The Current State Of Batman Is Odd

I saw this article on Fansided’s Bam Smack Pow site discussing this new game, Batman: Arkham Shadow. Right now all they have is a teaser for a new game in the Batman Arkham series…that will be exclusive to one VR system, Facebook’s Meta Quest. I’m not that familiar with VR gaming and right now we don’t have a plot, though it will have to take place before Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League since that is also set in Arkham continuity…and Batman is dead, acting as Brainiac’s #1 flunky thanks to mind control, and killed by Harley Quinn after some speech about how he had her peeps scared. You know, the ones who rob banks, blow up buildings, and line the streets with their dead at every opportunity. I think we can dispense with the violin. They probably stole that, too.

Remember when Superman was DC’s flagship character but as the 1990s started the more cynical grimdark trends popularity shifted to Batman? He didn’t have superpowers unless you count being a super rich supergenius who designed and built all his own gadgets, learned more languages and odd bits of trivia than Ken Jennings, and was trained in more martial arts styles than there are varied MMA fighters. Then he was just a normal man who could defeat God with his greatest skill: prep time. Yeah, tell me Bruce Wayne isn’t overpowered and I’ll tell you how wrong you are. He can’t juggle a planet, but I bet he has a battlesuit that will help him already being constructed.

Nowadays the treatment of Batman by creators and by DC itself is…strange. You’d think you would want to keep your number one guy (yes, that was on purpose Burton fans) at the top of his game. DC these days seem to be trying to ditch him. I expect the usual suspects to hate him because he has money and refuses to believe anyone can be a good person especially with money. Why does DC hate him enough to not only damage him in their own comics but let adapters screw him up as well?

It all seemed to start with the failed Catwoman marriage. DC fans were excited to see this new chapter in Batman’s life. Clark marrying Lois didn’t seem to hurt Superman’s stories, and if Batman was going to marry anyone Selina was as good a choice as any other. He needs someone who can keep up with his life as Batman as well as his life as Bruce. With a reformed Selina, which was also undone, he had a partner who could complete the family he’s built around himself. No, apparently Batman “needs his pain”. That’s a load of bull.

Counting the Bat FAMILY, he’s on like three different teams right now.

But that’s Tom King for you. He likes breaking the toys, which he and other Bat-Writers at the time loved to show by bringing back Flashpoint Batman Thomas Wayne, setting Bruce against the Bat-Family, and now this business with Failsafe, a robot created by Batman to stop Batman (not even sure how that works) being “possessed” with a personality Batman created in his own mind as a different kind of “failsafe”. Also, because Zur-En-Ar apparently couldn’t be a fun alien Batman concept from the Silver Age and had to be part of Batman’s mind because fun isn’t allowed in DiDio’s Darker DC, and don’t pretend that we lost that just because we lost DiDio. It’s still affecting how the DC universe is approached. It sounds like a total Bat-mess over there.

This extends to the rest of DC Entertainment, though. Crisis On Infinite Earths, the maybe-adaptation of the event that killed “my” DC continuity in the comics, decides to take a pop shot at Batman taking in a teenage sidekick. The Batman decided to take away his money. We just talked about the Arkham Batman being killed by Harley Quinn. That’s when you can even find a story with Batman in it. Gotham, Pennyworth, the previous and upcoming “Joker in name only” films, and the upcoming The Penguin are Batman minus Batman stories, the first two being prequels. Then you have the unrelated game and TV show both called Gotham Knights. In the show the supposed kids of Batman, who’s dead, and other Gotham-based heroes, none of them being Damien and his backstory, take over defending the city, which is all I know about it and care to know about because it just looks lame. The video game also has Batman dead but the rest of the Bat-Family take on the playable heroes as they carry on without their mentor. That at least is an interesting story idea with potential. I expect anything called Birds Of Prey to not have Batman but at least he’s alive and acknowledged, with the show being enjoyable despite being just as bad an adaptation as the as the Harley Quinn by Margot Robbie film.

Nowadays Batman is depicted as angry, withdrawn, and filled with paranoia, with writers trying to kill the friendship with Superman that other versions of Batman has had since the Silver Age, where they met saving the same cruise ship (I’d like to see that adapted someday if I could trust a modern writer…and I don’t), coming up with contingency plans to take down hero and villain alike–which admittedly I understand to a point given Superman isn’t the only Kryptonian they come across when Zod and Bizarro are around–and just basically unpleasant. He runs around in a bat costume because he’s crazy, not because he wants a psychological edge on the guys shooting at him. Batman is the “real identity” instead of another tool on his plans to clean up Gotham, which he also does as Bruce. Or maybe used to. Who knows anymore?

