My brother in Christ, Batman is a billionaire CEO.
Yeah but he is on “our team” though!
People can’t spot corpo propaganda, a lot of educating to be done.
The joker isn’t the disease in Gotham, he’s the symptom. In a world where the effort of an individual results in proportional gains, where people have a home, family, and attachments to their community, there is no joker. The populace is innoculated against his desire to tear it all down, because they have a stake in “it all”. The few that are vulnerable to his views, are getting the support and care they need from trained staff, and the people around them are keeping the joker away. Batman isn’t in Gotham because of the Joker; the Joker can exist in Gotham because of Batman, a billionaire who spent his efforts and resource on violence, instead of outreach.
Plus, giving OSHA some teeth, and forcing corporations to compensate fairly for workplace accidents, and regulations requiring the inspection and certification of toxic chemical plants would have stopped the joker, and countless other tragedies, at a fraction of the cost.
Treating people with dignity and respect creates a functional society…
Doing the opposite …
Until we start naming people who are doing this nothing will change but NPC normies worship their dear daddies
At first I thought you were insinuating this post was corpo propaganda, but then it clicked that you were talking about Batman himself lol. I’d like to say that many if not most versions of batman is more gentle and forgiving than the police, his goals are simply to take an impossible problem to fix and reduce harm from it as much as possible, without all the sophistry of purely hypothetical philanthropy and political reform.
his goals are simply to take an impossible problem to fix and reduce harm from it as much as possible
Corpo propaganda
Nothing can be done, nobody to blame, cope peasant
Name a place with zero crime or corruption thanks to the actions of a single person.
You’re thinking of the punisher
No. Unequivocally no. This might make sense on its face but it misunderstands Batman at a fundamental level- Batman is a hero who cannot make sense. He is severely mentally ill and craves change physically and instantly wrought by his own two hands.
If a CEO were doing something outlandishly and visibly evil then they might find themselves on Batman’s radar, but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about. Would it make sense for Batman to do something about it? Yes. Absolutely. Would the crazy 100 kg gymnast dressed like a giant bat, who has made a nightly ritual of shattering the spines of impoverished criminal dockworkers do that? No.
Now daredevil, daredevil might find himself beating the ass off a shady Manhattan CEO. But daredevil is sane, reasonable, and goal oriented and Batman is just not.
Yeah, doesn’t the dude consider Batman his true identity and Bruce Wayne the costume?
Depends on the continuity and who’s writing it, but often yes. He was notably portrayed this way in the Justice League cartoon.
This fact was revealed in Batman Beyond, in which Batman’s nemesis is an evil CEO called Blight.
In most modern versions, yes. He’s just survivor’s guilt held together by a ceaseless run of violent distractions and related obsessions. Not the one to call on your union busting boss.
but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about
In fact, being a mega-rich himself, he’s probably best buddies with those CEOs so long as they don’t do something so outlandishly evil that he has to go after them for publicity reasons.
Yeah, dude’s the night, not the IRS or the better business bureau.
No he won’t, batman fulfills every billionaires fantasy of dressing up in a costume and beating up poor people.
Yes. Not one really questions why Gotham has such a high crime rate, but where there’s poverty there’s crime. I think we need a working man’s batman.
Someone whose super power isn’t having infinite resources.
You mean like daredevil?
He works as a lawyer? Typically not a billionaire but not exactly struggling financially either.
That’s the internet pop-psychologist interpretation, but the people actually writing him often have him doing his best to better the Gotham around him. A lot of the petty thugs he catches are given chances to redeem themselves via Wayne based welfare programs.
The former richest man in the world gave away much of his fortune and continues to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Wealth_and_philanthropy
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He’s in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.
Batman WAS the CEO of companies
And there’s no solidarity like class solidarity. Remember Ellen Degeneres hanging out with Bush? Bruce Wayne would’ve been in that skybox too.
“Dark Knight Rises” plot is basically “Bane starts a revolution of the people, and a billionaire must stop him”.
self punch then?
Yes the billionaire that spent a shit ton on money on gadgets to beat up poor people would definitely be a champion of the people
He also beats up rich people, like the Penguin. The Joker and Riddler and all those guys get their crazy gadgets and hordes of minions somehow. They must be rich af
Upper middle class. They’ve got the kind of money Al Capone had, not the kind of money Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.
Batman generally leaves Lex Luthor, who does have that kind of money, alone. (And I don’t usually read DC, so I may be wrong, but I don’t think he tends to get physical with the court of owls much either…),
But all those are poor people who got rich via crime since they didn’t really have other avenues.
The Batman lore has a lot of hidden messages about social class and hierarchy which doesn’t translate well to today.
That’s what happens if you take all your knowledge from memes. Good luck.
You’re thinking of Poison Ivy.
Superman was already going after CEOs when Batman was first created. Batman was always a hero for the right wing.
Is this a ThinBlueLine x Punisher crossover episode?
