it's all the movie that did it and not the Atkham Games where he progressively goes more insane with each iteration.
>implying someone like Bruce would actually recognize the good he's doing and let that soothe his soul
Lmao, no. Complete and utter misunderstanding of Bruce's character. He's obsessive. It would never be enough for him. That's why he's shown, in numerous stories and continuities, being insane not just about his current responsibilities, but about the legacy of Batman and securing a replacement for himself.
Bruce will never recognize his accomplishments or his success in "avenging his parents" unless he manages to create a world where no life is ever unjustly ended. And if by some miracle that happened, I don't think Bruce would just be magically fixed. Hell I don't even think he'd enjoy it. I think it would just be the beginning of his actual grieving for his parents.
If Bruce created a truly crime-free world by the time he was, say, 50, I think he might just have enough time for therapy to get normal by the time he died. Bruce is fricked up.
This describes Miller's Batman, whom Morrison hates. Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age Batman was not like this.
I'd argue Bronze age was like that, and Golden Age wasn't really like anything because he was pretty inconsistently written. Silver Age characterizations don't count because they're all just the product of the comics code and not any sort of creative integrity.
>I'd argue Bronze age was like that
He was a healthy man with a healthy attitude.
>Golden Age wasn't really like anything because he was pretty inconsistently written
The Bronze Age ultimately turned him into Earth Two Batman who married Catwoman, retired, had a daughter, and died.
I mean he obviously has outstand trauma and issues but he funnels that into helping people and stopping people ending up like him. I like the idea that he's broken and knows it and that's why he's a good dad to the Robins who he helps NOT be broken so that they can go forward and do good without the baggage he has.
Bruce is NOT a good dad to the Robins. Dick has massive personal issues and hangups stemming from Bruce, an actual supervillain was a better parent figure to Jason than Bruce, he actively emotionally manipulated Tim, and he's both too lenient and distant with Damian.
Dumb retcons
Not so much a retcon as it was the Crisis rebooting things and DC going with Miller's take. Pre-Crisis Batman had no issues with Dick or Jason.
Dick's issues are pre-Crisis, they largely make up his character arc for the first few years of NTT culminating in him becoming Nightwing, as is the Nocturna and Jason plotline - it wraps up at the very start of CoIE.
Dick did not become Nightwing because he had issues with Bruce. That was something post-crisis added after the fact for more drama.
Now about the preceding 5 years of stories revolving around Dick's search for meaning and identity as something other than Bruce's sidekick.
Shit, even the massive event that used "Batman is a psycho rich kid brutalizing the poor to get off" ended with stating criminals aren't victims of circumstance and will gladly commit crimes regardless.
Dick wanting to be his own man and not a sidekick wasn't out of animosity for Bruce, that's just a normal part of growing up.
It's cringe. Batman is a good, upstanding man, who puts himself in the way of danger for the greater good. That's what the character is and was always envisioned as.
>b-b-but he dresses up as a bat and punches clowns in the face...
Yeah, it's for kids, innit m8.
It's not real life.
>Batman is a good, upstanding man, who puts himself in the way of danger for the greater good.
None of this means he can't also have a mental illness. Your inability to understand the matter being discussed has outed you as a total moron. Must sting, eh?
Comics from the 30's, aimed at pre-teens, weren't in the habit of having a serious discussion on mental illness.
He's the "good guy". You're over complicating it.
Doing this at all is a form of manchildism. You're trying to lend a layer of depth to something familiar from your childhood, because you can't just move on. Alan Moore is mostly to blame for this shit. He was manchild patient zero, which is funny since he b***hes so much about it now.
>Comics from the 30's, aimed at pre-teens, weren't in the habit of having a serious discussion on mental illness
Well maybe they should now.
Why? It's cringe. Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and let Batman be Batman.
Because people want more complex hero fantasies and not the outdated cheesy stuff from 1940s.
Batman's mental illness is a core part of the character at this point.
Hero fantasies are inherently cheesy to begin with, and should embrace that.
This is just moronic nonsense people say to be deconstructive or to bash something they don’t actually like, same as when people ask “why doesn’t Batman kill the Joker?” Even the writers and creators have spent years gazing into the void on both these points and constantly fail to come up with a meaningful answer to either through their “mature storytelling”.
It’s not the spicy take people think it is to suggest that Batman isn’t a well-adjusted person. He’s single-mindedly obsessed with his war on crime to the point that he considers his superhero persona to be “who he really is” in a way that other heroes don’t, and his personal relationships suffer because he keeps everyone at arm’s length when he’s not being outright Machiavellian. But since this a superhero story, this is all framed as part of his heroic drive that makes him a successful and celebrated hero because that’s the fricking point.
