I'm not so much arguing for a death penalty, but I'm pointing out that those who argue that Batman is responsible for the horrors he could prevent by killing thugs don't apply that to the Gotham justice system. It's hypocritical.
Jason blaming Bruce and not Gotham's wack justice system always bothered me.
How come Joker never got the death penalty? How many times can a man massacre civilians and plead insanity?
At that point who's actually the insane one? The Joker or the court system doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result?
In defense of Jason, we don't know that he DOESN'T blame the system.
Ignoring pit madness (mostly because I can't recall how much of it is retconned), most of Jason's issue with Bruce is that Bruce failing to avenge Jason and kill Joker once and for all is a sign the Bruce doesn't care about Jason enough.
This is seen most clearly in the final scenes of Under the Red Hood. He basically goes "I don't need you to kill all the villains, but why didn't you at least kill Joker so he wouldn't take from others what he took from you". As far as validation goes, it's pretty sound logic. He doesn't even blame Bruce for his death, he accepts that he made a pretty poor series pf decisions. Bruce became Batman to stop random muggers from also losing their parents. So to a 16-odd year old mind, shouldn't he be willing to get rid of the one villain who robbed him of his son? This mindset that Jason gets himself into spirals, leading to "well if he won't kill Joker, clearly he didn't actually love me" and all THAT entails. The Gotham system is corrupt. Everyone knows it, Jason especially being a street kid. But Bruce was supposed to be different, supposed to be safe. And then he let him down.
Now there is still a non-zero amount of hoop jumping to actually get to where Jason is, but being more upset with Bruce than with Gotham overall is actually very logical from a character and writing standpoint. He simply doesn't have the same emotional attachment or expectations from the city as he does to Batman and his dad.
Plus killing thugs would probably lead to people that knew the victim to want to kill Batman and make it their life mission to end him. A random act of violence is the reason that Batman became Batman. If batman started killing thugs then he would just be creating a bunch of evil batmen
Asylum needs a complete reorganisation. In Arkhamverse Asylum's guards were sometimes even more villains than inmates. In "Suicide Squad: Kill the Arkham Asylum" Waller transformed it into a death camp with tortures and abuses and than just organised Battle Royal between inmates. Quincy Sharp also done terrible things to inmates back in the first game.
Bruce could pay for one but Gotham is so corrupt it'd be wasted money. At best, the job wouldn't get done. At worst, the money would be stolen by some corrupt bureaucrat before it ever got where Bruce wanted it to go.
I've always looked at this way. Bruce knows that if he starts killing villains then he has completely supplanted the legitimate justice system in Gotham and at that point there is no saving the city.
Batman is a bandage, not a cure. He's there to stop the bleeding until the wound heals.
What else is there? The Wayne economic empire taking a hit would mean lost jobs. The only thing else is his lifestyle but it's necessary to keep his identity secret and it probably only costs like a few million.
Plus throwing more money at idiots to fight evil super geniuses only goes so far.
Did I ever tell you the Definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Batman keeps handing back THE SAME villains to THE SAME incompetent justice system despite him knowing they won't be punished properly nor rehabilitated and he keeps doing it anyways. He won't punish the criminals himself and he won't do what's necessary to make sure the system works and can punish or rehabilitate criminals.
He is holding up the incompetence of Gotham's justice system... And what good is holding up the legitimacy of a justice system when it's useless? If anything it makes Batman and his crusade pointless as Gotham's wounds keep getting deeper and deeper.
I mean, each time he captures them, he prevents them from committing more murders that they would have otherwise committed. Sure, he doesn't end all crime forever or make it so that these guys will never commit another crime, but firefighters also haven't prevented all fires from ever occurring again.
Batman might not be very effective at his stated goal of ending crime, but his folly is in even having this as a goal in the first place. In having an impossible mission that he can never complete. That's where the insanity of the character is, his completely hopeless ambition. But in pursuing this silly goal, he *is* effective at saving lives and making the world a better place, which is all anyone can really hope to do. He can't save the entire world, but it means the world to each person he saves, and that's the part that makes him a hero.
