The Trust from 100 Bullets can be regarded as inadvertent heroes. Sure, they've controlled all the crime in the country since before it was founded. But, by keeping the kingdoms of Europe from dividing America up into lots of tiny territories, they have made America remarkably free of war compared to Europe, and they have allowed it to act as the Arsenal of Democracy in both World Wars. True, they only did that great thing because a united America is easier to exploit. But in the long run, the freedom from the devastation of war probably more than makes up for all the stuff they've stolen.
Batman has been subject to numerous alternate Canon interpretations. Some depict him as a noble crusader against crime; others make him a borderline psychopath barely removed from the lunatics he spends his life fighting.
His relationships have also come under examination; debates about his sexuality rage wildly. There are tons of easy targets for jokes about that last part.
The various interpretations of Batman are the inspiration behind this image◊ merging Batman with Dungeons & Dragons Character Alignment.
One of the most raging questions about Batman concern civilian identity Bruce Wayne. Is he simply a mask that Batman wears during the day, a popular interpretion since Batman: The Dark Knight Returns? Or is Bruce a real person who's made the rational - within the DCU - decision to fight crime while dressed as a bat? The stories that most support the former view are those where Bruce most throws himself into the Upper-Class Twit act. When he tries to take an active role and takes up civic involvement in Gotham's problems, it shores up the latter interpretation.
This is strongly lampshaded in short story "Viewpoint", where newspaper publisher hires bunch of writers to give him their own interpretations of Batman in hope to make their common element - truth about Batman - more clear. He's very disappointed to find out that their visions have nothing in common.
Through they all have one thing in common - in all the stories told Batman dies because he refuses to (or maybe cannot?) give up. When he finally dies for real, he is reborn on another Earth, as infant Bruce Wayne, to one day become Batman once again.
From Batman: Hush, during his fight with Superman:
If Clark wanted to, he could use his superspeed and squish me into the cement. But I know how he thinks. Even more than the Kryptonite, he's got one big weakness. Deep down, Clark's essentially a good person...and deep down, I'm not.
Black Canary: Her relationship with Oliver and her motivation for continuing to go back to him after their many break-ups. Either they're a genuinely loving couple who have both made mistakes and gone through a rough patch, or they're an incredibly destructive mess with both having massive issues that they've constantly failed to work on. In-canon, this has been shown with her having a stable relationship with Mid-Nite, only to abandon it to get back together with Oliver despite the fight they were having all the while.
The Flash: Hunter Zolomon (Zoom/Reverse-Flash II) is a man who experienced repeated tragedy through his life, and after his spine is broken and Wally West refuses to use time travel to fix it, he accidentally gives himself superspeed (sort of). He resolves that the reason Wally didn't help him is that Wally has never experienced tragedy, and decides to become Wally's Arch-Nemesis in order to better Wally by attacking his friends and family and being the villain that will make Wally step up. Does Hunter truly believe that tragedy will make Wally better, and is merely too mentally unbalanced to realise that he himself could be a hero as he meets his own criteria for a great hero? Or is Hunter just a sad, broken man looking for an excuse to hurt Wally because Wally didn't help him? Or is it a mix of both?
In Gotham Central, Dr. Alchemy asks Det. Renee Montoya if she ever beats her girlfriend. Rather than immediately denying it, angrily or otherwise, she repeatedly avoids answering the question until he points out that she's evading the question, at which point she says, "Never in my life." Does she just refuse to answer at first because it's an outrageous and offensive question, or because she has in fact beaten her girlfriend, or maybe just thought about it? Or has she perhaps hit a different girlfriend? Later, in 52, we see her trade hits with an ex-girlfriend, Kate Kane, although, to be fair, Kate hits her first.