>It’s not the spicy take people think it is to suggest that Batman isn’t a well-adjusted person. He’s single-mindedly obsessed with his war on crime to the point that he considers his superhero persona to be “who he really is” in a way that other heroes don’t, and his personal relationships suffer because he keeps everyone at arm’s length when he’s not being outright Machiavellian.
This all comes from Frank Miller.
Well clearly the modern audience is of a different mind.
You know I've totally learned to hate this opinion because it always ends in the same fundamental issue
>The mentally ill traumatized character is put in a position where no mentally ill traumatized person should be because they're stronk and brave.
Like, there are mental issues way lower than what some of these characters have that bar you from being a cop or a firefighter.
I really fricking noticed it with Terra in Young Justice season 3. Who is the dumb motherfricker who decided the best therapeutic parole for this unstable child soldier with blood on her hands was just to put her back on the opposite side of the battlefield and hope she doesn't have an episode that leads to even an accidental kill. Weren't the rest of the league fed up with Bruce doing exactly this with more mentally stable figures like Billy and Dick by season one?
Batman is a representation of the elite pedophiles. He's a bat because he's a blood sucker. The character is purely propaganda to get the moronic masses to like the buttholes that's currently destorying and running the world.
I mean, if we're going with the Killing Joke's criteria for being a normal person driven crazy by one bad day then yes, Batman is absolutely nuts.
Joker asserted that it only takes one bad day to make someone go mad.
Barbera was shot, paralyzed, and raped by the Joker. When she woke up she wasn't freaking out and pulling a Casca. She knew it was over and her reasonable concern was to make sure her father was safe. Proves joker wrong, not crazy
Gordon was kidnapped, stripped naked, tortured, and was forced to see the aftermath of what happened to his daughter. When Batman gets him out of the cage, Gordon's reasonable concern is that the Joker is arrested and he's arrested by legal means. Proves Joker wrong, not crazy.
Bruce Wayne was made an orphan by his parents getting mugged and killed in front of him. His unreasonable interest was instead of using his billions to invest in Gotham city police department to bust up the mobs, or run as mayor to personally solve the mob problem, or create businesses to out-do the mob and drive them out of business, he uses his money to become a sleep-deprived kung-fu furry that ambiguously strangles the Joker after being told not to do that kind of thing. Proves Joker right, crazy.
>using his billions to invest in Gotham city police department to bust up the mobs, or run as mayor to personally solve the mob problem, or create businesses to out-do the mob and drive them out of business, he uses his money to become a sleep-deprived kung-fu furry that ambiguously strangles the Joker after being told not to do that kind of thing. Proves Joker right, crazy.
You gigga moron. Bruce does do those things to help Gotham cept the police cause that is an actual corruption backhoe. It is not enough.
>Business to outdo the mob
You don't seem to understand how mobs make money, do you?
The issue is it's mostly said by casuals or people who don't read comics period so they're not retaining the information that YEAH, Bruce does usually use Wayne Enterprises and charities for good. Even in TAS Bruce is constantly giving to charity and feeling shitty that his money doesn't go as far as he wished. And ultimately what they neglect is people don't want the story of Batman to focus on this shit because they're here for fun fantastic stories of a Detective dressed like a Bat that fights Monsters.
>people who don't read comics period
Your right people don't read capeshit comics because they're dead.
No, the Wayne Foundation is not a charity and has never been a charity. The last time it was given any focus it was consistently dealing in the sciences and building and remodeling real estate (which was got the Court of Owls pissed at him, that he was tearing down and rebuilding their old lairs)
Only casuals repeat made-up shit like “durrrr ackshually bruce gives thousands of jobs to criminals” when he doesn’t, and never has.
Didn't he already spend most of his wealth to rebuild gotham after it was severely damaged years ago?
No that was Lex
It’s what won him the presidency
It considtently has not, that is ALL optics shit you made up and are parroting from Cinemaphile
He has never rehabilitated criminals or given a scholarship, the only time this has EVER happened was a SINGLE time he made a low level goon girl his titty secretary because she had a nice rack
The only one who “bankrolled” anything after a disaster in Gotham was Lex, and Lex funded all the refugee camps too
In fact it was ONLY in N52 that Bruce had any hand in funding Arkham, before that Arkham was ran by the state and the director of it was Bruce’s worst enemy
You’re not only a stupid seething gay, but you know nothing about your own medium too
What an ignorant moronic homosexual. To pick just one of your lies:
>He has never rehabilitated criminals or given a scholarship
Pic is from Gotham Knights #32 from 2002. Just one of the many easily findable examples of exactly the things you claim has never been done.