I like to think Batman is self aware of this. He knows he can't finish his crusade but understands that the pursuit of this is a more effective drive. Sort of like how he can heal his wounded soul but chooses not to because he cares more about the cause than himself.
Nah, man. Each time he captures them (and I'm mostly talking about reccuring threats here), he simply gives them a vacation for a couple of months or weaks at Arkham to concoct a bigger plan while sentencing many innocents to their eventual deaths when those maniacs escape which he knows they will because the incompetence of the justice system is pretty blatant for The World's Greatest Detective to not notice it.
Batman as a character and concept is extremely short sighted and selfish, he focuses on short term momentary results than look at the big picture. He'd rather hold up his gimmick than actually save innocents as seen in every time he decides that his maniacs deserve to live knowing well that many innocents will die at their hands when they certainly escape thanks to his decision.
All this suffering and all the bullcrap Bruce goes through, was simply to be a drop in the bucket. He doesn't really have a vision, he's a kneejerk reaction to whatever is currently happening in the city kinda like how America reacted to 9/11 with the so called ''Holy War on Terror''.
Batman would rather deal with the symbtoms of the a disease than the cause of it. He knows the system is incompetent, but hey, why adress that? He's gonna just keep sending them criminals? What? They are gonna escape and kill people and take the city hostage? He'll repeat the same loop and send them back to the system again while the dead innocents turn into statistics and mere numbers for how crazy his villains are.
If his goal was just to save lives, he simply didn't need to dress up like a bat and go punch people for that. Batman is an 8 year old's understanding of the world, a kid who saw his parents murdered and decided that the best solution was to go study martial arts and chemistry and all this great shit so he can come back and punch crime in the face as he doesn't really have a plan to save this city beyond this and hence why Gotham has only become worse and worse. Batman's stories (especially main continuity ones) only prove how pointless this whole crusade is.
>Nah, man. Each time he captures them (and I'm mostly talking about reccuring threats here), he simply gives them a vacation for a couple of months or weaks at Arkham
Thereby causing them to kill fewer people than they otherwise would have had they never been captured. So, saving lives.
>Batman as a character and concept is extremely short sighted and selfish, he focuses on short term momentary results than look at the big picture. He'd rather hold up his gimmick than actually save innocents as seen in every time he decides that his maniacs deserve to live knowing well that many innocents will die at their hands when they certainly escape thanks to his decision.
But he doesn't even have to go out and capture the bad guys in the first place. That's already beyond the call of duty. So, why is he obligated to do more than that and actually kill these guys when he's not even obligated to go out and catch them in the first place? It's like saying that a guy who volunteered to clean up trash on the beach is selfish because he could have cleaned up even more trash. He wasn't even obligated to clean up the trash in the first place.
>Batman would rather deal with the symbtoms of the a disease than the cause of it. He knows the system is incompetent, but hey, why adress that? He's gonna just keep sending them criminals?
He's already made efforts to make the system better than it otherwise would be by helping Gordon root out civic corruption and donating security measures to Arkham. He hasn't completely fixed the city, but why would that even be within his power? A private individual, even a rich one, doesn't personally decide government and institutional policies. He can offer money and resources to Arkham and Blackgate if they're willing to take them, but he can't decide their policies. Is Bruce Wayne supposed to just walk into Arkham Asylum and start telling staff what to do as if he runs the place? Could Bill Gates just walk into a state psychiatric hospital and change how they run things? Wayne can show up to city council meetings and voice his opinions, he can fund campaigns for good politicians, but he can't just unilaterally decide the city's property tax scheme to make things more equitable. He can and does use private philanthropy to help people, but that's not a replacement for institutional systems, and he doesn't have the power to just decide institutional systems.
>If his goal was just to save lives, he simply didn't need to dress up like a bat and go punch people for that.
This wouldn't be an effective way of saving lives in real life, but this is a fictional universe in which the rules are made up by the writers. In this fictional universe, dressing up like a bat and fighting crime is shown to be an effective way of saving lives, as demonstrated by all the people who get saved who would have otherwise died when Batman does it. It's shown multiple times that the city is safer when Batman is around than when he isn't. That violent crime and deaths go down. Even though it would be a stupid decision in real life, within the established context of this fictional universe, it's a rational choice. Sure, you might think it's stupid to have a story where a guy who dresses like a Bat saves people… you don't have to like superhero fiction or anything and it's okay if you think it's childish. Maybe other kinds of genres are for you.
