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.
Batman was a CEO of a company.
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.
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.
Wish we had this instead of a growling guy in a mask headbutting a clown
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.
the group that is always watching Gotham and influencing it state and its key figures.
Bruce is just jealous of being left out of the “cool kids” group, so he plays the other team
that’s on him tbh, he should’ve been owlman
don’t worry i don’t take it personally. I’ll look into the court of owls.
One of my favorites story arcs. I do agree with you to some degree though because there are a lot of comic book writers that have a habit of romanticizing his wealth, that’s why he does come off as a “typical billionaire” most often. Then it is up to the next writers to mitigate the damage. Comics are tricky like that, you just have to pick and choose your own head canon.
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.
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 loversidekick - 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.
Why do you refuse to answer the comments disproving you?
idk what the hell you’re talking about. there’s one comment that gives reasons, and excuse me for being asleep at the time. other comments are just people being offended on batman’s behalf. that’s not disproving.
Oh no mate, you’ve really upset the adult Batman fans
i know right. i mean we’re in showerthoughts, and some of these people are accusing me of not having inhaled the entire batman anthology. i like two of the comments though, supersaiyanswag and underpantsweevil
So basically you know very little, but have come to the conclusion that he sucks anyway?
dude it’s ok. I’m not going to slap batman comics off of your hands.
Well he did have his parents murdered in front of him as a child.
That shit twists people.
i mean yeah, I’d totally support this angle but DC usually uses him as the moral compass of the entire universe while making Superman go nuts instead.
Yeah but he never actually went after the original murder if you notice. He spent his entire time going after lunatics who thought that they were going to take over the city because they had planted a bomb on a bridge or something.
At least Spider-Man actually got vengeance.
Depends on the story.
And that “vengeance” is what taught him that vengeance is dumb, and it’s better to fight to better the world around him than go after people Punisher style.
They don’t fight their own kind.
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.
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
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
Bruce is a billionaire. He’s on their side.
And remember, there’s no ethical billionaires, no matter how much philanthropy they do. Their billions are out there exploiting people.
Philanthropy is just the wealthy justifying their tax avoidance by wanking publically about how giving they are. If they were genuine about their concerns for giving back, they would pay their fucking taxes and at a higher rate. Tax avoidance and financial shit fuckery like corporate bailouts, share buy backs and COVID payments accelerate wealth acruell and drive up inflation and wage stagnation. Fuck. Them. All.
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 thinking of Poison Ivy.
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
That’s what happens if you take all your knowledge from memes. Good luck.
He also beats up rich people, like the Penguin.thr 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’ve got Batman mixed up with the Punisher, OP.
Or Green Arrow, really.
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.
That would work too.
No he won’t, batman fulfills every billionaires fantasy of dressing up in a costume and beating up poor people.
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.
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.
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.
Are we going to pretend that Wayne Enterprises isn’t likely 1 of those 100?
In most Batman lore, I’d expect Wayne Enterprises to be #1 out of those 100.
I think that’s kinda the point of the comic…