Please drop the link to the livestream of your suicide in your reply.
That's called grooming. Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein offered his employees free scholarships too.
I am magnanimous in victory so I will accept this concession in lieu of killing yourself.
>accuses others of lying
>with a lie
That character, Cody, is not a criminal, nor a “rehabilitated” one. In fact Bruce has actively PREVENTED hundreds of rehabilitated criminals from getting jobs in O’Neill’s run
Unlike you I ACTUALLY have an example instead of posting something that’s a lie and pretending like there’s “many more examples” (there aren’t, and you couldn’t even post one)
You’re such a pathetic piglet homosexual you literally have to squeal and lie and make shit up to pretend your shitty headcanons are true. Off yourself.
The point of that issue was that the umbrella company was ultimately part of Penguin's criminal plan you fricking moron
No it wasn’t you fricking moron. Penguin HAD no criminal plan, he just wanted to give felons a 2nd chance, and it was just a regular umbrella factory. bruce even takes his girlfriend to visit him in jail afterwards (for just violating parole) as an apology for ruining a good man’s life out of his superhero autism
You just now proved you don’t even read the shit you cry like a baby about, you just make shit up as usual like all you gays pretending bruce has “dem criminul job programs” and shit
>zoomer only knows from New 52
The Wayne Foundation has consistently been shown doing things like rehabilitating criminals, providing scholarships to employees, bankrolling relief efforts after disasters, etc.
Zoomer casuals like you need to eat a bullet immediately.
Maybe make them a focal part of Bruce's supporting cast, have them show up in random places. Make them basically green peace in Gotham as part of driving home how shitty it really can be. Bruce meticulously combs through thousands of applicants to try and see if they're truly good people. Then since they're out working amongst the poor and crime ridden Batman will swoop down and hit them up for any leads or what the word is on the street. Since he knows they're good people he trust them to have the right priorities. So they become a kind of psuedo-Henchman for Batman.
You're getting it backwards. Bruce Wayne was originally depicted as a socialite philanthropist in the Golden and Silver Ages. Go back and read even Detective Comics #27 if you don't believe me. He was based on the archetype of the idle wealthy scion.
It's actually only in the '80s that the idea of Bruce Wayne as an industrialist rather than strictly a philanthropist comes to the forefront, and even then, the charitable work is always there and always pretty prominent (e.g., Wayne Enterprises wasn't introduced until Batman #307 in 1979 while the Wayne Foundation is from Detective Comics #328 in 1964, and that was just the most enduring of the philanthropic ventures he had been shown doing over the years.
>Even in TAS Bruce is constantly giving to charity and feeling shitty that his money doesn't go as far as he wished.
Where is this batman doesn't care about the poor thing even coming from? Zoomers? Bruce is constantly shown to protect the innocent Even without any mention of charity work. Is this due to the live actions?
It's coming from midwits on social media
I think the problem is that they don't properly introduce Thomas Wayne Philanthropy and charity non profit projects that Bruce inherited alongside the Wayne Enterprises.
Maybe making it all one single organization similar to the Wayne Enterprises being all Wayne family business into one would help.
Isn't that essentially what the Wayne Foundation is? I'm not sure if it's still canon but Bruce is basically the biggest philanthropist on Earth....TWICE since it's technically two foundations to his mother and father with a focus on humanities and science respecitively.
Wasn't the Wayne Foundation from Bruce only? Was it retconned to be the same organization his father used to heal countless people when Bruce was still a toddler?
I think its a good way of building interpersonal drama between him and other characters because whenever a writer tries to give Batman any character flaws its always just "Well I'm SORRY for loving my job too much!" like its everyone else who's the butthole. I actually like the idea of him sleeping with Babs cause it shows a moment of weakness on his part.
>moron who dresses like a bat and fights a mass murdering clown who he refuses to kill or let others kill is mentally ill
Obviously yes. Nothing Batman does is something you'd expect from a mentally sane person.
Depends on how you're playing it. The fact that they made criminal insanity focal to Batman's mythos via Arkham and most his rogues being dubbed as such it makes sense that Batman is the other side of that coin. He's also criminally insane just to a heroic bent.
However if you're not leaning into that, then ignore it. I wouldn't expect Batman being insane to be a big part of his time with the Justice League. If you're playing Batman more like a detective who fights mobsters or pulp hero who fights pulp villains, you're probably not going to examine that idea. But if you're playing with a character whose whole deal is "their past trauma has warped them into something extreme and absurd" it's hard to ignore the 6'3 Bat in the room.