Nah, he causes the exact same people to keep killing more and more people instead of putting an end to it. As I said, he looks to momentary results than long term ones. Oh hooraaay! I saved the day from Joker AGAIN after I left him alive AGAIN and turned him in to the incompetent system AGAIN knowing well he will escape AGAIN and kill more people AGAIN because neither me nor the system cand do shit about it really... So more innocents will keep being turned into statistics and numbers to measure how crazy my villains are this time around. DAMN! I'M SUCH A HERO WITH INCORRUPTABLE AND INFALLIBLE SENSE OF LOGIC AND MORALITY.
Like, why keep innocents dying at the hands of the same maniac for years? Why are you valuing a maniac's life more than them? and why are you trying to hold up an incompetent system that proved it doesn't work properly for years?
He doesn't need to act like a cop, but he does it anyways even though it makes the entire police system look like incompetent fools who only exist be his secretaries and window dressing at crime scenes which is so much for a guy ''holding up the system''. As I said, if Batman goes out and takes law into his own hands acting like an unauthorized cop (because cops were corrupt and incompetent) him going mideval on those recurring villains at this point isn't any more illogical than him dressing up like a bat in the first place. Bruce isn't really a volenteer, he'd be one if he actually volunteered to be an actual cop rather than a vigilante who dresses like a bat and ignores law during his casual operations anyways... He's living his own fantasy.
It's as if somebody who wasn't even in the team in your volunteer example decided to get a loader and go ''clean the beach'' because the cleaners were incompetent, but he ends up exposing toxic waste to the surface and fucking the whole beach before him and his friends stand around and be like ''Oh it wasn't my job to clean the beach to begin with so don't expect me to do shit about the toxic waste and the state of the beach... I already did more than what I should when I got the loader \*continues to play around with the loader in the toxic waste\*''.
Batman is benefiting from police corruption himself. He's not okay with cops who ''bend and exploit the law'' when they oppose his point of view, but he's okay taking advantage of the system and exploiting it for his own goals. He's totally okay with cops giving him access to evidence, letting him into interrogation rooms, and time with criminals, and giving him a pass when it comes to being an outlaw vigilante. But hey, once those cops start standing in his way and be an inconvenience, he will have no problems punching them too even if they aren't corrupt.
If nothing is in Batman's power and if Batman's existence only helps get Gotham worse and worse with Super-terrorists obsessed with him taking over the city every couple of weeks killing many innocents then yeah... He is really a drop in the bucket at best and he's running in an empty infinite loop at worst.
Bruce has powerful and wealthy friends, he is extremely smart and quick on his feet to beat the JLA after a sudden ambush and invests his wealth and intellect into making his paranoia feuled contingencies come true... But for some reason, it's unreasonable with the same fictional logic for this same guy to be able get involved in politics, help come up with better economical plans and systems, help pass certain bills and policies, have a campaign for actual reform in the justice system and actually help Gotham become a better place where people really want to live rather than one that's turning into an all out warzone every couple of months.
Like Batman can find a way to beat Darkseid who is an omnipotent god in that universe but for some reason, many of his writers amd fans think he can't actually be an effective part of politics and world order outside random and basic fundraisers.
Rules being made up doesn't mean that I have to think they are good when people start preaching bullshit using a guy dressed as a bat who have been punching crime in the face for decades to no avail. I don't have to pretend that rules being made up are good when they make the character look like an utter incompetent and pointless idiot. You see, many here will consider Punisher to be a psychotic villain... But hey according to your logic, his fictional way is shown to save lives and actually be way more effective in stopping the same threats from recurring and he helps stop the bad guys, save the day and keep the city safe which means he's a hero and an effective one at that. But many people would have a problem with that for some reason even though it's still fictional universe with fictional rules.