You’re aware he is a CEO of a company?
I thought Lucius Fox was the CEO. Bruce Wayne is chair of the board.
Depends on the particular telling I think. DC has IIRC gone both ways with that.
Huh, maybe. Although my point was more batman is part of that class (albeit begrudgingly) so expecting batman in a position of great power and influence to actively take that from other people is just very hypocritical. Not that he shouldn’t (or someone shouldn’t). Just a very weird position.
In Batman Beyond, Batman’s nemesis is a CEO. He’s a villain called Blight, who killed Batman’s father.
Yeah, but in that Batman is basically Spider-Man with ex-Batman as a mentor.
He’s still Batman. He does detective stuff, doesn’t have superpowers, Gotham is appropriately grimdark, etc. Terry doesn’t have to learn that with great power comes great responsibility like Peter does. The only similarity is that he’s a working class wisecracking teenager with a somewhat agility based fighting style. Peter Parker was never a burly hoodlum before he got his powers, and he doesn’t see being a superhero as a way to make up for mistakes he made as a normal. He also didn’t steal his powers. Terry is a much more mature and slightly darker character than Peter at the start of his journey. He’s not an academically minded geek, he’s someone who’s experienced the real world and understands it. He’s got street smarts, he can fight, and he can lie.
I once read that Superman was a humble man who faces big exploitative businessmen, while Batman is a big exploitative businessman who stands up to homeless people. The implications of Batman being more popular than Superman today and what this says about our society is enough for a complete essay.
Or Batman’s more popular because he’s a more interesting character. Superman can only experience kryptonite so many times before you start to suspect he never actually left the planet Krypton.
Maybe, or maybe they have bad writers because they are not able to imagine credible stories in which Superman’s strength is useless in the face of the corruption of the system and the businessmen who abuse their power, no one would believe stories like that, you need to add kryptonite to make it realistic
useless in the face of the corruption of the system and the businessmen who abuse their power
You could put any superhero in that situation and have a story. But if it’s just a white-collar crime setting, would Supe then be any different from any other Tom Dick or Harry? Is it even a superhero comic at that point? It would be interesting to some, but I can see why the writers wouldn’t want to take that risk.
Well, I’m not a big comic reader but that’s what the story with Lex Luthor is about, right? how all of Superman’s immense power is useless against the intelligence of a rich and evil man. I think that is the most famous antagonist and that has transcended the comics the most for a reason. Maybe for fans it’s doomsday or zod, but for casual readers and the general public it is lex and it is for good reason.
what the story with Lex Luthor is about
I dunno, seems to end with a big fight and / or kryptonite almost as often anyway. Then again, doesn’t that kinda undermine your original point?
Then again, doesn’t that kinda undermine your original point?
I don’t understand why that should be done, the character stops being popular, so good writers stop having interest in working on it, they try to revitalize it with different stories, etc. whether the loss of popularity precedes the bad stories or not is not something that I am in a position to determine. In any case it wasn’t my point, I’m not a big fan of comics, I read it there and in movies/television, which if I continue a little more, it makes some sense
You’ve got Batman mixed up with the Punisher, OP.
Or Green Arrow, really.
That would work too.
Isn’t Queen also a billionaire CEO…?
Trust fund baby, but part of his story is that he straight up murders rich and powerful people who aren’t using it to benefit society.
So, his hit list is problably 1:1 the list of rich and powerful people that exist
No, Poison Ivy.
Pretty sure theres a lot of batman media that confirms that people hate him because he basically just protects the rich. They even call him a billionaire playboy.
Like Lex Luthor, who hes fought on several occasions? Or more like the Court of Owls, one of his recurring set of villains?
Also the Penguin
Penguin is a mobster first and wealthy second, as a result of being a successful mobster.
And the difference between Penguin and a billionaire is about a billion dollars.
I think more Superman.
He is just a working class guy, both his wife and his own job are probably getting replaced by AI, his mother pension keeps getting lower and his dad died because he couldn’t afford proper healthcare.
Also his arch nemesis is already a Billionaire.
Martha and Pa both got hooked on Oxy in the 00s, nothing Superman can do about it. He tries writing a big expose as Clark Kent but the Planet kills the story because Perdue buys a lot of ad space with them.
Public got too weird about Supergirl, forcing her to retire as incels kept jumping off of buildings so they could grope her when she saved them.
Batman is a CEO, right?
He just goes after the ones he can beat without much backlash from the public/system.
Imagine if he takes down a CEO. He’d not be able to play batman. Gordon and batman sympathisers would be affected, so Batman’s human connection in the police would be lost. He can hack stuff, but might not always be enough.
He can do other stuff, but he can only do it gradually and much more tactfully.
He did take down Lau in the dark knight tho.
Lau laundered money for the mob and also was Chinese.
I don’t think the public/mainstream would have issues there, where he goes after the non-native guy who laundered money for the mob.