>Batman is mentally ill
>Gets way more pussy than I'll ever will
Why is real life so cruel
If we're gonna do fricking mental illness Batman because of """"realism"""" then we also have to confront the fact that he's a billionaire commiting class warfare and could be using his money and influence in ways far more productive than dressing up and beating up thugs. Mental Illness batman is just a super fricking lazy way to make the character "deep," but it just actively makes the character work. Brave and the Bold was in ironically the best version to come out since the fricking 80s because he's just a driving dude who wants JUSTICE, which is tight as hell.
Makes the character worse, not work. Mother fricker.
>class warfare
Congrats on bringing up the only take that is shittier than "Batman is just as crazy" while also having zero textual support.
You're missing the point. You can't have it both ways, you can't go "obviously, because he dresses up like a bat and fights crime, he is mentally ill because deeeeeeead paaaaaarents!" And then have it so everything around him is goofy fun time stupid shit. Either he is a "real" character in a "real" world, with mental illness problems who beats up poor people and spends billions of dollars r&ding gadgets while his city gets shittier and shittier, WHICH IS A BAD TAKE, or he is a fricking comic character in a world with other comic book characters who fights super villains and whose only "mental illness" is a fricking huge boner for Kamen Rider style JUSTICE.
Sure you can. You're confusing "grounded" and "realism" for reality. Bruce is mentally unwell but functional. A mentally sound Bruce is called Oliver Queen. So yes, Batman can have some screws loose and still run around punching an evil clown.
Dude, it's capeshit, sometimes Spider-Man is fighting a guy with robotic tentacles that is just as silly as Dr Eggman from Sonic and sometimes he's crying over MJ corpse because his sperm killed her.
No, one gotta go. The comics medium is serious (lol) and respected (lol) so it has to be consistent.
>could be using his money and influence in ways far more productive than dressing up and beating up thugs
But he canonically already does this through things like the Wayne Foundation.
>If we're gonna do fricking mental illness Batman because of """"realism"""" then we also have to confront the fact that he's a billionaire commiting class warfare and could be using his money and influence in ways far more productive than dressing up and beating up thugs.
It's canon that Penguin and his organization fricked up anything Bruce tried to fix Gotham forcing him to sabotage his criminal activities as Batman.
And even without Penguin the Court of Owls wants the status quo and they control Gotham and a huge part of the world companies
Also at this point Ra's and Joker would ruin any project he tried out of spite.
It's as bad as every coma/purgatory idea, which is to say absolute dog shit.
Your post OP has a very superficial conceptualization of mental illness. Even worse than the thing you are critiquing. I think you are just using the word to mean weird and erratic. Batman isn't erratic but he is weird and different because the concept is utterly fantastical.
So I gave you a very weak answer because you had a very weak question. As I said "Batman is just as nuts as the guys he fights" has far more depth than what you are going for, not because it's such a profound sentence but because you are dumbing down everything to a point where the superficial is profound by comparasion.
Tell me something I don't know, pal. It has been obvious for a long time that Batman is as insane as his foes from Arkham. As the Joker said once: "You're just a little boy in a playsuit, crying for mommy and daddy".
It may be cruel, but it's also true. Bruce's parents would have wanted for him to be happy in his life and create his own family, not to turn himself in an obssessive crusade on a hopeless mission which caused more harm than good.
Batman IS insane, and recent events with Zur-En-Ark coming out of his mind is just a proof.
>why are you here?
so basically this entire thread and countles others wouldn't even exist if DC properly introduced the Wayne Foundation
How would you make those guys as memorable as the Wayne Enteprises? I guess they could slightly change it's name to distance itself from Batman family business
You don't. It's a background element. It's something you mention but don't dwell on unless you directly tie it to the plot.
Dunno this kind of group can be fun just like Damage Control and Smiling Friends.
>portrayal in The Batman movie that depicted him as some reclusive peeping Tom
I'm going to watch this now
This question is answered in a lot of Batman media, but I'll just mention Joker (the movie) and Batman Beyond.
Despite media finger-wagging at its depiction of mental illness, the revelation in Joker was that Arthur was not mentally ill. He was put on drugs that clouded his mind, suppressing memories of institutional injustice perpetrated upon him that would drive any sane person to violence. Which is what happens at the end when he freed Gotham from the "opiate of the masses."
Terry McGinnis was the product of an experiment to recreate Batman by using his blood, but also through recreating key events and trauma in his life, in a plot lifted straight from The Boys From Brazil.