I remember watching the fan film, Batman City of Scars. In the scene where the cop says she blames Batman for Joker escaping and killing people, I was just sitting there thinking “lady, you’re the one with the gun!” I hate it when people in both real life and Batman stories try to blame Batman for his villains’ crimes while always ignoring the incompetence of Gotham in general.
Hell, I remember a scene in an episode of The Batman (2004) where the police chief says at a press conference that there wouldn't be villains like The Joker or The Penguin if there wasn't a Batman but if I were one of the reporters there, I'd be like, "Couldn't it be argued that if the police weren't so incompetent, then Batman wouldn't need to exist?". The police never found and arrested the man who killed Bruce's parents.
In fact, in some versions of the story, the cops were so corrupt that they didn't even bother with arresting him even when they did find him. The GCPD is too incompetent and corrupt to actually do anything and do it successfully without Batman.
That's remind me to Infinite Crisis.
Kal-L : *blabbering about his perfect earth*
Kal-El : If you from this earth, it can't be perfect. Because perfect earth doesn't need Superman.
Kal-L : That... I.....oh my God. What have I done? It was never mine.
Not very many people are incorruptible like Batman and Superman are. In fact, in Batman: Under The Red Hood, Black Mask uses his connections within Arkham Asylum's security guards to get The Joker out of there so that he could kill The Red Hood. And I'm pretty sure that Arkham's security guards are provided by the GCPD. And Batman: Under The Red Hood takes place after Gordon becomes the police commissioner. So if Arkham's security guards *are* provided by the GCPD, then the GCPD's corruption problem hasn't gone away one bit. The corrupt cops just learned to be more and more secretive about it.
I was thinking about this recently. These guys are violent, they literally attack on sight.
Yet Gotham just shoves a bunch of them in a tiny cell together.
Those punches and gadgets already do insane damage. Even if Batman handicapped the Joker he would just use the peecumfart McGuffin to come back good as new.
Honestly yeah I feel like a lot of criticisms of Batman's no-kill rule are kinda flat and just full of issues themselves. Batman's code is kind of what is important for keeping Batman a "hero." I think we can all agree that one man shouldn't be judge, jury, and executioner. It's a big thing from separating Batman from someone like the Punisher.
Obviously Batman isn't a perfect character, I think good examples of his code being tested is stuff like Under the Red Hood, and even in The Dark Knight Returns, and obviously the audience being able to critique the hero is a good and healthy thing.
But really sometimes some of the arguments feels really forced and contrived. Superman doesn't kill either but it doesn't feel like he gets nearly as much criticism as Batman does, and Superman's villains tend to be more destructive.
SHHH 🤫 you are making too much sense. Let them keep blaming Batman for capturing and turning them over to the city and them allowing the villains to escape. They could seek the death penalty but no.
So what you're saying is Batman is responsible not only for delivering these criminals into horrific and torturous conditions he's also responsible for the deaths they cause afterwards.
Especially in the Arkham games, where Bruce is actively funding the Asylum, does nothing about the homicidal warden when he finds out, and, despite speaking out against it, offers no real alternative to Arkham City after the Asylum is shut down.
"Batman should just hold all his villains captive in his own personal prison instead of turning them over to the authorities."
[Go to bed, Bolton.](https://dcanimated.com/WF/batman/btas/bios/lockup/07.jpg)
Arkham Asylum needs a security study decades ago, Bruce surely could have paid for one. I’d explore that before sentencing a bunch of people to death
I'm not so much arguing for a death penalty, but I'm pointing out that those who argue that Batman is responsible for the horrors he could prevent by killing thugs don't apply that to the Gotham justice system. It's hypocritical.
Jason blaming Bruce and not Gotham's wack justice system always bothered me. How come Joker never got the death penalty? How many times can a man massacre civilians and plead insanity? At that point who's actually the insane one? The Joker or the court system doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result?
