People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people
How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don't want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
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Idk, I always thought Superman was cool, but a little boring and vanilla. I normally prefer Batman. Admittedly, I've never dived down the Superman lore pit, but I am aware that he gets a little darker sometimes. He's definitely one of the better role model heroes. Anyone that actually hates Superman, is a dipshit.
He has all the power in the world and chooses to be kind. That's awesome.
I dunno', batman is cool, but he's an ineffectual LARPer that refuses to do the ONE thing that would actually start to fix things in Gotham...
That and he's a billionaire that decides to keep up the playboi image despite his escapades demonstrably having a miniscule effect on crime in Gotham compared to him just using his billions to actually help solve the systemic issues in Gotham's economy that drives so many to crime in the first place.
In short, Batman is everything wrong with the American attitude about capitalism.
At least Superman has the excuse that he is not an economic powrhouse that actually could indirectly improve thousands upon thousands of peoples' lives. ... as weirdly as an all-powerful being not being an economic powerhouse is.
Batman is definitely cool. That just can't be disputed. He definitely spends a fuck ton of money on the city. His main obstacle, is the writing. Gotham City has to be awful. It has to be, or there is no story. He can't kill villains regularly, because of plot. If the problems were capable of being fixed, then he'd be on of the best possible people to solve them.
The problems are capable of being fixed. The people of Gotham take to crime to survive because they have been squeezed by the ruling class and it’s the only way to protect what remains of their material conditions.
The Waynes and people like them, the owning class, prop up a system of inequality that forces these conditions to endure.
Bruce Wayne, the richest and most powerful of all, is hurt back (his parents killed) and instead of solving the systemic issues, he doles out individualized corporal punishment as a vigilante.
It’s the ultimate extension of “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”: Rich people will never acknowledge that the very system that provides them power is the ultimate root of all the issues they intend to solve via violence. Batman is himself the ultimate villain of the story.
I wish. He doesn't even dole out corporal punishment, at least as far as those words mean to the state that he continually props up.
I agree his biggest problem is the writing, because in reality, he'd be the best person to fix the problems (as you say)... outside of his freakish inability to kill irredeemable trash.
Though that's why he sucks so bad when reconciling everything back to reality. He absolves the rich of fixing problems because not even the "cool" insanely rich and very willing philanthropist Batman can fix a single city let alone a country, and heaven forbid killing irredeemable trash!
He's inadvertently a perfect example of how blind capitalism and boundless optimism are absolute braindead garbage perspectives.
Tell that to Bludhaven. Nightwing > Batman.
Nah, Batman is definitely cooler than Dick. Which makes sense, he's been doing it for several more years. I don't know too much about Bludhaven. But I'm pretty sure that it's categorically less fucked up. Nightwing doesn't have to be as effective as Batman imo.
Dick used his money to turn it from resembling Gotham to resembling Metropolis. Cool is irrelevant, Dick is ridiculously more efficient and solution focused than Bruce, who is just obsessed with punishment and subjugation of people who have done wrong, Dick is objectively a better superhero for his city, and is focused on solving problems rather than punishment, he’s also not an asshole or a fascist.
Batman brained a guy so bad he lost his mind and became Calander Man, he is not solution oriented.
Okay, that's fair enough. Does he kill people?
Sadly, no, the no kill rule stuck with him.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I love Batman, I just think Dick has had the benefit of more modern writing and more progressive writers for his solo gig, Batman’s failings are more of a side effect of the era when he was created and the specific writers that have handled his canon more than anything else. Dick ended up being a lot more morally akin to Spider-Man than Batman, his reason for doing what he does is specifically to help people and improve things, as opposed to punishing villains and those who have done wrong. I see him as less of a crime fighter/authority figure and more of a public servant.
I see. I honestly think that the no kill rule could work. It's just that Gotham is so corrupt, the infrastructure and social support so lacking, that villains have no shot at rehabilitation, and every chance of just breaking out and doing it again. Joker has broken out hundreds if not thousands of times in every single iteration. If he got a secure cell without corrupt guards and actual help after the first insane murder plot, he could probably get better. I think in some iterations, he has, at least temporarily, improved significantly. I agree with the outdatedness. He comes from a time when kids were hit to "fix" left handedness. He's going to use punching as a solution every time. It's like if people started punching and emotionally abusing high support needs autistic kids instead of actually helping them. Y'know, like they used to. And still do. Punching might stop the behavior in the immediate future, but it's going to get a hell of a lot worse than acting with empathy. Which, at least in the 90s animated series, he does tend to show a bit, with his always calling them by their names and the one time he comforted the woman that was stuck as a small child.
TAS was peak Batman, for me, they did a comic run in that universe all in the style of Bruce Timm that was really good. I get the no kill rule for certain characters, and for the sake of writing, original villains that people enjoy seeing on the page aren’t easy to pull off consistently. And most of my favorite characters, as far as villains go, are the one’s that definitely should be killed (Carnage, The Joker, Doc Ock, Bullseye, Zsasz, should all be killed on sight, but I fucking love when they show up. Also, you just can’t kill Carnage, ao there’s that.) so i get why it’s part of comics.
But Batman DOES uses his billions to help Gotham. The problem is that most of his rogues gallery is composed of high ranking rich mafia bosses, and the rest are completely insane individuals (or even sane people who just LIKE being evil for no reason like Scarecrow who literally gasses people until they die of fright just to study their reactions). You can't possibly think bribing the Joker with a billion dollars would stop him from bombing orphanages, gassing entire neighborhoods, or LITERALLY NUKING AN ENTIRE CITY.
Investing money into Gotham isn't gonna stop the Penguin or Black Mask from running protection rackets or bribing cops, it won't stop Poison Ivy from commiting literal ecoterrorism, and it won't stop Victor Zsasz from gutting people to death with knives, or Deadshot from assassinating people.
Oh, and another thing: the city is actually fucking cursed with evil black magic. That's not hyperbole. The city literally makes people evil.
Batman only is a vigilante because his work as Bruce Wayne is not enough.
The obvious solution to the irredeemable crazies I hint at is to KILL THEM. Then it would become a question of why the fuck isn't he helping Gotham's economy?
I get what you're hinting at, that a lot of it is a lack of perspective by the writers, but the fact remains that Batman is one of the least effectual "heros" there is.
You can't possibly think bribing the Joker with a billion dollars would stop him from bombing orphanages
You're missing OP's point. Depending on which Joker origin story you're looking at, then the man would never become the joker in the first place. Like if we go with the recent movie version of Joker's origin, he became the joker in large part because of an awful healthcare system and a horrible social safety net system. If he got good care and treatment all through his life then he never would become the Joker
Depends on the comic. Sometimes he has philanthropic initiatives that get attacked by the bad guys.
Sometimes seems like a piss-poor excuse to me.
In fiction, hard agree; in reality, I'd summon super man over bat man pretty quick. I think he's boring because he doesn't leave much room for interesting conflict. irl, I don't want interesting conflict lol
I'd prefer benevolent god over tech wizard bdsm billionaire exceptionalism. The guy choosing to be small is far greater than the guy buying big shoes
Wouldn't say I hate him, he just bores me, his plots are kinda lame, and I don't like his personality. Invulnerable to everything but some supposedly rare rock that's actually everywhere apparently with how often he finds himself encountering it. They eventually added magic I guess because kryptonite showing up like table salt was getting old. Then has the whole goody two shoes paladin act going on. Just a yawn fest imo.