I grew up with a more heroic Batman, a Batman who is good to his friends and the people he is sworn to protect, while a nightmare to his enemies. He was allowed to even smile now and then without pretending. He could be happy. He could be a good friend, a “super friend” if you will, because that’s one of the versions of Batman I knew. The DCAU Batman sat with a child and made her dying without suffering rather than killing her quicker because her psychic powers were going to go nova with her. The calmed child didn’t destroy anything because Batman is compassion. Batman does have to save you because that’s Batman. That’s a hero, someone who cares, who wants to see others do and be better, but isn’t going to hesitate kicking your backside when he needs to.  I miss that Batman and he’s more and more becoming absent from the multiverse.

That doesn’t mean he’s the cuddly softie type. That wouldn’t fly in Gotham City. He’s the Dark Knight. He operates out of the shadows, uses fear as a tool just as much as his batarang (which is a boomerang, not a @#$%$# throwing star, which you should gather by the name). He is damaged by his childhood trauma, but he couldn’t be as damaged as he gets depicted and be effective at a hero. He would be the Punisher, he would be killing dudes. He isn’t. He finds them jobs when they get out of prison to keep them out of the criminal life. He runs charities for cops, orphans, and strives to improve Gotham’s status in and out of the cowl. Despite the overused line, he isn’t vengeance, he isn’t crazy, and he isn’t robbing his company blind.

And let’s talk about those kid sidekicks. Batman isn’t trying to create another him. In fact he’s doing the opposite or keeping them from becoming worse. When Dick Grayson saw his dead parents, and knew it wasn’t a high-wire accident, Bruce saw the same suffering he had felt when he saw his own parents murdered in front of him. He tried to get Jason Todd out of the criminal life, and while he succeeded there he failed to fully pull Jason from the brink, but he tried. Tim Drake became Robin because he saw that Bruce was handling Jason’s murder poorly and that he needs Robin as much as Robin needs Batman. Robin is that anchor back to his humanity, reminding him of what he’s fighting for. That’s why Robin has the bright colors. Now he’s trying to succeed with his own flesh-and-blood son where he failed with Jason, only Damien is worse, having been trained by Ra’s to be and thing like an assassin.

Then there’s the non-Robins, unless you count Stephanie’s short stint. As Spoiler she did okay messing with her dad but had Batman taken her in sooner the gang civil war might not have happened. She’s also been Batgirl, an identity both Katy Kane and Barbara Gordon took because they were inspired to do good taking up the fight against Gotham City’s underworld. I still maintain Cassandra Cain needed it more, when the plan to make her the ultimate assassin backfired spectacularly and she vowed not to kill. She’s the only Batgirl who started out with Batman’s approval. Even the re-imagined Kate Kane was inspired by her cousin’s exploits, while the pre-Crisis version was mostly after Batman’s romantic aspirations because DC wanted to prove Batman and Robin weren’t gay. We’re all thinking it, so let’s leave Tim alone.

There’s an issue of Batman: Gotham Adventures that shows what would happen if Bruce hadn’t become Batman, and it’s actually worse off for the DCAU versions of Dick, Tim, and Barbara. Far from being irresponsible, it turns out that it saved their lives and their futures. Meanwhile it gained Bruce something he needed: a family. It’s in the team name, the Bat-Family. It’s not surprising, but it is sad that today’s writers seem set on tearing that family apart, or at least damaging the bonds between them because they think being a loner is part of Batman as a character. That hasn’t been true since Robin’s introduction.

His legend goes beyond himself. In other timelines there have been others inspired by fate and the legend of the Dark Knight to take up his mantle. Huntress originally was another of Bruce’s children in a reality where he married Selina and retired due to being too old. In Digital Justice, Gordon’s grandson is a cop who saw corruption in the system and was chosen by an AI Bruce to take on a new Batman, while Terry McGinnis became Batman as a sort of absolution of his past sins. I haven’t even listed all of the others inspired by Batman to take up crimefighting in Gotham and around the world because there was a whole organization of them, Batman Incorporated. Unless you’re starting a cult, you don’t get this many sane people together if you’re a brooding loner lunatic.

Yet, that’s how Bruce is depicted these days…if he’s there at all. It seems DC is trying to get rid of Bruce if not in the comics then in the shows and games, while the movies treat him as a violent, brooding loner controlled by his childhood trauma rather than pushing back against it to spare some other child what he went through. This is how DC Entertainment is treating their current flagship character while still trashing their previous flagship character and declaring how great the “trinity” is when the last member has her own issues. I just don’t understand what they’re thinking at DC anymore…if they’re thinking at all. When fans understand the character better than the stewards of the property, and plenty of fan productions show that they do, it’s a sad day for Bruce Wayne and the legend of Batman.