DEATH BATTLE

Has, or had? Because you'd think he would've did something about such a phobia the moment he becomes aware he has it.

edited 24th Nov '17 2:01:37 PM by MarqFJA

Actually, I'd kind of like to see that.

One does not "do something" about a phobia.

Yeah they do. There are Cognitive behavioural therapy and desensitization therapies one can take to treat a phobia. One can get counseling. There's even medications to treat some of the symptoms (Depending on how the phobia expresses itself).

That's like saying "One does not do something about cancer". That's monumentally stupid and wrong.

edited 24th Nov '17 3:25:17 PM by Ghilz

Only the common crooks would be afraid of bats. The main villains would just find Batman annoying at best.

Except Scarecrow, who (IIRC) once got so desensitized to fear that he couldn't feel fear at all except toward Batman. Of course, being Scarecrow, he also got addicted to fear and so deliberately kept going after Batman just to be able to feel it.

edited 24th Nov '17 6:38:11 PM by TrashJack

To be fair, most Batman Origins have him design the bat motif BEFORE he encounters super villains. So scaring "Common Crooks" was the entire point. He didn't know he'd be facing mutants, freaks and insane clowns when he made it.

edited 24th Nov '17 6:20:54 PM by Ghilz

Yeah, most of Batman's quarry consists of completely ordinary human criminals — you know, the kind that not only comprises the majority of Gotham's criminal underworld (be they underlings or crime bosses like Rupert Thorne), but forms the vast bulk of the minions in service to the true supervillains in Batman's rogues gallery.

The fact that he started trying to terrify normal people only for the circus to show up in his wake is sometimes a plot point, too. Comes up whenever someone wants to do a “is Batman bad for Gotham?” story.

edited 24th Nov '17 10:03:16 PM by KnownUnknown

That theory immediately falls apart just by bringing up the many Batman rogues whose presence in Gotham has no connections whatsoever to him.

Ra's al Ghul predates not only Batman, not only his parents or Gotham itself, but known human history. And he would've come to modern-day Gotham regardless of Batman's existence; the city being a Wretched Hive was enough grounds for him to seek its destruction.

Victor Freeze became what he is because of his Corrupt Corporate Executive boss pulling the plug on his Human Popsicle project out of simple greed.

The Penguin was already well on the road to criminality by the time Bruce took up the mantle of Batman.

Do I need to go on?

Spider-Man and Batman have had a memetic rivalry going on for decades — at least since the 1990's. They're Marvel and DC's flagship heroes that aren't 100% patriotic paragons like Captain America and Superman, but are feared and often villainized by the police and media. Plus, they both had rival animated series in the 1990's - although Batman's was in many ways the superior show due to Fox's extreme censorship of the Spider-Man series.

Plus, both are geniuses who theme their superhero identities around animals a lot of people are afraid of. Peter's stint as a member of Horizon Enterprises and the CEO of Parker Industries was even similar to what Bruce does as Batman - particularly the former, since he had to do so in secrecy.

edited 25th Nov '17 5:57:37 AM by Arawn999

The story that primarily concerns itself with how Batman's presence relates to how Batman makes Gotham "go crazy" is Loeb's The Long Halloween. The question of whether all these lunatics can truly be traced back to Batman or not is a running one, but the general gist of the story ends up being that Gotham was always populated by madmen in one way or another, what Batman did was basically shatter the outer layer of sanity the cit had and bringing all the hidden lunacy boiling to the surface.

You're thinking Vandal Savage.

Ra's is about 500 to 600 years old, which I am pretty sure isn't older than history.

Furthermore, the question was "Is Batman good or bad for Gotham" and while it's true that he has nothing to do with the creation most of his Rogue's gallery, there's one major exception.

The Joker. Most of the Joker's origins, Batman's intervention are directly related to his creation as its their confrontation that leads the Joker to fall in a vat of Chemicals (which apparently Batman decided to leave him in to get flushed out). And guess who is the super villain in Gotham with the highest body count?

edited 25th Nov '17 6:05:57 AM by Ghilz

Even putting aside the question of whether or not the existence of super villains is Batman's fault, there are so many ways in which he contributes to situation in Gotham.

