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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Batman punishes the guilty, severely, but does not kill. Batman believes in the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption.

Well, guilty according to Batman.

They had a few issues here not Too long ago of an incident where Batman shows up and beats the snot out of Freeze, including breaking a limb or two. Bruce Wayne then gets on the jury for his trial and argues Freeze had been set up by someone else and they can’t just assume he’s guilty because Batman thought he was.

 Lance845 wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
The DC universe only became a connected universe years after the characters were conceived, and I think we still see the evidence of that today in both the comics and movies. Meanwhile, Stan Lee and company invented much of the Marvel universe around the same time period with a little more attention to connectivity.

Ehh... thats not really true.

Marvel as we know it started with the invention of the Fantastic 4. There were many character that were created before the first "cross over" in the Avengers 3 years later. But things still didn't really wholly cross over until years after that.

Both DC and Marvel are created off the back bone of acquisitions of other comic companies and characters. But DC more so than Marvel. And that acquisition led to a lot of characters that where wholly separate suddenly being able to cross over. With Avengers and other team books becoming popular we got more Justice Society and such. Thats what led to more and more cross overs which eventually built to the idea of a cohesive universe of characters that can interact. The inter connectivity isn't so much a product of planning and attention as it is a sales gimmick that then took shape.

I'm probably overstating the Marvel situation and considered that when I typed it. However, DC is definitely much more of a hodgepodge with overall older characters. It's the 'original sin' that's helped drive all the reboots...and 'tweaks' like the DC multiverse to make sense of the timelines. Wonder Woman was a Justice Society member, then she wasn't anymore, then an alternate Earth WW was, then she wasn't again but her mother was, and now IIRC she was again. And I'm probably missing a few turns.

Yeah, DC is fething mess.

Question. Are the major super villains needed?

Sure I get that they are now part of the lore but like Spider-Man origins I really don't need to see Batman take on any of the versions of Joker, Scarecrow, Harley, Mr Freeze, Penguin, CatWoman, Ivy, Bane, Riddler (well maybe a Heath Ledger-esque one).

I know Punisher hasn't had a big box office movie success, but the series seemed pretty good and didn't seem to have many recurring super villains. Sure the Punisher isn't Batman and is maybe only after lower tier but they do tend to not be a recurring problem.

Whether they need to keep on reusing the same villains in every reboot... I think the answer is an emphatic no. - There's a wide variety and storied history of excellent Batman villains, from the classic to the modern (Such as the much lauded Court of Owls).

However, I've always felt the most interesting thing about Batman is his villains. - I've always had the theory that in the 80 plus years of Batman, there's only really been 8 good stories about Batman. Sure, there's been plenty of great Batman stories, but they're often great because it's a story about the villain.

A great example of this is the emmy award winning 'Heart of Ice' from Batman The Animated Series. Bruce isn't really a massive part of the story, but where he works in it, is that he's a window into the mystery, the events and the tragedy of Mr Freeze.

It's kinda why the Gotham TV show worked (for whatever extent of work you want to use), except that it swapped out Bruce being the window for Jim.


I think I kinda lost my point a little...

Have we ever seen Batman take on white collar crime?

I would find it highly amusing to see him descend on the NYSE and start biff-bapping some megacrooks.

Usually there's a bit of a twist to it, but there are various villains that comes under.

Roland Daggett
Rupert Thorne
Maxie Zeus
Ferris Boyle (The 'real' badguy of Heart of Ice).
Max Shrek (Batman Returns)


The story, 'Batman: War on Crime' posits that this is a reason why Batman still does Bruce Wayne things and is actively involved in Wayne Enterprises. - So he can suss out the unethical money-making schemes that the rich are up to so that he can thwart them, and, hopefully, find a way to tie it back to them.

It IS worth saying though that overall, while there are some Batman stories that tend to deal with it, it's much more of a trademark of Green Arrow stories, which has it very much placed as his stories, hearkening back to the Robin Hood inspiration.