Speaking of Batman, there's his main enemy, The Joker. Though he started off as a dark and creepy serial killer, he spent most of the '40s, '50s, and '60s as a mostly harmless lawbreaking jester. Then, after Batman was remade into a dark and brooding hero, the Joker returns to his homicidal maniac origins; then we get to "The Killing Joke," in which he shoots Barbara Gordon (formerly Batgirl) through the spine, and then kidnaps and tortures Commissioner Gordon more or less for the hell of it. And then there was "Death in the Family" and countless other stories in which the Joker gets darker as time goes on. In the movies, he has changed from one appearance to the next. The Movie of the 1966 series portrayed him as the prankster crook. Jack Nicholson, famous creepy actor, portrayed him as a former gangster making the best of his deformities by incorporating them into a costume. The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger appeared to be a suicidal nihilist out to cause chaos with a carefully orchestrated plan. His solo film portrays him as simply a clown with mental health issues who was taken off his medication and therapy just when he has very bad month of riots, beaten and harrassed, losing his job, and finally being mocked by his idol for his failure as a stand up comedian, push him gradually into more and more acceptance of his own violent impulses.
Though he's traditionally portrayed as chaotic and capable of adapting on the fly to any situation, Grant Morrison's Batman & Robin run has suggested that, in fact, the opposite is true: as Axe-Crazy as he is, he's been able to survive confrontations with Batman for so long because he's Crazy-Prepared and already has a plan for everything. And the Monster Clown persona is a facade that lets him channel his homicidal urges. At heart, he's not a Monster Clown....he's just a monster.
Also, does the Joker break the fourth wall for comedic effect at the whim of the writers, in which case anything he says while Breaking the Fourth Wall is barely canon? Or is his suggested "super sanity" giving him canonical awareness of the reality of comic books? In either case, does this extend to the other adaptations? Did Nicholson's mobster-Joker go insane because of his accident causing deformity or because it let him know that we're watching his misery for entertainment?
If he knows that he's in a comic book, then his behavior might have been hand-waved in his own mind because his victims only exist to be his victims. Even the Gordon family and other named victims are not actual people in our level of reality. Maybe the only reason he keeps committing crimes and going up against Batman is because he doesn't want the comics to end. Because then it would be like he ceased to exist. And he doesn't want to die.
In fact, Joker might even be said to be committing horrible crimes to get Batman involved because otherwise the entire world he exists in would cease! Joker is forced to murder, rob and prank people to save the entire universe. He's not the hero Gotham wants, but he's the villain Gotham needs.
When the Joker expresses a personal philosophy, such as Ledger's nihilist with a plan, does the Joker believe in it? Or are they all meaningless words to him, another joke intended solely to screw with the minds of the sane?
Batman: Black And White - Case Study by Paul Dini puts forth a particularly brilliant alternative; the Joker is completely sane. Back before the chemical vat incident, he was a crime boss who played his anonymity to the hilt in order to do whatever he wanted. Afterward, he knew that was no longer possible, so he created the "Clown Prince Of Crime" persona of Obfuscating Insanitysolely so he would be sent to Arkham whenever he was caught - he purposefully invented Joker Immunity! The doctors are ecstatic when they discover an old report claiming this - and then orderlies drag Harley Quinn past, and she comments that she wrote that report before she started counseling the Joker. The Joker drove Quinn insane to invalidate her findings once he realized that she had figured out his scheme. And he left the report where it would be found just so he could Yank the Dog's Chain. ...Or was that all wrong, maybe even made up recently by the Joker or Harley and back dated, either as a joke or as part of a scheme to help break out again (by getting declared sane and transferred to the more easily escaped facilities at Blackgate Penitentiary).
Then in the reality of DC Rebirth, it is revealed that there seem to be three Jokers for that version of the DC multiverse...
The Batman miniseries, The Long Halloween has four interpretations regarding Gilda Dent's confession about committing the first Holiday murders:
As Gilda believed, she committed the first murders, then - as she believes - a pre-Two-Face Harvey Dent committed the others until Labor Day, when Alberto Falcone, who publicly took credit for the murders, killed Sal Maroni.
Gilda committed the first murders, but starting with Alberto faking his own death on New Year's Day, he reapportioned the identity for himself and committed the other murders. Gilda stated she's read Harvey's files to get an idea of how to cover up her tracks. As this points out, having Harvey commit the other murders takes away from his fall from grace and transformation into Two-Face.
