General Marvel Legends

SDcomics said:
I think Bruce's love of his adopted family is what keeps him grounded and real. They're his lifeline and they're what keeps him from going over a dark edge.
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CTV said:
Everything about Bruce Wayne/Batman to me says comorbid psychiatric disorders and a loooooooooot of money, which is what makes him an interesting character to me vs. Iron Man who I find to be a douchebag.
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My favorite two takes on Batman are one: The Mask of the Phantasm examination of Bruce when he's starting out. How Bruce actually *is* healing on his own, and when he meets Andrea he legitimately starts moving away from becoming the Dark Knight. I LOVE the moment he's at his parents grave and he's pleading with their memory that "it just doesn't hurt as much anymore" and asking if he can do anything else, if they'll just give him a sign it's ok to give up that vow. And Andrea shows up just in time to be that sign... and then she ghosts him and it sends him spiraling. I love the idea that a broken heart is what finally makes Batman, and that the film completely shows it as a Shakespearean tragedy.

My second favorite take is that the whole reason Bruce does what he does is not because he's the Joker, but because the part of Bruce that is Batman never made it out of the alley. He's still 10 yrs old and the vow he makes is a child's vow. Batman is a child's solution to that pain. The kind of solution only someone who isn't old enough to know how the world really works would make. This is also why I really hate the "Batman should just use his money to end crime by ending poverty" take. Like, that fundamentally misses the point of the character. Batman is "What if you could PUNCH your trauma? What if you could kick your OCD or your anxiety square in the nuts?". And yeah, punching my trauma sounds great, actually.

I think both takes on Iron Man work for me, just not at the same time. I like the penitent Tony who is working hard to fix things in an earnest way, and he just sucks at it because privilege has meant he's never flexed those muscles before. I do enjoy the arc of a guy trying to be better and struggling a lot. I also think there's something compelling about an Iron Man who thinks he's doing the right thing, but cannot escape the gravity well of his wealth and fame. Who deep down *is* selfish. There's something really tragic about that too, when told right, that I think has real meat on it. I could go either way on that guy.
 
I think if Tony were real right now, he’d be going through what happened to him in Dark Reign. On the run from the corrupt federal government which is trying to get his secrets. He essentially killed himself to keep his knowledge of the other heroes’ identities from getting into the hands of actual fascists like Iron Patriot. He definitely would not be in the front row of the 2025 inauguration…

Anyway, the Buster armors are fun. But Bob Layton didn’t think the Hulkbuster was even necessary in the first place. Classic Armor Iron Man knocked out Hulk, defeated Magneto, defeated Namor underwater, etc.

The whole point of Tony Stark is the possibility of humanity. We are physically weak, prone to addiction and obsession. But with our intellects and enough resources, our hearts in the right place, and the determination not to give up, humanity has the ability to achieve anything despite all of those faults.


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Objectively, in the real world, a billionaire dressing up as bat to be a vigilante would by definition be dealing with some severe psychological issues.

If I was to reboot Batman, I would have his parents death occur when there were already metahumans like Supes, Green Lantern, WW, Flash existing as heroes - heroes who were dealing with global threats or supervillains in the glistening Metropolis or the world as the JLA - and not dealing with local street crime to stop his parents from being murdered in gritty spots like Gotham. So Bruce grows up wanting to be a hero to people dealing with crime in his city that he feels are ignored and need to be protected, and he takes on a persona that strikes fear and trauma and violence.
 
FYI, the best millionaire who dons a costume to fight crime is Siegfried Horatio Hunch III - aka 'Mazing Man. A truly underrated and forgotten comic book...
 
JakeEkiss said:
My second favorite take is that the whole reason Bruce does what he does is not because he's the Joker, but because the part of Bruce that is Batman never made it out of the alley. He's still 10 yrs old and the vow he makes is a child's vow. Batman is a child's solution to that pain. The kind of solution only someone who isn't old enough to know how the world really works would make. This is also why I really hate the "Batman should just use his money to end crime by ending poverty" take. Like, that fundamentally misses the point of the character. Batman is "What if you could PUNCH your trauma? What if you could kick your OCD or your anxiety square in the nuts?". And yeah, punching my trauma sounds great, actually.
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To be fair; I don't think the argument of 'use wealth to end poverty' is an argument against Batman's existence within the fiction, or that HE should reason that out as a solution to his problems. I think it's mostly used as an argument for why we, the audience, should not see Batman as something aspirational. Similar to arguments against 'being' Punisher. We understand why FRANK is Punisher. But Punisher should never be seen as aspirational either. He's not the archetype for 'real' justice. He doesn't even care about justice -- it's right in the name what he cares about.

