Batman General Discussion

Speaking of games apparently the Arkham letdown is making his debut in the main dc universe. Hopefully they’ll do better than a half assed version of Under the Red Hood

You mean the Arkham Letdown? Ah man, that dude did not live up to his name. Best boss fight in the game.

I'm going to use "Letdown" as a name for some kind of boss character one day. Thank you for that

Edited by Soble on Jan 7th 2019 at 2:43:44 AM

It can't be the same guy in this case.

He's already doing his own shit, it wouldn't make sense.

My bet is... Lincoln March.

You mean Arkham "TOTALLY ORIGINAL CHARACTER NOT FROM DC CANON" Knight? :V

Yes

I finished Detective Comics a couple day ago (well there's one more volume but the story Tynion was telling about the Bat-Family seems over).

I wish more Batman stories ended with him proudly stating that "everything will be all right." I'm tired of Sadbats.

I'm very hit or miss on Tynion's run, but I think it ended pretty well, all things considered. I'm not fond of Kate's arc in the run, but everyone else is mostly well written imo. I just wish Cass got more focus, but even then, I think she had the strongest ending of all the characters from his tenure. The last scene with her, where she's at the clinic, and Clayface leaves her that note before running off with Dr. October? Probably one of my top three scenes from all of DC Rebirth.

I also highly recommend the next volume if you want to see what happens with Cassandra and Bruce afterwards. Bryan Hill only got one arc (to set up his Outsiders series), but it's a good one.

What was wrong with Kate? Tynion wrote her almost perfectly.

I disagree entirely. Her character arc was a circle. She started out largely independent from Batman, working with her dad and fighting cults. By the end of the story, despite going through massive changes, she loops right back around to that.

I’m also uncomfortable with a Jewish man being the head of a militaristic conspiracy that planned to blow up a city. It was unintentional, but still reeeeaaaaally iffy, considering all the “globalist conspiracy” theories out there.

Isn't that bold part kinda contradictory to this point? It doesn't matter if she ended up doing the same thing by the end, as long as her character changed, which it indeed did and you agree with.

I've seen this idea pop up in so many places, and I remain confused by where it comes from. The Colony was not a conspiracy. Not in any way. They were a branch of the Army, an official DoD project. Jacob did take them rogue, but that's not the same thing as a conspiracy. Kinda the opposite, even.

They weren't trying to rule the world or anything, and the only reason they were going to blow up a portion of Gotham was because they had to, since the Knights ruined their capability to narrow down their list of League of Shadows suspects, with an LoS attack imminent.

Edited by caivu on Jan 25th 2019 at 3:46:01 AM

I liked when Kate killed Clayface. It felt appropriately dramatic for the Batfamily to semi-implode over the unavoidable death of a villain.

Yeah, I hate the actual death (since everyone loves Clayface), but the situation was pulled off pretty much flawlessly.

The Joker obvious isn't legally insane, but is there another accepted type of insane he fits? This applies to a lot of Batman villains because "insanity" in most super-villains is the writer's lazy explanation for their evil Arkham Asylum being bad at its job

Edited by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93 on Feb 5th 2019 at 9:31:43 AM

Most of the Bat rogues don't fit any form of insanity at all. Joker has stated numerous times he know the difference between right and wrong, he just doesn't care.

In terms of “is this villain mentally ill?”, only a handful really are.

Clayface, as of Rebirth, cannot tell the difference between right and wrong while in clay form for too long. He could actually use the insanity defense.

Poison Ivy, as of New 52, has Seasonal Affective Disorder, but that has no bearing on her committing crimes. So she’s mentally ill, but cannot use the insanity defense.

Harley Quinn, if we go by Injustice and Suicide Squad (and maybe her comics too, I don’t follow them), is heavily hinted to have schizophrenia. The way its portrayed though, it isn’t the cause of her crimes, so no insanity defense.

Two Face has multiple personality disorder. Normally, not an insanity defense, but because of his coin obsession, you could argue that he in particular can’t help himself. He has to do what it tells him to do, even if its wrong. So, possible insanity defense.

Beyond them, I don’t think any of his villains even really have any form of mental illness? Joker is just a straight up serial killer, he knows what he’s doing, and he definitely couldn’t use that defense. Neither could most others, like Mr Freeze or Firefly.

Professor Pyg is an iffy one as it seems unclear whether he knows what he’s doing is wrong. Depending on how severe his case is, it might be possible.

With Joker, I thought I recalled there being a story that implied he managed to bribe some people into getting him committed to Arkham.

tbh, they should just say that Gotham is in a state where the death penalty is outlawed, and make up an excuse about Arkham having more experience with rogues than Blackgate.

I seriously think the label of insane is just the writer's lazy explanation for why they're evil and Unfortunate Implications

You'd think they'd have realized by now that some men just want to watch the world burn.

Someone on Twitter posted this about the potential drawback of Cass becoming Batman.

Dick and Wally were lucky in that their Question the mantle taking was part of the story and was meant to differentiate them from their predecessor, Yeah their different but they are just as good and in some ways better

Everybody else tends to be how They'll never be as good as their predecessor

So one of the stories in Detective#1000, the one written by Geoff Johns, is about The Joker and Harley's family going up against Bruce and Selinas' in the far future. Nice to see DC aren't shying away from Bat/Cat inevitably being a thing...it's surprising to find they still consider Joker/Harley a thing though.

I wouldn’t read too much into that. Action Comics #1000 had several stories that didn’t fit into continuity. Stuff like Superman in the 1930s, or at the end of the world.

That's true, even Bendis' story in #1000 is set in an altogether different future

I think the end of the world story from AC#1000 is vague enough to still fit canon...at least for now.