Gilda snapped from Harvey's transformation into Two-Face and became delusional and started thinking she started the Holiday murders and the truth is Alberto really did commit all the murders.People who support this theory point out there's no switch in M.O., which given Batman is doing forensic tests in one issue, would been noticeable, and there aren't two murders on New Year's, which should've happened if Gilda quit, and someone else picked it up and Alberto would have no idea about another murder. Additionally, Gilda was in ICU during the Thanksgiving murder and a wheelchair in Christmas and the murders on Mother's Day, Independence Day, and Carmine Falcone's birthday were about covering up Holiday's identity, and even Alberto had motives the early murders as they're all people who'd turned on his father or could turn, and/or failed him. Also, despite Gilda saying she'd read Harvey's files, she reacts with surprise that he brought his files home with him shortly before Maroni threw acid in Harvey's face.
Gilda, Harvey, and Alberto committed some of the murders each.
Related to these, whether or not Calendar Man really did know anything about the murders or was just blowing smoke out of his ass to keep from being overshadowed. As the link in the third interpretation mentions, he was already switching the gender pronouns around before the possible change in killers happened.
There's the question on if Carmine Falcone truly knew about Alberto's actions. While Batman suspects he does and it seems like he made sure Sofia wouldn't see Alberto shoot at the Riddler, some of the murders aimed at members of Falcone's family and Alberto's cold behavior to his father raise doubts as to this. For what it's worth, though, Batman does suspect that the argument between the two is staged and despite Alberto saying Falcone didn't know he was born on Valentine's Day, Carmine did visit Alberto's "grave" on that exact day.
Did Sofia really love Sal Maroni or was she just using him? Depending on one reads it, it makes her killing Alberto in Dark Victory not just killing him for not being like Carmine, but also revenge for the one Holiday killing that is definitely Alberto's.
Gordon spent a good portion of the story dragging his feet when Harvey discovers a connection between Thomas Wayne and Carmine Falcone (which turned out to be Thomas saving Falcone's life after Falcone's father swung by Wayne Manor). Was it due to a lack of evidence, because he feared Harvey was going off the deep end already, or because (much like what was implied in Batman: Year One) he knew Bruce was Batman (which would explain some of Bruce's behavior) and didn't want to expose him?
A storyline in Justice Society of America sees the JSA forced to fight the spirits that had been condemned to Hell by the Spectre because Hal Jordan's attempt to turn the Spectre's mission to redemption rather than vengeance weakened the Spectre's hold on the damned. During this fight, Reverend Richard Craemer- a former supporting character and spiritual advisor to previous Spectre Jim Corrigan- shows up during the battle and reveals that Corrigan sent him to help. Since Corrigan doesn't appear himself, it's left open if Craemer was actually contacted by Corrigan's spirit or if he simply meant that his experience with Corrigan helped Craemer realise what was happening and inspired him to help for the sake of his friend.
Red Hood and the Outlaws: Jason is trying too hard to copy Bruce by wearing his symbol and forming a team which is a knock-off of the Outsiders. At the same time, he's using an identity that belonged to the Joker, and his teammates are his surrogate brother's friend and ex-girlfriend. Jason is trying too hard to make up for, or rather, hide, the fact that he has absolutely nothing in his life except his rage and resentment by taking things and friends that belong to other people. Does he honestly give a damn about Starfire and Roy, or is just using them because he considers Roy to be nothing more than a pathetic hanger on and Starfire as an emotionally devoid alien powerhouse with a skewed sense of memory and a warped physical perception of human beings. The fact that he only included the two on his team because he washed up on Starfire's island and learned Roy was about to be executed adds to the credence that his team was only put together through half-assed improvisation.
The Riddler: Insufferable Genius who's obsessed with proving his superiority over Batman, or a seriously ill criminal whose compulsion to tell the truth is what drives him to leave riddles?
Chaste HeroRobin/Red Robin Tim Drake's indifference and avoidance of adding sex to his relationships, as well as him never falling for the Honey Pot has created a theory that he is the DC universe's first Asexual or Demisexual character (Demi fits better with canon as he and his long time girlfriend Stephanie Brown decide to have sex after years of dating in Convergence).
DC: The New Frontier: Did the Centre manipulate Theodore Smiesel into writing a book about it as Evil Gloating, or did he do it in defiance of the entity? Batman and J'onn speculate that the Centre was speaking through Smiesel due to the writing style, but Smiesel seems to think that he's successfully fighting the Centre's will to write the book and warn people. The Centre may have just been tricking him into thinking that, but the book does provide some helpful insight to its enemies.
