BW Media Spotlight

“I’ll need a time traveler, a memory restoring machine, and a sandwich because I missed lunch.”

Ever since posting that Comicstorian commentary on Tim Drake being redundant as part of a series of videos against the “family” style team, and my response that it’s the writers that are the problem, I’ve been thinking about just how each member of the Batman Family actually fits among the Gotham City protectors. I don’t believe that anyone needs to be redundant among the family. Namely because I don’t believe Batman needs to, or even can, do it all alone. With modern writers trying to blow up Gotham City every four issues because they’re infected with Eventitis and needs every story to be epic like a movie instead of continuous but episodic like a TV show, you’d think the lone wolf who has been on four hero teams at the same time may want a little back-up. Some of his cases even take him out of Gotham City and someone should be there when he’s doing Justice League or Outsider business. The man’s busy and unless you want to make Bruce a Gary Stu a little help is required.

And unlike the two unrelated media projects called Gotham Knights (the video game and TV series have nothing to do with each other outside of “Batman’s dead and we’re still in Gotham City”) you don’t need to kill off Batman to give them a spotlight. I just went over the times he’s out of town, plus it’s a large city and each member of the Bat-Family has their own unique skills, lives, and personalities that they all could handle aspects Batman can’t because he’s not tied to any of those experiences. So I thought it would be fun to go over each member of the team and see where they can fit in and what they bring to the Bat-Family.

This isn’t a complete list. All I know about The Signal and the two (?) Batwings are they exist. So I really don’t know where to squeeze them in, but based on the rest of my list maybe some of you out there can find them a spot on the team? Let’s start with the obvious.

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