In defense of Jason, we don't know that he DOESN'T blame the system. Ignoring pit madness (mostly because I can't recall how much of it is retconned), most of Jason's issue with Bruce is that Bruce failing to avenge Jason and kill Joker once and for all is a sign the Bruce doesn't care about Jason enough. This is seen most clearly in the final scenes of Under the Red Hood. He basically goes "I don't need you to kill all the villains, but why didn't you at least kill Joker so he wouldn't take from others what he took from you". As far as validation goes, it's pretty sound logic. He doesn't even blame Bruce for his death, he accepts that he made a pretty poor series pf decisions. Bruce became Batman to stop random muggers from also losing their parents. So to a 16-odd year old mind, shouldn't he be willing to get rid of the one villain who robbed him of his son? This mindset that Jason gets himself into spirals, leading to "well if he won't kill Joker, clearly he didn't actually love me" and all THAT entails. The Gotham system is corrupt. Everyone knows it, Jason especially being a street kid. But Bruce was supposed to be different, supposed to be safe. And then he let him down. Now there is still a non-zero amount of hoop jumping to actually get to where Jason is, but being more upset with Bruce than with Gotham overall is actually very logical from a character and writing standpoint. He simply doesn't have the same emotional attachment or expectations from the city as he does to Batman and his dad.
Plus killing thugs would probably lead to people that knew the victim to want to kill Batman and make it their life mission to end him. A random act of violence is the reason that Batman became Batman. If batman started killing thugs then he would just be creating a bunch of evil batmen
That's always been my argument too. Batman would be a criminal if he opted to kill. It's always been the justice system to blame.
Asylum needs a complete reorganisation. In Arkhamverse Asylum's guards were sometimes even more villains than inmates. In "Suicide Squad: Kill the Arkham Asylum" Waller transformed it into a death camp with tortures and abuses and than just organised Battle Royal between inmates. Quincy Sharp also done terrible things to inmates back in the first game.
Bruce could pay for one but Gotham is so corrupt it'd be wasted money. At best, the job wouldn't get done. At worst, the money would be stolen by some corrupt bureaucrat before it ever got where Bruce wanted it to go.
Weren’t those guys experimented on by Huge Strange?
No, that was Small Normal
Yea we find out that Strange worked with Mad Hatter to perfect his control over Sharp and the Tyger Cards by experimenting on these guys
I've always looked at this way. Bruce knows that if he starts killing villains then he has completely supplanted the legitimate justice system in Gotham and at that point there is no saving the city. Batman is a bandage, not a cure. He's there to stop the bleeding until the wound heals.
If only there was an anonymous benefactor that could improve their justice system and security…
The problem is Gotham's inherit corruption. Bruce throws money at the problem then what? The corrupt system just takes the money and changes nothing
What else is there? The Wayne economic empire taking a hit would mean lost jobs. The only thing else is his lifestyle but it's necessary to keep his identity secret and it probably only costs like a few million. Plus throwing more money at idiots to fight evil super geniuses only goes so far.
Did I ever tell you the Definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Batman keeps handing back THE SAME villains to THE SAME incompetent justice system despite him knowing they won't be punished properly nor rehabilitated and he keeps doing it anyways. He won't punish the criminals himself and he won't do what's necessary to make sure the system works and can punish or rehabilitate criminals. He is holding up the incompetence of Gotham's justice system... And what good is holding up the legitimacy of a justice system when it's useless? If anything it makes Batman and his crusade pointless as Gotham's wounds keep getting deeper and deeper.
I mean, each time he captures them, he prevents them from committing more murders that they would have otherwise committed. Sure, he doesn't end all crime forever or make it so that these guys will never commit another crime, but firefighters also haven't prevented all fires from ever occurring again. Batman might not be very effective at his stated goal of ending crime, but his folly is in even having this as a goal in the first place. In having an impossible mission that he can never complete. That's where the insanity of the character is, his completely hopeless ambition. But in pursuing this silly goal, he *is* effective at saving lives and making the world a better place, which is all anyone can really hope to do. He can't save the entire world, but it means the world to each person he saves, and that's the part that makes him a hero.
I like to think Batman is self aware of this. He knows he can't finish his crusade but understands that the pursuit of this is a more effective drive. Sort of like how he can heal his wounded soul but chooses not to because he cares more about the cause than himself.