Some people believe that The Sandman (1989)'s Death is a bitch. Sure, she is supposed to be kind, but there are hints of wanton cruelty and schadenfreude underneath it. Particularly striking is the scene in Endless Nights where she casually strolls through a time-frozen party, telling everyone how they really died and watching them do so, including the children. Sure, it may have been an homage to "The Masque of the Red Death" but it did seem unnecessarily vindictive to do it in that way, especially considering her expression the whole time.
This was from the distant past. All of the Endless' characterizations have moved on since then. How far in the past? Back then, Dream still liked Desire, the first Despair was still alive, and Delirium was still Delight. It's possible that Death hadn't started her "one day as mortal a century" yet, either, which would explain why she was acting the way she did.
Death doesn't decide when people die or how. She just states the fact to people who are trying to deny it and takes pleasure for a frustrating job finally getting done. Also, in this world, death is not the end.
The party took place long, long after she changed her ways. And they were dead already. They would have died anyway by the time she finally got in to take them.
Neil Gaiman himself has said that there's a perfectly valid story to be told about how Dream was an insufferable jerk and Desire's actions were entirely justified. It's just not the one he told.
The debate has raged for years over who is the real personality, Superman or Clark Kent? Sometimes the Superman persona is very much the real person, with Clark Kent as a mask he puts on in order to live a normal life. Other time it is the opposite and Clark is the real person, who is simply playing the role of "Superman". Other times, both are an integral part of who he is, equally, or neither one.
One good story involved a pair of gambling aliens tried separating Clark and Superman. What actually happened was that there became two identical people, and that when one of them was Clark the other felt compelled to be Superman, and vice versa.
Lois Lane: Depending on who you ask, Lois was dumb enough to be fooled by a pair of glasses, or the only person whom Superman couldn't easily deceive during the Silver Age, to the point he needed to pull off ridiculous and overcomplicated stunts, often involving robots and Batman, to divert her suspicions for a short while.
Supergirl: Depending on the reader, Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El is the nicest girl ever, a short-tempered sweetheart, her cousin's doormat, or an insecure and afraid teenager who grew up to be a confident, sassy, brave and self-reliant woman.
Lana Lang: Reliable and loyal childhood friend or obsessed lovesick idiot who keeps ruining relationships because she can't get over her childhood crush?
Lex Luthor: An evil, self-serving, hypocritical, egomaniac bastard whose rants about Superman holding back humanity are nothing but a mask for xenophoby and egotism? A hero striving to show the human race that it has some worth when set against the impossible, unreachable ideal that is Superman, rejecting no act that would prove his point as worth it to the greater good? A tragic hero, with every action ruled by obsession and hubris based in deep insecurities only unearthed by Superman's presence? A secular humanist who believes Superman is holding back social growth on Earth because people rely on him too much, preventing humanity from our grand destiny? A futurist who believes in the advancement of mankind no matter what the cost, sometimes resulting in him doing immoral things for the "greater good"? A petty dick who'll stoop down to any level of crime to prove he's superior to everyone else?
New Krypton: In-Universe, Superman considers two different explanations for Alura's increasingly hostile actions against humanity: either Alura is motivated by the grief of losing Zor-El, or she has always been cold and distant, and Zor-El was her Morality Chain. Since Superman never had any emotional connection to Alura before the events of New Krypton, he reasons any interpretation is equally valid. It should be noted that before her husband's death, Alura was shown to be coldhearted and ruthless. Behind Zor-El's back, Alura instructed Commander Gor and the Kandorian military to abduct several known felons from Stryker's Island Penitentiary and relocate them to the Phantom Zone. Unfortunately, during the breakout, several Science Police guards at Stryker's were killed. When Superman comes and asks Zor-El and Alura for help bring renegade Kryptonians to justice. Alura reveals not only that she ordered the Kryptonians to abduct the prisoners, but she also gave the order to kill the Science Police guards, to the shock and horror of Superman, Supergirl, and Zor-El. Alura was remorseless about the science guard's death and accused Superman of caring more about humanity than his race. This shows that Alura was a coldhearted and ruthless person who cared only about her race, even when her husband was alive. Kara actually brings this up in her last confrontation with her mother; Kara initially thought a few of her father Zor-El last words, watch out for your mother meant to make sure that Alura didn’t get hurt when he was gone, but seeing Alura torture Reactron, made Kara believe that he was warning her to watch out for her mother because he knew how ruthless she is, it’s possible that Zor-El meant that because before he died, he was shocked that Alura ordered the death of human guards and was remorseless of doing that.