• He doesn’t kill his villains, not even in self defense or defense of others and denies people the right to do the same. There’s actually a story where the Joker is finally put on death row only for Batman to swoop in and say “nope not him this time”.

• He refuses to join the GCPD as a detective and offer his skills and technology which would make them far more effective at fighting crime.

• He is content to keep sending the rogues to what has got to be the least secure mental hospital in either fiction or real life.

• His continued vigilantism means definitely encourages other vigilantes to take the law into their own hands.

• He has obstructed other superheroes and law enforcement agencies when they have attempted to deal with crime in Gotham.

Bruce may not be responsible for (most of) his rogues becoming super villains but he definitely hurts the city in lots of other ways.

edited 25th Nov '17 7:42:59 AM by windleopard

Meh, the "He doesn't kill his villains" bit I don't really give much weight to, coz lets face it, Gotham doesn't either. So I fail to see why he's got to be the executionner when the legal system won't.

Didn't they send all supervillains into space once and yet they still made it out?

No prison is secure enough, not even the domain of death

Because the villains work for a greater threat: narrative fiat

And there's no thwarting that

Because Gotham isn't the main protagonist, Batman is. That the legal system is a joke is well established, it's why superheroes exist in the first place. Which means that Bruce not doing what the law won't is wildly inconsistent and particularly hypocritical when he gets on the likes of Huntress, Red Hood and even Wonder Woman when they don't have the same hang ups about putting a rabid dog 12 feet under like he deserves.

Of course, this wouldn't be nearly so problematic if writers didn't feel the need to give damn near every super villain a triple digit body count (at least) and depravities that would make real life war criminals wretch.

edited 25th Nov '17 7:53:10 AM by windleopard

Of course then I need to point your own contrary logic

"Superheroes exist because the legal system sucks" Superheroes are therefore a good thing

"Batman encourages the rise of more vigilantism" Ah so Superheroes are now a bad thing?

Because it's always a "rabid dog". None of the actual ramifications of that kind of vigilante justice are ever explored in superhero fiction. While the fact is, in real life, someone like that would be an instant threat regardless of their intentions or how horrible some of the villains are, because of mistakes.

Simple mistakes. Yeah, it's easy to kill the Joker. Equally easy to kill someone you think is just as bad as the Joker, even though their situation might be different or they could be straight up framed. But you won't know that by the time they're dead. Not to mention, how many times the icons of ultimate evil like Joker and Hitler have been projected on people that don't even◊ remotely deserve that?◊

And that's not getting into your biases, and you have biases. Everyone does. You won't be judging every situation fairly, no matter how much of a Batgod you are. We freakout when cops, legally sanctioned and trained cops, get too gun-happy and start killing suspects based on their own biases. To a real life vigilante, this would happen in a matter of weeks.

This is why many people are opposed to the death penalty. Even meticulously crafted and tested legal systems aren't trustworthy enough to decide who deserves to die, what chance does a mentally troubled individual in a Bat costume have?

No, Batman should not kill and Batman writers should start putting better arguments for it, instead of treating it like some kind of a "fatal flaw" of his.

As I've said many times, the "Should Superhero X Kill People" argument always winds up being a ridiculous straw argument between two equally flawed extremes. There are two sides to the discussion and everyone's expected to fall into one of them:

• No, superheroes should never ever kill anyone ever, under any circumstances whatsoever. It is never justifiable for a hero to take a life. Never. If the Mad Bomber is about to blow up a shopping mall and the only way to stop him is with a sniper rifle, you let him blow up that mall because you never kill anyone no matter what. That's the hero's code.
• Yes, superheroes should always kill everyone all the time. Superheroes should just be killing criminals left and right. It should be a goddamn bloodbath of justice up in here. Mad scientists, muggers, jaywalkers, just kill 'em all and let God sort it out. You aren't a true hero until you've got a body count to make the Hiroshima bombing jealous.

This inevitably happens whenever this topic is brought up, because the question is fundamentally wrong. "Should superheroes kill?" is a question with a clear Yes/No answer. A better question would be, "Under what circumstances is it acceptable for superheroes to kill?"