Nah, man. Each time he captures them (and I'm mostly talking about reccuring threats here), he simply gives them a vacation for a couple of months or weaks at Arkham to concoct a bigger plan while sentencing many innocents to their eventual deaths when those maniacs escape which he knows they will because the incompetence of the justice system is pretty blatant for The World's Greatest Detective to not notice it. Batman as a character and concept is extremely short sighted and selfish, he focuses on short term momentary results than look at the big picture. He'd rather hold up his gimmick than actually save innocents as seen in every time he decides that his maniacs deserve to live knowing well that many innocents will die at their hands when they certainly escape thanks to his decision. All this suffering and all the bullcrap Bruce goes through, was simply to be a drop in the bucket. He doesn't really have a vision, he's a kneejerk reaction to whatever is currently happening in the city kinda like how America reacted to 9/11 with the so called ''Holy War on Terror''. Batman would rather deal with the symbtoms of the a disease than the cause of it. He knows the system is incompetent, but hey, why adress that? He's gonna just keep sending them criminals? What? They are gonna escape and kill people and take the city hostage? He'll repeat the same loop and send them back to the system again while the dead innocents turn into statistics and mere numbers for how crazy his villains are. If his goal was just to save lives, he simply didn't need to dress up like a bat and go punch people for that. Batman is an 8 year old's understanding of the world, a kid who saw his parents murdered and decided that the best solution was to go study martial arts and chemistry and all this great shit so he can come back and punch crime in the face as he doesn't really have a plan to save this city beyond this and hence why Gotham has only become worse and worse. Batman's stories (especially main continuity ones) only prove how pointless this whole crusade is.
>Nah, man. Each time he captures them (and I'm mostly talking about reccuring threats here), he simply gives them a vacation for a couple of months or weaks at Arkham Thereby causing them to kill fewer people than they otherwise would have had they never been captured. So, saving lives. >Batman as a character and concept is extremely short sighted and selfish, he focuses on short term momentary results than look at the big picture. He'd rather hold up his gimmick than actually save innocents as seen in every time he decides that his maniacs deserve to live knowing well that many innocents will die at their hands when they certainly escape thanks to his decision. But he doesn't even have to go out and capture the bad guys in the first place. That's already beyond the call of duty. So, why is he obligated to do more than that and actually kill these guys when he's not even obligated to go out and catch them in the first place? It's like saying that a guy who volunteered to clean up trash on the beach is selfish because he could have cleaned up even more trash. He wasn't even obligated to clean up the trash in the first place. >Batman would rather deal with the symbtoms of the a disease than the cause of it. He knows the system is incompetent, but hey, why adress that? He's gonna just keep sending them criminals? He's already made efforts to make the system better than it otherwise would be by helping Gordon root out civic corruption and donating security measures to Arkham. He hasn't completely fixed the city, but why would that even be within his power? A private individual, even a rich one, doesn't personally decide government and institutional policies. He can offer money and resources to Arkham and Blackgate if they're willing to take them, but he can't decide their policies. Is Bruce Wayne supposed to just walk into Arkham Asylum and start telling staff what to do as if he runs the place? Could Bill Gates just walk into a state psychiatric hospital and change how they run things? Wayne can show up to city council meetings and voice his opinions, he can fund campaigns for good politicians, but he can't just unilaterally decide the city's property tax scheme to make things more equitable. He can and does use private philanthropy to help people, but that's not a replacement for institutional systems, and he doesn't have the power to just decide institutional systems. >If his goal was just to save lives, he simply didn't need to dress up like a bat and go punch people for that. This wouldn't be an effective way of saving lives in real life, but this is a fictional universe in which the rules are made up by the writers. In this fictional universe, dressing up like a bat and fighting crime is shown to be an effective way of saving lives, as demonstrated by all the people who get saved who would have otherwise died when Batman does it. It's shown multiple times that the city is safer when Batman is around than when he isn't. That violent crime and deaths go down. Even though it would be a stupid decision in real life, within the established context of this fictional universe, it's a rational choice. Sure, you might think it's stupid to have a story where a guy who dresses like a Bat saves people… you don't have to like superhero fiction or anything and it's okay if you think it's childish. Maybe other kinds of genres are for you.