Both of these stories deal with the question of nature versus nurture/circumstance, and fall on one side. Bruce Wayne is a sane person making rational decision in a particular set of conditions, not least of which is the fact his wealth makes crime-fighting a calculated risk for him.
You know what's actually a little insane? People who claim Batman is insane often also feel Bruce Wayne can solve crime in Gotham by simply dedicating his wealth to improving the livelihood of the poor. In other words, they feel Bruce's heroic vigilantism is insanity, but the criminal psychopathy of his rogues gallery is the product of circumstance. That's cognitive dissonance.
it's just a lazy way to add drama and conflict. You can do similar things to literally every superheroe. No shit that these characters seem silly when directly compared to real world problems, sensibilities, and issues
The thing is most superheroes are aliens or mutants with superpowers and therefore have the feeling they have a moral duty to use those powers for something beyond self-enrichment. Batman at the end of the day is just a dude in a bat-themed gimp suit. Wayne made the conscious effort to empower himself. Very few capeshitters have a similar background, the most noteworthy being Iron Man who was probably a deliberate attempt by Marvel to make a competitor to Batman that trims away the vestiges of being a detective serial.
He's mentally ill and adopting an army of traumatized orphan kids and training them up to be vigilante child soldiers is his biggest crime.
They wanted to be child soldiers. Not his fault. To make an omelette gotta break a few eggs.
The Wayne Foundation is canonically just a tax-evasion front to defraud hundreds of billions (literally over 100 billion dollars) that’s spent soley on Bruce’s insanely expensive Batman equipment
It's basically DC's version of the Clinton or Jeffrey Epstein foundations- a money laundering front used to hide corrupt use of donated funds
>using post-Rebirth as an example of anything
Casual spotted
That doesn't even make any sense. Not only would that make the Wayne Foundation one of the largest charities in the world and subject to a host of scrutiny, linking shell companies to it would bring even more scrutiny, it'd be less secure than keeping the shell companies separate, and it'd massively complicate the accounting and increase the chance of discovery, but Bruce wouldn't need to reveal anything to get his money back. He'd just need to have an attorney representing the shell company. It's only slightly less moronic than TDKR where Bane stealing all of Bruce's money isn't resolved by an attorney asking how Bruce Wayne made a personal divestment of all his assets in person at the exact time and place a terrorist attack was being carried out.
Shh he used the Batcomputer to do it
Everyone who says shit like this in the first place, is always mentally ill themselves.
For instance, Grant Morrison.
Damn now I’m curious what he did in the 80’s to be known as violent, driven, and borderline psychopathic.
Dark Knight Returns. Which Frank Miller wrote because he was pissed off how Adam West made Batman look like a gay soft gay in the 60s.
I think Paul Dini did a good job capturing the essence of Batman in this
Superhero comics would probally sell better if they weren't so fricking moronic and inconsistent.
They'd sell better if there was a manageable way to read them, everything is cope. If I ask "What should I read if I want to read about Batman" I'm going to get at least a dozen different answers and a lot of those comics are going to be rare, expensive, or I gotta buy a shitload of them and cross-reference them with some Justice League or Superman story or whatever the frick else. If I ask "What should I read if i want to read about Guts" the answer from absolutely everybody is "Berserk volume 1".
It's probably why Watchmen still sells so well compared to other western comics, you pick up a Watchmen omnibus and boom, you're done you can now read the entirety of Watchmen and it's that simple.
>a manageable way to read them
Buy a Batman comic that looks cool.
Read it.
It's as simple as that. You don't need to worry about past stories, if you have a functioning brain you can fill in the blanks and all capeshit pre-2000 is basically designed to be standalone stories.
Bruce absolutely is mentally ill, but people conflate "mentally ill" with "needs to be committed like the rest of his rogue's gallery"; which is like saying "you have a cold" is the same as "you need to be locked up in a hospital until you get better". Bruce Wayne suffers from a myriad of mental illnesses, but none of them render him psychotic.
Bruce killed millions with his Bat Deathmachine Satellite in Infinite Crisis.
Joker across his entire lifetime has killed only 3 thousand.
I may not like all of Morrisson's stuff but he's based in my book for calling Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams homosexuals for ruining Green Lantern.
Adams drew the best Hal Green Lantern.
For me, it's Ivan Reis the only good Brazilian artist to be hired by the big two.
Batman is a piece of shit.
I like Morrison's little inversion of the whole "Batman is the real identity" thing.
>Batman's not afraid of anything.
>It's me. I'm afraid.