What's the public have against Batman?

Robin's cuddlyness just serves to make Batman even cuddlier.◊

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

Plus, though we can see them from an outside perspective and know quite a few of them would have done horrible things even if Batman hadn't been there to stop them, the public of Gotham (or any other superhero town really) has reason to believe the classic "if it weren't for the hero we wouldn't have all these murdering supermonsters about" - since as far as they know the supervillains only ever show up and cause damage when Batman is involved.

Especially Gotham, since a greater percentage of their super-criminals are singularly fixated on the Dark Knight than normal. Joker's not the only one in Gotham who will horrible, horrible things simply to stick it to Batman. And Bats does have a tendency to turn the unstable into the chronically obsessed balls of destruction.

If anything, I feel like the whole "public fears him" bit for Batman is off not because they fear him in the first place, but because they kind of make them react to him in certain ways when they ought to react in others. They focus on his looks and the way he presents himself and often don't focus on the negative effects of his actions well, for example, even though that would be a bit more interesting for a storyline comparing the positive and negative effects of his existence (which are usually done with Batman brooding and someone reassuring him rather than the public itself voicing such things).

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Batman needs to get dragged off into space for a few weeks with no one to cover for him so the public of Gotham can get a taste of the Joker running roughshod over them with nothing to stop him.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

...That would actually make for a darn good story. (If done right, anyway...)

EDIT: And if you want no-one to be able to cover for him, have everyone who could cover for him get shot into space with him.

edited 4th Oct '13 7:40:49 PM by kkhohoho

Have a story set during one of the Crisis crossovers where Gotham learns just what happens when Joker has them to fixate on rather than him.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

My instinct is that such a story would result in several people stepping up to the plate to deal with the Joker. After a long and drawn out conflict throughout the streets of Gotham, it would inevitably end in a police shootout in which the Joker is killed. If the police can't do it, then the FBI would, and if they couldn't, that's when the army would be called in. Someone like the Joker only gets away with running rampant because he's consistently manhandled by Batman; take Batman out of the equation and it's only a matter of time before the Joker takes a bullet from an officer of law.

Batman's constant intervention and non-lethally neutralizing of the Joker keeps him out of the line of fire. He would undoubtedly kill many people without Batman reigning him in, but ultimately, that story ends in the grave.

edited 4th Oct '13 9:57:12 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

The question is would the citizens of Gotham rather have the batman around stopping him every once and a while after he kills a half dozen people? Or would they rather have the army stop him after he murders 10,000 people in a mass gas attack?

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

How do you know he'd get away with killed 10,000 people before the police mange to subdue him?

Ukrainian Red Cross

Indeed. The reason Joker's been around for so long (aside from obvious reasons...) is because Batman never bothered to put a bullet in the Joker's brain. I'm guessing that a whole legion of 100 or so cops wouldn't be so forgiving...

Yes Americans with guns can solve any problem.

Am I a good man or a bad man?

When the Joker's involved, use of legal force by law enforcement is reasonable.

Ukrainian Red Cross

If Batman was around the Joker would be foiled in the middle of his attempt to set off a laughing gas bomb in the middle of a football game or something. If Batman was gone he would be gunned down by police 20 minutes after the bombs went off.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

This.

Batman has kind of a double-edged effect of both preventing madmen like the Joker from committing massive acts of terrorism, while also allowing men like the Joker to go to Cardboard Prison so that he can break out and fail at more acts of terrorism in the future, rather than going to a morgue as a consequence of the violence that would follow said atrocity. It's kind of a give and take.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

If any of you were writing or planning some kind of batman adaptation, how would you tackle that issue?

Two possibilities present themselves.

---

1: Emphasise the fact that Bruce is crazy, and portray his opponents and critics as having legitimate points.

People say that Gotham brings out the insanity in people. Make that theme prominent.