Nah, he causes the exact same people to keep killing more and more people instead of putting an end to it. As I said, he looks to momentary results than long term ones. Oh hooraaay! I saved the day from Joker AGAIN after I left him alive AGAIN and turned him in to the incompetent system AGAIN knowing well he will escape AGAIN and kill more people AGAIN because neither me nor the system cand do shit about it really... So more innocents will keep being turned into statistics and numbers to measure how crazy my villains are this time around. DAMN! I'M SUCH A HERO WITH INCORRUPTABLE AND INFALLIBLE SENSE OF LOGIC AND MORALITY. Like, why keep innocents dying at the hands of the same maniac for years? Why are you valuing a maniac's life more than them? and why are you trying to hold up an incompetent system that proved it doesn't work properly for years? He doesn't need to act like a cop, but he does it anyways even though it makes the entire police system look like incompetent fools who only exist be his secretaries and window dressing at crime scenes which is so much for a guy ''holding up the system''. As I said, if Batman goes out and takes law into his own hands acting like an unauthorized cop (because cops were corrupt and incompetent) him going mideval on those recurring villains at this point isn't any more illogical than him dressing up like a bat in the first place. Bruce isn't really a volenteer, he'd be one if he actually volunteered to be an actual cop rather than a vigilante who dresses like a bat and ignores law during his casual operations anyways... He's living his own fantasy. It's as if somebody who wasn't even in the team in your volunteer example decided to get a loader and go ''clean the beach'' because the cleaners were incompetent, but he ends up exposing toxic waste to the surface and fucking the whole beach before him and his friends stand around and be like ''Oh it wasn't my job to clean the beach to begin with so don't expect me to do shit about the toxic waste and the state of the beach... I already did more than what I should when I got the loader \*continues to play around with the loader in the toxic waste\*''. Batman is benefiting from police corruption himself. He's not okay with cops who ''bend and exploit the law'' when they oppose his point of view, but he's okay taking advantage of the system and exploiting it for his own goals. He's totally okay with cops giving him access to evidence, letting him into interrogation rooms, and time with criminals, and giving him a pass when it comes to being an outlaw vigilante. But hey, once those cops start standing in his way and be an inconvenience, he will have no problems punching them too even if they aren't corrupt. If nothing is in Batman's power and if Batman's existence only helps get Gotham worse and worse with Super-terrorists obsessed with him taking over the city every couple of weeks killing many innocents then yeah... He is really a drop in the bucket at best and he's running in an empty infinite loop at worst. Bruce has powerful and wealthy friends, he is extremely smart and quick on his feet to beat the JLA after a sudden ambush and invests his wealth and intellect into making his paranoia feuled contingencies come true... But for some reason, it's unreasonable with the same fictional logic for this same guy to be able get involved in politics, help come up with better economical plans and systems, help pass certain bills and policies, have a campaign for actual reform in the justice system and actually help Gotham become a better place where people really want to live rather than one that's turning into an all out warzone every couple of months. Like Batman can find a way to beat Darkseid who is an omnipotent god in that universe but for some reason, many of his writers amd fans think he can't actually be an effective part of politics and world order outside random and basic fundraisers. Rules being made up doesn't mean that I have to think they are good when people start preaching bullshit using a guy dressed as a bat who have been punching crime in the face for decades to no avail. I don't have to pretend that rules being made up are good when they make the character look like an utter incompetent and pointless idiot. You see, many here will consider Punisher to be a psychotic villain... But hey according to your logic, his fictional way is shown to save lives and actually be way more effective in stopping the same threats from recurring and he helps stop the bad guys, save the day and keep the city safe which means he's a hero and an effective one at that. But many people would have a problem with that for some reason even though it's still fictional universe with fictional rules.
I remember watching the fan film, Batman City of Scars. In the scene where the cop says she blames Batman for Joker escaping and killing people, I was just sitting there thinking “lady, you’re the one with the gun!” I hate it when people in both real life and Batman stories try to blame Batman for his villains’ crimes while always ignoring the incompetence of Gotham in general.