I think most comics observers would say that Batman has the greatest rogue's gallery of any superhero. (Spidey in second place, I guess?) So I don't know why anyone would want to shy away from them. I think they're not just good characters on their own...most are particularly interesting in how they interface with Batman's own psyche.

One of the subplots of White Knight is the wealthy elite of Gotham basically contorted Batman and all of Bruce's efforts to improve the city into an insurance scam to profit off the carnage.

Kayback wrote:
Question. Are the major super villains needed?

Yes. Because we know they're the only ones who can provide an actual challenge for Batman. A Batman movie without substantial supervillains would be like the corridor fights from Daredevel, or almost all of the fights in Luke Cage... sure, there might be some visual spectacle, but the outcome is never in any doubt.

There's certainly room to not reuse the same set of villains every go around the merry-go-round, though, although I can understand why they do so. Particularly when they get them right the second time... hell, if they'd dismissed 'villains we've already used' then Tommy Lee Jones' giggling idiot would have been the only version of Two Face we would have had on screen, and we would have missed out on the much better rendition in Nolan's version.

So I heard Pattinson was just diagnosed with coronavirus. Filming on this had resumed in the UK but is now shut down again.

 Thargrim wrote:
So I heard Pattinson was just diagnosed with coronavirus. Filming on this had resumed in the UK but is now shut down again.

Our local media also wrote about that today, so if you are not in Austria too and we got wrong intel here, it seems to be true

Well... Batman getting the coronavirus is just another nail in the coffin of 2020 isn't it.

But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

..... quickly Robin. To the Batcave!

[insert] Spinning Batman logo [/insert]

Couldn't have been Bane. Bane wears a face mask.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

Statistx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

I think the real question we need to be asking here is whether or not Batman was wearing a mask and why he was not following social distancing guidelines.

Someone going out and engaging in physical contact with random people on the street with no precautions? I highly doubt all of these so-called criminals that he is assaulting at night are within his support bubble.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Statistx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

I think the real question we need to be asking here is whether or not Batman was wearing a mask and why he was not following social distancing guidelines.

Someone going out and engaging in physical contact with random people on the street with no precautions? I highly doubt all of these so-called criminals that he is assaulting at night are within his support bubble.

He wears a mask, it just doesn’t cover his mouth or nose.

 AduroT wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Statistx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

I think the real question we need to be asking here is whether or not Batman was wearing a mask and why he was not following social distancing guidelines.

Someone going out and engaging in physical contact with random people on the street with no precautions? I highly doubt all of these so-called criminals that he is assaulting at night are within his support bubble.

He wears a mask, it just doesn’t cover his mouth or nose.

A true American mask, following the letter but not the spirit. Batman is all about freedom of expression xD

 Grimskul wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Statistx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

I think the real question we need to be asking here is whether or not Batman was wearing a mask and why he was not following social distancing guidelines.

Someone going out and engaging in physical contact with random people on the street with no precautions? I highly doubt all of these so-called criminals that he is assaulting at night are within his support bubble.

He wears a mask, it just doesn’t cover his mouth or nose.

A true American mask, following the letter but not the spirit. Batman is all about freedom of expression xD

Let's not over-generalize, more than half of Americans wear masks properly for medical considerations and only a (granted, large) minority refuse to over political considerations instead.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Statistx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But who gave it to him? This needs investigating.

Can only be another one of Scarecrows fart gas

I think the real question we need to be asking here is whether or not Batman was wearing a mask and why he was not following social distancing guidelines.

Someone going out and engaging in physical contact with random people on the street with no precautions? I highly doubt all of these so-called criminals that he is assaulting at night are within his support bubble.

He wears a mask, it just doesn’t cover his mouth or nose.

A true American mask, following the letter but not the spirit. Batman is all about freedom of expression xD

Let's not over-generalize, more than half of Americans wear masks properly for medical considerations and only a (granted, large) minority refuse to over political considerations instead.

That's fair, didn't mean to offend the sane part of America that hasn't bought into the over-politicized madness over mask wearing. Batman would definitely be social distancing by throwing batarangs than with fists afterall.

Batman would've already cured it, but if Miller wrote the comic, only after the latest incarnation of Robin had died.