YMMV / Batman: Fortunate Son

• Faux Symbolism: The comic makes many visual parallels of equating the veneration to rockstars to the veneration of holy saints, but the most out-of-nowhere instance happens to be the last one: as Lazarus gives his ending rant about instigating Izaak's violent downfall to make him into a "legend", he promptly throws himself out a window to his death, being impaled on a crucifix-shaped fence as he lands. How that factors into the metaphor is anyone's guess.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The idea of Batman hating rock and roll becomes ironically hilarious in light of The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie, where Batman is often shown to have a love of rock and roll, to the point of writing his own heavy metal songs and randomly shredding out his rock guitar in his indoor pool.
• Just Here for Godzilla: If you're picking up this book for some reason, you're probably drawn to it due to the review of it on Atop the Fourth Wall, especially as it’s one of the earliest comics that genuinely pissed off Linkara, as well as inspiring one of the show’s most memorable Running Gags.
• Memetic Mutation: Both "Punk is nothing but death... and crime... and the rage of a beast" and "Pigs— from a gun!" got their starts here, easily being the most iconic and nonsensical things said.
• Narm:
  • Batman's infamous line: "Punk is nothing but death... and crime... and the rage of a beast." Even if he's supposed to be portrayed as an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy whose sudden hatred of rock music is — in fact — a flaw according to the narrative, it's still a really absurd and goofy way for him to put it. The fact he keeps mentioning rock music as "The Beast" as he beats the snot out of several punks only comes across as even more laughable.
  • Despite Gene Ha usually being a solid artist, his depictions of the Dynamic Duo here aren't very flattering: Robin inexplicably has the scrunched-up face of a 60-year-old, and Batman's cowl looks like it barely fits over his nose, and has especially large ears that makes him look like a rabbit more than a bat.
  • The comic has a really tenuous grasp on what Rock actually is, especially the rotten stuff that's supposedly driving the conflict, which rears its ugly head during the scene where Batman reveals his Rogues Gallery's taste in music. The point was to intimidate Robin out of defending rock by teaching him that their villains are huge fans of it, which gets straight-up silly when among the bands that they espouse happens to be ABBA. As in, the campy Swedish Disco-Europop group.
• Never Live It Down: This comic singlehandedly turned the idea of Batman hating Rock & Roll into one of biggest in-jokes among comic book fans for decades. Despite this trait only existing for basically this one comic alone, Batman buffs (especially Atop the Fourth Wall fans) love periodically referencing it as if it were a canon fact, and that to this day, among Bats' greatest enemies is the existence of rock music.
• One-Scene Wonder: Some members of Batman's Rogues Gallery cameo during a scene in Arkham Asylum, each sharing their personal tastes in classic rock music. This ended up being one of the more fondly-regarded scenes for at least being endearingly nonsensical, even if the knowledge that The Joker, The Riddler, and Two-Face are connoisseurs of ABBA and Black Sabbath isn't the damning moral that Batman intended it to be for Robin.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: This comic has a really confused moral focus. To make the entries below even more confusing, bear in mind that this comic was intended by Gerard Jones and co to be a tribute to rock 'n roll:
  • Izaak Crowe is narratively portrayed as a tragic figure that we should feel sorry for as he breaks down and eventually loses his life over the handling of his music, but the comic shows very little reason to actually warrant any pity. His breakdown is supposed to be the result of him feeling crushed between the gatekeeping of his counter-cultural inspirations and the corporate shackles of being a major label artist, but how this manifests is him whining about being given a life of privilege and riches instead of living a "real" life of destitution and struggle, suggesting that him being successful and making money at all is what made him feel like a "Sell-Out". His actions in trying to reclaim his integrity also don't do him any favors: his response to a music video he wasn't satisfied with is blowing up the studio to prevent them from broadcasting it, and he starts a violent uproar in an attempt to get his album distributed for free despite there being probably more charitable, less destructive means of doing so — even when it's revealed that his downfall was partly orchestrated by his corrupt manager, there's no indication that if he must sell albums and make money, Izaak couldn't just donate the proceeds he didn't want.
  • By proxy, Robin is supposed to be played as the relatable Audience Surrogate, trying to reason with Batman out of his anti-rock funk by expressing sympathy towards Izaak. This doesn't work very well considering not only the aforementioned flaws of Izaak himself, but the glaring leaps of logic in trying to defend him only makes Robin seem like the out-of-touch strawman. Him rhetorically asking Batman if it's "such a huge crime to knock some cheesy videos off the air" is seriously undermined by how bombing a broadcasting station absolutely is, in fact, several crimes.
  • Batman is an especially confusing character as the comic can't seem to decide on its moral and where he ultimately stands in relationship to it. He starts in a pretty awkward position as a rock-n'-roll hating crusader motivated by contrived retcons to his backstory, and despite embarking on a few actions to better understand rock-n'-roll and its culture, aside from a quiet commiseration following Izaak's death at the end, at no point does he actually seem to turn on his opinions. He still goes through the climax believing "punk is nothing but death and crime and the rage of a beast", tries to prove to Robin how corrupt rock music is by revealing how much the criminals at Arkham love it, and ultimately doesn't seem like he actually learns or resolves anything, thus only leaving him with his laughable vices.

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