\n"}it\u2019s really wild to see how batman has evolved over time as a consequence of writers wanting to change everything while also changing nothing because any comic that lives that long is a shambling stitched-together corpse
\nearly batman is a swashbuckler and he\u2019s having a good-ass time beating up these bad guys, because he existed in the context of organized crime being a big fucking problem. they were coming out of the 1930s. that\u2019s the era of al capone, you know? john dillinger only died five years ago and he was a fucking celebrity. and batman shows up to be like YOU KNOW WHAT\u2019S COOLER THAN SHOOTING PEOPLE AND BRIBING GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS? BEING BATMAN.
\nearly batman could not have been more clearly edutainment, pulpy enough to make kids feel like they were reading That Good Shit but always with a really obvious message (the message was DON\u2019T DO A CRIME). he fights a lot of giants because having to protect yourself from people twice your size is very #relatable to children.
\nwhen he adopts robin it\u2019s very clearly to give kids a character to relate to more strongly than they can bruce wayne\u2013FIGHTING CRIMES ISN\u2019T JUST FOR RICH MEN, IT\u2019S ALSO FOR COOL KIDS LIKE YOU. see how cool robin is, kicking the shit out of these dudes? don\u2019t you wanna be cool, like robin? he\u2019s from the circus, that thing you wanted to run away to because that\u2019s a viable life choice in this era!
\nbruce wayne was rich but his whole cover was that rich people are fucking useless. a man who inherited money? a fucking useless, lazy shit, no question. this was just accepted by everyone, that obviously an heir would never be suspected of doing anything that might take effort. the difference in attitude on a fundamental level toward the idle rich is staggering.
\nhis wealth is also MONUMENTALLY downplayed, in the same way you see in old movies. they deliberately did not film the philadelphia story in an actual mansion because they didn\u2019t think anyone would believe that the rich got to live like that. so bruce wayne ends up looking like he lives in a tract home in a suburb. \u201cis this how rich people live? yeah, sure, probably. who cares, let\u2019s fight crimes.\u201d
\nthey only introduce a backstory after the comic has been going for a while, because at first it\u2019s like? why would he need a reason to fight crime? it\u2019s fun? but i guess they figured they had to create SOME reason for bruce wayne to not be completely useless, as all rich men are. why is bruce wayne the only rich man capable of doing cool shit? because his parents died, that\u2019s why. check out robin kicking this dude in the head. fucking sweet, right?
\nthere\u2019s a whole storyline where batman fights a whole fucking town because it\u2019s corrupt and the cops are corrupt and THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS CORRUPT so he\u2019s gonna FIGHT THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IF HE HAS TO, FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR COCAINE.
\nthen the comics code happens and fucks everything. batman can\u2019t fight, like, systemic corruption and dudes with tommy guns anymore. all the crimes get CARTOONY AS SHIT. the joker isn\u2019t just a murderous jewel thief with a weird face, he\u2019s a fucking clown. he\u2019s a weird clown man committing clown crimes. puns everywhere. suddenly batman is fighting Supervillains, and they\u2019re all insane. but they aren\u2019t, really? they are a cartoon\u2019s idea of insanity, like a wolf in a straitjacket getting hit on the head with a mallet. when a character is insane what that actually means is they\u2019re wacky, they do weird shit, they have no meaningful motivation and do crimes for no reason because the alternative is having them commit real crimes for good reasons and that\u2019s not good for the kiddos. the fact that batman changed so much after the code is fucking WILD because, remember, it was ALWAYS for the kids. it was BLATANTLY for the kids. the code still managed to fuck it just through the culture shift it created.
\nthen later there\u2019s this shift, again, away from the code and away from kids entirely. late seventies, i think? fuck if i know, i don\u2019t know shit about damn. suddenly they want to be more GRITTY and REAL and DARK. they want REAL CRIME. batman is PUNCHING RAPISTS IN ALLEYS. but this isn\u2019t the era of dillinger anymore. as a society, collectively, we understand more about crime and the societal forces that drive people to crime and so on. there are a lot of alley rapists in this era of comics tbh and this is probably why. rapists always deserve to get punched regardless of class struggle. also at this point we understand more about violence, and people who are violent, who commit acts of violence and solve problems with violence and enjoy being violent. a rich guy having a blast kicking a guy in the head for robbing a bank is no longer great optics.
\nso batman stops having fun. this is now his dark mission, his grim assignment. he doesn\u2019t like this job, but someone\u2019s gotta do it. he will not smile as he punches a rapist in the head. this is serious business. i don\u2019t necessarily have a problem with this decision, because i think it\u2019s a legitimate course of action to say \u201cin a modern context, these behaviors become unacceptable, and so we will change his behaviors so that he can continue to be a heroic figure\u201d. that\u2019s valid as a motherfucker and i wish more people would remember that the whole point of making batman a grump was so that he could continue to be a good guy, as opposed to the alternative of gleeful violence.
\n(getting rid of most of the violence is also good\u2013he\u2019s a detective\u2013but these are comics we\u2019re talking about here so lol)
\nand then there\u2019s the villains. you\u2019d think this would be the point where they say \u201chey, maybe let\u2019s go back to the way some of our villains were before the code\u201d. you\u2019d think that if they hated the goofy villains so much they\u2019d just move on. but it\u2019s comics so nothing ever goes in the trash for good. and that\u2019s when you have writers who look at a cartoon wolf in a straitjacket and they say \u201cthat\u2019s not what insanity looks like! we should make him a sociopath.\u201d
\ni mean you could have just said \u201clet\u2019s stop calling him crazy and try to find a better motivation for these crimes, like being an asshole\u201d but instead now batman has all these villains with sociopathy and OCD and DID and schizophrenia, because that makes it REAL, because now instead of being cartoon crazy people committing cartoon crimes they are real crazy people committing real crimes!! OH BOY
\nand at some point someone looks at this and goes \u201cyou know i feel like this might be ableist as shit\u201d and writers could have said \u201cyeah in retrospect the only evil clown i\u2019m aware of was legally deemed sane and didn\u2019t actually commit thematically appropriate crimes, so maybe mental health isn\u2019t the issue here\u201d but instead they said \u201cyes, batman is kind of an asshole to be punching these sick people, but he\u2019s a necessary asshole because without him there would be Crazy Crimes and we all just have to come to terms with that i guess\u201d
\nnow we\u2019re at this place where we\u2019re trying to reconcile about eighty years of nonsensical horseshit and all of these decisions that were made because of shifting cultural attitudes or to sell comics or because one writer in particular assumed everyone would love his cool OC as much as he did, and there are writers going \u201cyou know, bruce wayne probably has pretty severe ptsd\u201d and there are writers going \u201cwhat if batman was the REAL villain all along\u201d and there are writers going \u201clol rich man wears bat costume to punch the mentally ill and poors, did u ever think about that\u201d and there are writers going \u201chey have you heard of this ayn rand chick because boy howdy i just did and now i\u2019ve got ideas\u201d
\nbut the reality is that heroism and goodness are not static concepts that look the same to all people even within the same era and trying to reconcile every different version of what the popular conception of heroism has looked like for almost a century is dumb as hell and batman should have entered the public domain in 2014
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