Bruce Wayne, unhinged ever since he saw his parents get killed, decides that the best course of action is to dress as a bat and use his billions of dollars to beat up blue-collar criminals. The police hear about a mysterious man going around committing GBH on known perps, and try to arrest this new criminal (because, in countries like America, even convicts are entitled to protection under the law).

Batman comes in for extensive criticism on grounds like he's going around beating up random people and causing trouble with police investigations. However, people in the bad parts of Gotham, feeling abandoned by the police, look upon him as a saviour who actually cares about them and gets stuff done while the cops are busy protecting the upper classes from those trying to steal bread to feed their starving families.

As the movie goes on, Batman discovers that Pamela Isley is planning to contaminate Gotham's water supply with a natural toxin that is poisonous to humans only. Rather than share his discoveries with the cops who have been clashing with him all movie, he goes for her on his own, finds her base, and manages to shut down her plan before she completes stage one. Crisis averted, but she goes free because there's no evidence of her involvement that Batman hasn't compromised.

Meanwhile, show the cops also working on the case and reaching the same conclusion as Batman, but taking longer because they are constrained by the law they are sworn to uphold. They manage to find Poison Ivy's HQ just as Batman is taking her down; it appears that, had Batman not arrived in time, Poison Ivy might have successfully done a trial run. However, if Batman had stayed out of it, Poison Ivy would have been convicted and sent to prison, where she won't be able to try this again in three months.

As for the sequel... before I discuss that, I'd like to go on a tangent about torture and police brutality in media.

In lots of movies and TV shows focussed on cops, we see an edgy, loose-cannon cop beating up a suspect to make them confess. His superiors will give him Hell for this, but it always turns out the cop was in the right, because the suspect breaks and gives them the information they need. When the chief angrily asks "What about civil rights?!", the cop responds "What about the victim's rights?" and the superiors are portrayed as somewhat well-meaning but misguided beaurocrats who don't understand the real world.

Just once, I'd like to see a movie which looks like it's heading in this direction. And no, it doesn't get to portray the loose cannon as actually a menace or the chief as non-obstructive for the first third. We see a cowboy cop who, unlike those desk workers, knows how things really are, so when he find a known associate of the big bad, be smashes his head in to find out what he knows.

And it turns out the guy has nothing to do with it. Oh sure, he might do some small-scale drug dealing, but he's totally innocent of the big crime going down. The good cops do manage to apprehend the apparent big bad, and then the loose cannon, who continues to act like the standard cowboy cop throughout the movie, is suspended and put on trial for brutality against an innocent person.

But back to Batman. For the sequel, I'd like to see basically whata I just described, but with Batman in place of the loose cannon cop. He beats up a small-time courier who he (wrongly) suspect has connections to what Scarecrow is up to. Scarecrow is taken down, but Batman is hounded and possibly arrested by the cops for beating up an innocent person who has already paid the penalty for his crimes and is being monitored by the police. The ultimate message would be "This is why we have due process!"

(Obviously, both of these plots work just as well with Joker, but it would be nice to see some variety).

---

1. 2: Batman as special consultant.

This is a more idealistic idea, probably better suited for a TV series. Basically, it's what the 60s series did.

Early in his crime-fighting days, a young and somewhat inexperienced Batman single-handedly manages to pinpoint the location of a significant drug deal and goes to stop it. Meanwhile, the police also track down the deal, and arrive a few minutes later, to see Batman taking on all the gangsters by himself. Everybody is arrested.

Down at the police station, Batman is unmasked, revealing him to be Bruce Wayne, and interrogated. The police consider him to be a man who jumped in at the right time to foil a crime, and are impressed with his detective skills. Since they manage to get confessions out of the gangsters to send them all to jail, there is no need for Bruce to testify at trial. The cops come to an arrangement with Bruce whereby he basically acts as a consultant, being called in whenever they have a particularly unusual criminal to deal with. As part of this arrangement, Bruce is permitted to act anonymously, only a few police officers knowing who Batman really is, but he still has to follow due process and share all his findings with the police. He also has to let them know if he ever decides to investigate a case on his own.

