Batman General Discussion

Batman Zur En Arh is still tossing around in that Batman robot isn't he

yes hes gonna be a big part of the summer event teaming up with waller, and a female coluian

One of the more amusing things about Ra's to me is that the guy who created him wanted a villain with an Arabic name but didn't know how to pronounce Arabic, but his mispronunciation is so ingrained in everyone's consciousness that everyone just rolls with it.

It's like Mowgli.

That tricky thing of white Americans trying to write about foreign language and cultures from way back.

With the era of the internet allowing easier global communication, you'd think people would be better about this.

Though I think the Raysh pronunciation is Hebrew from what I understand, and Ra's creator did actually consult some experts on this.

Aw yeah! Is this gonna be the return of Indigo....though she'd probably be Brainiac 8.

Wait, the Failsafe robot is going to be involved in a Suicide Squad storyline?

God I love comics.

That thing needs to be destroyed. Superman needs to WORLD OF CARDBOARD that sucker ASAP.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 29th 2024 at 10:27:38 AM

Failsafe is a prime example of a really cool idea that's been handled in the worst way possible.

It is thematically fitting kind of? Waller would love a robot that kicked Batman's teeth in... after it kicked the Justice League's teeth in.

And Zurr En ARRRRH would be on Waller like "oh you like short-stringing criminals to get stuff done and then icing them when they're no longer useful too? Hey baby wanna know my secret identi-TEE okay I see you have a gun in my face and piano wire around my throat, but I would like to remind you miss that I do not have lungs or a face! I'm trying to say I'd like to do a team up, sir, thank you."

And then Waller would find out he's The Batman Who Cosplays and be like, "oh so Bruce actually made something that can KO the entire Justice League in the space of a week and was built under three different layers of convolutedness, and can't be traced back to me or my government? Okay, I'd like to offer you an entry-level position in the Suicide Squad."

But like, Failsafe is just... a retcon of a story I was fine with, and asks me to believe that Bruce is just the best engineer in the universe and probably the worst risk manager.

Rather than Bruce maybe learn from Tower of Babel he doubled down on the exact kind of stupidity that caused that storyline.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 29th 2024 at 10:32:18 AM

Also right now, Failsafe has been taken over by Zur en Arh.

So it's basically just Metal Sonic but as Metal Batman.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 29th 2024 at 10:34:42 PM

At this point, ending it with Bruce kicked out of the League seems like the only way to end this. And not him quitting, really.

Edited by Blueace on Mar 29th 2024 at 11:40:38 AM

Considering the last time Bruce got himself kicked off the Justice League is what led to Failsafe existing at all that might not be a good idea.

The Justice League was disbanded at the end of Dark Crisis.

If they keep insisting on having Bruce do this shit, then I can picture some heroes who don't consider him a friend and see him as a Control Freak and a liability deciding he needs to be taken down, just as he decided to try and take down other heroes himself so often.

And part of me would like to see it work.

But part of me also wants him to just....stop being that guy as well.

Batman dealing with a group of superheroes who see him as a liability and want to eliminate him because of it is an AWESOME idea for a story with a lot of potential if put in the right hands.

And yeah, your feeling is one that's become increasingly prominent among the fandom since the King run. Bruce either needs to have his character development stick or get retired. This shit where he's constantly having all his development in the Dixon run undone so he keeps treating his family and friends like crap and being a miserly loner who causes more problems than he solves has been going on since Infinite Crisis at least and only gotten worse as the years went. I genuinely think the Grant Morrison run is the only one since the early 2000s that made a sincere effort to push Batman's development and general life situation forward rather than just concocting elaborate ways to make him run in place.

Single-parent Bruce from the current Batman & Robin run is my favourite Bruce.

I'm surprised they are doing this Failsafe and Zur en Arh shit again, when there's more interesting plot threads set up that they could do.

Like, the Penguin's children are trying to take over crime in Gotham, that has lots of potential, seeing as comic Bats is starting to feel his age and needs to learn to trust his own heirs, while Penguin just wants to get out of crime and leave things to his children, having gotten tired of his game with Batman and realizing that he's wasting his life getting punched by a man dressed like a bat.

That's being a dealt with in Penguin's comic.

I would like to see Batman's no-kill policy/rehabilitate actually bear some fruit.

• White Knight of Gotham. Retool this, have Jack Napier reemerge and become one of the only honest figures in law enforcement, and scarily good at it, even becoming a decent replacement for Jim Gordon. What is Joker better at doing than commanding ranks of corrupt individuals into doing exactly what he wants? Let's say Joker is step 1 of Gotham actually being fixed and refuting Ra's and the League's EVER INCREASINGLY VALID POINT that this city is unsalvageable.
• Riddler. Gotham and the post-Batman Hush stories indicated that Riddler could have been a useful GCPD detective. Like Dent his problem is an obsession that can be fought. Even if he is a vain, narcissistic person he's still better and more interesting than Ghost-Maker. Have Riddler determine that Bruce is Batman, laugh at the absurdity of it, and decide that the best way to prove his superiority is to do Batman's job but better as his own persona. This creates a terse alliance between two hyper-smart individuals. Draw in the audience of people who like works like Sin City and The Boys where alliances and morality are gray and shaky. We already had Lex Luthor be a good guy and work with the Justice League.
• Poison Ivy. She's the most obvious case of Villain Has a Point and all she really needs to do is reign in her eco-terrorist shtick to reasonable levels, work with Waynetech to reduce pollution, etc.
• We've been overdosed on Harley being a good guy.
• Penguin I think should stick around, but maybe if he'd survived he could be one of the few influences on his criminal children to make them stop being, well, criminals?
• Two-Face could easily go back to being on the side of the law.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 29th 2024 at 12:29:48 PM

Riddler reforming and becoming a private detective in the lead-up to the New 52 was such an amazing evolution for the character and had so much potential and I'm still pissed it got dumped when the reboot hit.

And yeah, if we're going to insist on Batman holding fast to the no-kill rule, we need to start getting stories that show it having positive outcomes rather than just letting Joker kill half the city for the five hundredth time in a row.

Honestly, I'd love a modern story where the Joker is just a funny goofy clown and everyone is treating him like modern Joker and are scared of him.

Including Batman.

Let the Joker surprise people since they already ran the idea of him being an ultra evil super competent devil in human form down to the ground.

Make him funny, his act is boring.

Yeah, the most damning thing about modern Joker is that an "agent of chaos" has become embarrassingly predictable and produces stories that are painfully rote. Even when writers to do "crazy" new things with him, they end up just repeating the same beats. Hell, just look at the current arc of the Zdarsky run with the whole "Joker Zombie Apocalypse in a Bad Future" idea that sounds interesting on the surface until you remember Morrison already did the same thing in their run and did it in a far scarier and cooler way on top of it.

I remember when Joker was actually unpredictable, the kind of guy would hand out exploding cigars as a harmless prank until one at random turned out to contain nitroglycerin or was just as likely to pay for his meal and leave politely as blow up the diner.

Wait, when did Joker cause the apocalypse in the Morrison run?

The running subplot of a Bad Future where Damian was Batman that ran throughout Morrison's run ends in a villain unleashing a viral epidemic that turns people into Jokers, turning Gotham into a warzone and culminating in the government being forced to nuke the city.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 29th 2024 at 9:43:52 AM

Oh, okay. I think I remember that.