This is the basis for the concept of reasonable use of force. When a violent altercation breaks out, lives become prioritized. It is the responsibility of a peacekeeper to ensure:

1. The safety and wellbeing of innocent civilians in the vicinity of the altercation.
2. The safety and wellbeing of peacekeepers.
3. The safety and wellbeing of the person causing the altercation.

In that order. Under no circumstances is it ever acceptable to harm or kill a surrendering or subdued perpetrator in cold blood. If, however, the choice becomes harming or killing a perpetrator who is actively threatening the lives of peacekeepers or worse, civilians, taking them down nonlethally must cease to be a priority. The life of a person pointing a gun at another person as value, but not as much value in the moment as the person who has the gun pointed at them.

Of course, a major reason superheroes get away with No-Killing Code is because of the myth of nonlethal violence is so commonplace in the genre in the first place. Superhero media acts as though killing is always a choice. Like when you hit someone really hard over the back of the head, a toggle pops up where you select Lethal Blow or Nonlethal Blow.

This is, itself, the fundamental paradox of the superhero genre: it's built around the ideal of solving problems through gentle, consequence-free violence

If I recall the context from that correctly, the Joker was put on death row for a crime he didn't commit. The argument wasn't, "Should or should not the Joker be executed?" It was "Nobody should be executed for a crime he's innocent of, not even the Joker," versus "F*ck him, he's committed so many other crimes, just let him take the fall for this one!"

The Death Row thing also meant that there was a serial killer out there that he would have to completely ignore in order to allow the Joker to die, which even outside of the "should Joker die for a crime he didn't commit" angle is something he would never allow.

edited 25th Nov '17 8:30:11 AM by KnownUnknown

Of course, this raises the question of why he wasn't executed for the crimes he had committed.

Not really. I never claimed superheroes were a good thing.

I mean, this issue of bias never seems to be a problem when it comes to who to non lethally beat up. And considering how public most super villains are with their crimes, mistaken identity can't be that much of an issue (there's a reason why I've argued Bruce isn't that much of a detective).

If I recall correctly, there was a story where Cass Cain, the second Batgirl, once stopped a man's heart for about two minutes then re started it again to make him feel what his victims felt when killed them. This is a girl who was so traumatized when she killed a man for the first time (mostly because she could read his body language and thus could sense what he was feeling as the life slipped from him) and yet she has no issue risking making the same mistake years later.

edited 25th Nov '17 8:48:28 AM by windleopard

That's another thing that muddles this question up some. Gotham's legal system is corrupt and ridiculous, and there's a lot of steps that have to be in place for his rotating Rogues Gallery to function: cops need to either not shoot to kill or always miss even when criminals are actively trying to kill them or others, courts have to always sent captured criminals to an asylum or jail no matter the severity of their crimes or the actual sanity they show ("I've got a gimmick!" "Cool, I guess you're insane. Off to Arkham"), said prisons and asylums have to be incompetently run such that they fail to either rehabilitate or contain any inmates, etc.

There's also an underlying issue there, then, that if it's supposed to be his fault for not killing them, that Batman is expected to execute people on the expectation that the state wont. Which... leads down unsettling ground.

edited 25th Nov '17 8:47:54 AM by KnownUnknown

It's generally a problem with Batman's more down to earth setting that the story has to bend itself backwards to justify the Joker still drawing breath. Marvel's counterparts to the Joker tend to be Red Skull (in terms of villain all villains fear) and Carnage (in terms of sadist with a terrible sense of humor) and both tend to die a lot more often for their crimes but come back as they're working with some truly weird sci-fi/supernatural shit.

edited 25th Nov '17 8:48:12 AM by Gaon

I'd say the best Marvel equivalent is Jigsaw, Punisher's archenemy, who manages to repeatedly survive facing a guy who is actively trying to kill him despite being in a down to earth series with little supernatural or magical angles for the same reason Joker does: audiences and writers like him.

edited 25th Nov '17 8:51:13 AM by KnownUnknown