Ukrainian Red Cross

"And now I'm in prison for a crime I didn't even commit! ATTEMPTED murder?! Do they give out a Nobel Prize for ATTEMPTED chemistry?!"

Gotham City has a bad habit of agreeing with this logic.

But back on topic, Batman is still better than what came before him, because what came before him was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, whereas now Gotham is a wretched hive of scum and villainy but also Batman. The next step after "Batman" is a massive federal investigation and reformation of the Gotham City Police; "every cop is on the take" is a very real problem that is largely the cause of Gotham being a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Coming forward with his training and technology during the course of this would help significantly if new police officers can be Batman-trained, and Batman's super-computers and other exceptional technology can be provided to the new Batman Cops for use in going about their activities. Batman-training the new cops is a better alternative to finding trustworthy cops and then Batman-training them due to the nature of their environment; to find trustworthy cops, you have to convince trustworthy people that they aren't going to be murdered in their sleep tomorrow after signing on with the GCP, which will be easier to do if you're offering to Batman-train them. Otherwise, you just wind up with more corrupt people signing up because they want some of that mob money too, while good people do the safe thing and stay out of it.

• Step 1 - Batman
• Step 2 - Fix the GCP
• Step 3 - Make the GCP Batman.
• Step 4 - Profit!

edited 6th Oct '13 8:43:25 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Batman's job should really be what it was in TDK trilogy. The guy who provides a beachhead for real cops to take over and holds off the psychos until the city can fix itself.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

Ideally, it should be a reciprocal improvement. Batman improves the GCPD, which in turn forces himself to adhere to a higher code of action, which in turn gives the GCPD an even higher standard to pursue.

Rinse, repeat until utopia.

Reading all this makes me wonder how Batman Arkham Origins will handle this topic. From what is shown of the game so far, Batman does his own thing because he doesn't trust the GCPD at all, considering them corrupt (he doesn't know who Jim Gordon is yet, who is still a Captain rather than Commisioner), and it only gets worse when after a bounty is placed on his head, one of the villains that wants to hunt him down is a corrupt SWAT leader.

edited 9th Oct '13 6:46:46 AM by Exploder

Even on that note, how do they know it's even just one person and not multiple people decked out like this? (Which, historically, it has been, technically speaking, if we were to count the times someone else has filled in for him.)

You raise a very interesting point. In cases of highly dangerous criminals like this, why aren't the FBI or the military or what have you called in to deal with them? Plus, surely the FBI is better able to handle such dangerous psychopaths (and, in the case of the superpowered villains, I'd suspect the FBI in a superhero universe would be equipped to handle at least the most basic or famous situations) than, say, Arkham Asylum?

Now, I'm not a huge comic reader/hugely knowledgeable about the comics, so I need to ask, has this point ever been addressed throughout Batman's existence?

(I had more that I wanted to say...but damn brain farts >_>)

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

In some continuities Arkham is a federal facility.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

Hm, well, if that's the case, leaving that point aside then but still looking at all the "why not the FBI" stuff.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Because most of Batman's villains aren't interstate?

Weak yes and a bit heavy on the license but its all I got.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

Because Batman handles it. It never has the chance to escalate to a state or federal level. What's the FBI going to investigate?

• The Joker tries to bomb the mayor's office.
• In less than a day, Joker is in prison.

Wham, bam, thank you mam, nothing to see here. Batman's involvement keeps any of his villains from ever actually reaching the level where the government starts taking notice. At the same time, Batman's also making the Gotham PD look just flat out amazing at their jobs because of their incredible success record with bringing in some of the most psychotic, perverse minds Gotham can come up with, so there's no need for a federal investigation into the GCPD's corruption either.

As far as the state or federal level is probably concerned, Gotham is a shining example of what all cities should be like, with a flawless police department and an amazing record.

edited 18th Oct '13 11:44:37 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Its just that none of them are stupid enough to vacation there.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins