• pyre@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      not to mention he’s a psycho himself. instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons while letting the biggest maniacs and the ones leading these gangs run away every time.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons

        Some of the better Batman comics introduce him as skilled detective, rather than a superhero whose power is infinite money.

        Like any good crime thriller, his work starts with some innocuous crime or tragedy that gets swiftly covered up by corrupt police. Batman steps in as a noir vigilante, listening to the witnesses everyone else ignored and tracing the crime back to the low-level thugs who serve as pawns in a much bigger game. He extorts them for information in order to move on to bigger fish - the crime boss who runs the docks or the sleazy businessman who thought he could pay to make a problem go away - and uncovers a deeper systematic corruption. He runs into various freaks and geeks - your two-faced DA or your web-fingered club owner - who facilitate the city-spanning crime. And, in the climax, he discovers the whole system is rotten, even to the point where his own Wayne Enterprises is complicit in these cruelties.

        He discovers the limits of vigilantism, its not just a question of biting into a few bad apples, but tearing the rotten tree out of the earth root-and-branch. And he realizes its too much for one man to change. So he goes back to that first original witness/victim, and he brings him back to his cave. And he sets himself to training this survivor of a broken system how to fight crime like he does.

        The best Batman stories aren’t the ones where he punches a Clown Prince out of a factory window. Its ones in which he pulls another scared child out of the wreckage of his parents’ home and gives him a second chance at life.

      • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        I don’t mean to direct this at only you, but I hate this take. There are plenty of comics that dive into this, him using his wealth to help Gotham, the city just had too many problems. Court of Owls for instance, the group that is always watching Gotham and influencing it state and its key figures.

      • III@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change

        Do we know this? I don’t follow the comics at all but do they ever go into the things Bruce Wayne does as CEO of Wayne Enterprises? I can’t fathom we have gone decades without someone touching on this.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          i don’t follow the comics but things that are established that i know of are:

          • Bruce Wayne is insanely wealthy
          • Uses his wealth for his bat-themed middle age crisis (bat sports car, bat private jet, bat motorcycle, bat gondola probably)
          • Other than that the best thing he does for other people is “philanthropy” (in the real world this is a scam by the wealthy) unless you count taking in his young lover sidekick
          • The police and the politicians are extremely corrupt and are for sale.

          Now from all this i gather it would be very easy for Bruce to get actual political power in Gotham to make real change but he doesn’t do it because running around in a furry costume is more fun.

          Even apart from that, sneaking around in a costume talking about how you’re the night or the knight or whatever is on its own very cringe and psychotic.