It's also fair to say that any comic book character being written as a billionaire today is going to be forced to grapple with the question of 'why aren't they doing something useful with all that wealth?' It's not 1980 anymore when people generally felt like things were going really well for everyone and super rich people were just really lucky and had earned the right to do fun, stupid stuff like have yachts and shit.


JakeEkiss said:
I also think there's something compelling about an Iron Man who thinks he's doing the right thing, but cannot escape the gravity well of his wealth and fame. Who deep down *is* selfish. There's something really tragic about that too, when told right, that I think has real meat on it. I could go either way on that guy.
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I'd argue that's probably the more compelling version of the character in the year of our fluffy lord 2025, when the average comic reading population has probably had their fill of real life egotistical billionaires viewing themselves as the saviours of the free world. Comics are virtually always political and have to decide on their messaging and what makes sense in the current world for their characters. Captain America had certainly had choices made for his direction over the years as well.


fac said:
FYI, the best millionaire who dons a costume to fight crime is Siegfried Horatio Hunch III - aka 'Mazing Man. A truly underrated and forgotten comic book...
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I think you're forgetting about Zorro, and I forgive you.
 
fac said:
Objectively, in the real world, a billionaire dressing up as bat to be a vigilante would by definition be dealing with some severe psychological issues.

If I was to reboot Batman, I would have his parents death occur when there were already metahumans like Supes, Green Lantern, WW, Flash existing as heroes - heroes who were dealing with global threats or supervillains in the glistening Metropolis or the world as the JLA - and not dealing with local street crime to stop his parents from being murdered in gritty spots like Gotham. So Bruce grows up wanting to be a hero to people dealing with crime in his city that he feels are ignored and need to be protected, and he takes on a persona that strikes fear and trauma and violence.
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Sure, I mean, if we were living in the real world every superhero is in deep need of therapy, and not for any of the stuff that happens to them while superheroing. Waaaay before that. Excuse me, Mr. Parker, you seem to have survivor's guilt leading to suicidal ideation. let's talk about that.

I do think Batman can work better in a world that already has some superheroes in it. Though, if you assume the movie he saw was Zorro, still works for me without. Like I say, he never stopped being a kid in that regard.
Damien said:
To be fair; I don't think the argument of 'use wealth to end poverty' is an argument against Batman's existence within the fiction, or that HE should reason that out as a solution to his problems. I think it's mostly used as an argument for why we, the audience, should not see Batman as something aspirational. Similar to arguments against 'being' Punisher. We understand why FRANK is Punisher. But Punisher should never be seen as aspirational either. He's not the archetype for 'real' justice. He doesn't even care about justice -- it's right in the name what he cares about.
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The most prominent use I've seen of the "why doesn't Batman simply buy off crime" argument is by people who vocally don't like Batman, don't read Batman, and want to take people who do down a peg (or who just like shitting on it and want to feel clever). They're the ones who will be like "he should fund an orphanage instead" which... like... tell me you've never read a Batman comic without telling me. There are people who do have the nuance you're talking about, but those ain't the people I'm thinking of in my comment.
 
JakeEkiss said:
The most prominent use I've seen of the "why doesn't Batman simply buy off crime" argument is by people who vocally don't like Batman, don't read Batman, and want to take people who do down a peg (or who just like shitting on it and want to feel clever). They're the ones who will be like "he should fund an orphanage instead" which... like... tell me you've never read a Batman comic without telling me. There are people who do have the nuance you're talking about, but those ain't the people I'm thinking of in my comment.
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Got'cha. Different circles. I don't think I've seen people frame it that way more than maybe a couple of times. Like I said, most of the times I see it it's more being used against people that want to BE Batman. Which is just so deeply weird.
 
it's funny, as someone who's made part of my living writing superheroes... society changed the rules and turned the camera around on a lot of things and really altered the course for a lot of our classic heroes. We know for absolute certain there are no good billionaires in the world, so characters like Batman and Iron Man have to be written with extra nuance. If I were writing Tony, the arc of his story is a reformed warmonger who will spend the rest of his life and fortune trying to undo the harm his family has done knowing he never can, not even by sacrificing every dollar and every drop of blood in his body, because you can't bring back people a bomb with STARK on the side of it has blown to pieces.