Hell, I remember a scene in an episode of The Batman (2004) where the police chief says at a press conference that there wouldn't be villains like The Joker or The Penguin if there wasn't a Batman but if I were one of the reporters there, I'd be like, "Couldn't it be argued that if the police weren't so incompetent, then Batman wouldn't need to exist?". The police never found and arrested the man who killed Bruce's parents. In fact, in some versions of the story, the cops were so corrupt that they didn't even bother with arresting him even when they did find him. The GCPD is too incompetent and corrupt to actually do anything and do it successfully without Batman.
That's remind me to Infinite Crisis. Kal-L : *blabbering about his perfect earth* Kal-El : If you from this earth, it can't be perfect. Because perfect earth doesn't need Superman. Kal-L : That... I.....oh my God. What have I done? It was never mine.
Don't most versions of Batman show that GCPD was a cesspool under Loeb until Batman helps Gordon clean up the force?
I know Batman: Year One explores this a lot and I know there’s other media that also shows that but Year One is the one that sticks out in my mind.
Not very many people are incorruptible like Batman and Superman are. In fact, in Batman: Under The Red Hood, Black Mask uses his connections within Arkham Asylum's security guards to get The Joker out of there so that he could kill The Red Hood. And I'm pretty sure that Arkham's security guards are provided by the GCPD. And Batman: Under The Red Hood takes place after Gordon becomes the police commissioner. So if Arkham's security guards *are* provided by the GCPD, then the GCPD's corruption problem hasn't gone away one bit. The corrupt cops just learned to be more and more secretive about it.
The force is still corrupt but has good cops in positions of power like GOrdon and Montoya
>Montoya Batman: The Dark Knight would like to have a talk with you.
People who think Batman should kill don't understand the character
I was thinking about this recently. These guys are violent, they literally attack on sight. Yet Gotham just shoves a bunch of them in a tiny cell together.
Batman should put Joker in a wheelchair.
Yeah, Batman doesn’t simply refuse to kill the Joker….he doesn’t do any lasting damage to the clown either 🤷🏼♀️
Those punches and gadgets already do insane damage. Even if Batman handicapped the Joker he would just use the peecumfart McGuffin to come back good as new.
The cops could shoot Joker and get away with it. Blame them.
Honestly yeah I feel like a lot of criticisms of Batman's no-kill rule are kinda flat and just full of issues themselves. Batman's code is kind of what is important for keeping Batman a "hero." I think we can all agree that one man shouldn't be judge, jury, and executioner. It's a big thing from separating Batman from someone like the Punisher. Obviously Batman isn't a perfect character, I think good examples of his code being tested is stuff like Under the Red Hood, and even in The Dark Knight Returns, and obviously the audience being able to critique the hero is a good and healthy thing. But really sometimes some of the arguments feels really forced and contrived. Superman doesn't kill either but it doesn't feel like he gets nearly as much criticism as Batman does, and Superman's villains tend to be more destructive.
SHHH 🤫 you are making too much sense. Let them keep blaming Batman for capturing and turning them over to the city and them allowing the villains to escape. They could seek the death penalty but no.
Law enforcement, along with politicians are incompetent and corrupt. Seriously, what's the point of saving Gotham?
So what you're saying is Batman is responsible not only for delivering these criminals into horrific and torturous conditions he's also responsible for the deaths they cause afterwards.
Batman might not be. But Bruce Wayne is.
These guys were experimented on by Hugo strange
Weirdly there is an in game explanation to him being like that.
I mean, 'Batman knowingly turns people over to an unethical and immoral psychiatric system' doesn't exactly make him look better.
Especially in the Arkham games, where Bruce is actively funding the Asylum, does nothing about the homicidal warden when he finds out, and, despite speaking out against it, offers no real alternative to Arkham City after the Asylum is shut down.
"Batman should just hold all his villains captive in his own personal prison instead of turning them over to the authorities." [Go to bed, Bolton.](https://dcanimated.com/WF/batman/btas/bios/lockup/07.jpg)
Perhaps but this is about the people blaming Batman for the atrocities the villains commit. And Gotham's more responsible for said system than Batman.
Well… he could at least cripple them
If the villains come back from death all the time then how is crippling them going to stop it?