Superboy-Prime: An Omnicidal Maniac who destroys anything he doesn't like, or a kid who's been given incredible power and thrust into a situation he was in no way ready to handle? Or a deliberate parody designed to screw with the fans heads with lines like "I'll kill you to death!"? Are his lines really that stupid or would anybody also scream the first thing that came to their mind, even if it made no sense, after having the equivalent of a nuke explode in their face? Maybe he kills people because He grew up in a world where all these people were fictional characters, and deep down, he still doesn't see them as real?
The Tara Markov version of Terra from Teen Titans. A sociopath who could not be helped, or a broken little girl who got mixed up with the wrong people and let her emotions get the better of her? Did she truly think the Teen Titans were her friends, even a little bit? Did she have feelings for Garfield?
Two-Face. Tradition states that the two halves of his face represent his split personality. Normally, they have the non-scarred side represent Harvey Dent and the scarred side represent Two-Face; they give us scenes where he has a perfectly reasonable dialogue shown only in his non-scarred profile, only to flip out into ultraviolence shot entirely from his scarred side. But some writers claim the opposite is true: the non-scarred side is Two-Face, the monster with a face of an angel. The scarred side represents Harvey Dent, the wounded hero who lies crushed beneath.
Supported in spirit by the non-canon Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, in which Harvey has his face restored to full normal- and proceeds to go completely evil; scratching both sides of his coins as if he has been "consumed by his dark side." At least both sides match.
Additionally, an acid scar to the left side of his face would correspond to behavior on the right side of his body.
Moreover, prior to the 1980s Two-Face was not portrayed as a man with multiple personalities, just as someone who rejected moral responsibility and let random chance in the form of his coin make his choices for him. The multiple personalities first showed up when he got a new Post-Crisis origin. The idea of Dent having two personalities caught on so well it's completely erased the character's first 40 years. Ironically, his appearance in The Dark Knight caused some protest when it was closer to his original portrayal.
V for Vendetta: Is V a freedom fighter looking to replace the NF regime with something better for humanity, or a man driven insane by medical experiments and willing to let the world burn to sate his desire for revenge? The most interesting thing is that while the creator personally sympathises with V, he has said that seeing V as a hero or villain are both fully valid interpretations, and encourages readers to discuss their perceptions of V and his actions.
Watchmen: Are the masks just self-gratifying lunatics, or misunderstood heroes who were then prosecuted for keeping the population safe? Or some of each?
Ozymandias, the villain behind it all. Interpretations of him vary from a mass-murdering psychopath to the savior of the world and its best hope for the future.
Rorschach. A sociopathic, alienated, serial killer? Or an intelligent, uncompromising man trying to save humanity from evil and corruption and bring loyalty and morality back into the world?
Eddie Blake/The Comedian. Is he a really dark antihero? A murderous lunatic? Did start out well-intentioned only for the relentless brutality he witnessed to grind him down into a government sponsored psychopath?
Is Doctor Manhattan unable to alter the future or is he just so much of a fatalist that he won't even make the effort?
Whether or not Hercules Unbound is actually Diana's father? Or is she actually a living statue?
Steve Trevor's inability to tell Di and Wondy apart in the Golden Age causes readers to tend to think he may have been putting on a front and being willfully obtuse out of respect for her attempts to keep her ids separate or that he has face blindness. Diana didn't wear a mask, and only sometimes donned glasses as "Diana Prince", it wasn't much of a disguise even for the Golden Age. There's also the fact that his sexist "stay in the kitchen" attitude only really shows up when it would be better for Wonder Woman rather than Di to be around and when said attitude gives Diana a chance to leave and reappear as Wonder Woman, he doesn't have the same issues with Wonder Woman or Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls.
◊ merging Batman with Dungeons & Dragons Character Alignment.