Batman, I always liked that line from Kingdom Come when Clark calls Bruce on his bullshit - how he's not some big bad scary tough man, he's someone who works every minute of every day to make sure nobody ever has to be scared the way the kid in that alley was fifty years ago. They're both products of a time when there was at least the illusion of noblesse oblige and now we know everyone that rich is probably a psychopath, but we still have these heroes we don't want to give up because of that. And you've got to be particularly careful with Batman because if written wrong he's just a privileged guy beating up embodiments of diagnoses from the DSM-5.

The same thing goes with the classic scientist heroes of old, too. Comics used to be overflowing with genius hero scientists patenting world-changing devices that defeat the monsters of our nightmares, but how long has Reed been written as an utter bastard now? And how many "technologists" in the real world have proven to be absolute fucking shitheels who would sooner starve children on the other side of the world than lose a hundredth of a percentage point off their profit margin?

Writing heroes is weirdly complicated, and writing LEGACY heroes is SUPER complicated, even if we still think of them as four-color aspirational cartoons for kids. I mean, I sold my first superhero story 12 years ago and I look back and think "I know a LOT MORE about the American prison system right now and who I make a throwaway villain in a story in 2025 ain't the same as who I might have done when I started out..."

All that being said, rich superheroes remove the biggest challenge to writing superheroes: how do these poor fuckers keep food on the table, afford their hospital bills, and pay for housing when they spend half of every day battling villains for free. (I don't know about everyone else, but I actually find stuff like Peter's ongoing poverty SUPER STRESSFUL to read about let alone to try to write for.)
 
Damien said:
Well.. some of us are just terrible writers, or something. Apparently.
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Never stopped anyone from being published and cultivating a fan base and sometimes fortune.

And as someone who's more classic Peter than Oliver Queen, I find all that to be part of the escape and power fantasy. He has the same struggles, and they're even worse because of his choices, but at the end of the day it's idealized that doing the right thing can pay off.

The stressor is that doing the right thing means nothing in the real world and you'll be f'd over for playing by the rules. But I'd rather strive towards that and hope it makes someone's life easier than be... *Gestures to political thread*.

But I don't enjoy Iron Man or Batman when hes a tech God or even Thor or Strange who can just deus ex stuff up. I like my Parkers and Murdocks.
 
How do you "buy off crime?" He'd just be financing the same criminals with whom he has a personal grievance. This is why I don't dig "Absolute Batman" because it mostly discards Batman's personal code of morality. It's like asking "why doesn't Spiderman just snap every supervillains neck so he never has to deal with them again." It wouldn't be be "more awesome Spiderman" it would just be acrobatic Judge Dredd in tights.
 
I would argue the point of the Absolute Universe is exactly that discard for all its players, based on why the universe spun out. But I think you're right in that a lot of readers and media are missing these points. Or maybe I misread it.
 
Sean Gordon Murphy's excellent Batman: White Knight and its sequel deal with Batman as an authoritarian and Bruce Wayne as a poverty-fighting philanthropist. Generally, I think these questions do not work in the confines of superhero stories, but Murphy's work is stellar.
Damien said:
It's also fair to say that any comic book character being written as a billionaire today is going to be forced to grapple with the question of 'why aren't they doing something useful with all that wealth?' It's not 1980 anymore when people generally felt like things were going really well for everyone and super rich people were just really lucky and had earned the right to do fun, stupid stuff like have yachts and shit.
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It's also worth noting that Bruce Wayne was created as the son of "wealthy socialites." The Waynes were probably rich, and maybe even very rich if they came from old money. But the Waynes weren't the Rockefellers. It doesn't make sense to me that the son of a doctor would be a billionaire. The story has necessitated that more than anything. How could Bruce own a jet, military equipment, and state-of-the-art vehicles without hundreds of millions of dollars?

Making him a billionaire has fundamentally changed his character. It changed his morality. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, [insert your billionaire of choice], could end world hunger, cure disease, [insert your human suffering of choice]. The fact that Bruce could do that and doesn't make him a far more complex figure than he would've been even 40 years ago.
docsilence said:
society changed the rules and turned the camera around on a lot of things and really altered the course for a lot of our classic heroes. We know for absolute certain there are no good billionaires in the world, so characters like Batman and Iron Man have to be written with extra nuance.
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Absolutely. To me, superheroes work best as new-age mythology. What's the biggest problem facing our world right now? Climate change? Keep Superman as far away from it as humanly possible. Superheroes should only deal with larger-than-life villains within their pantheon, like Cronus (Greek mythology) or Loki (Norse). Once you turn them toward real-world problems, the entire fantasy collapses on itself.
 
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