Batman: Fortunate Son is a one-shot comic by DC Comics released in 1999. It was written by Gerard Jones with art by Gene Ha.
Rock star Izaak Crowe is at the end of his rope, spiraling into despair as he feels his music doesn't have that same tone as it did before. However, before he can take his life, he's met with what seems to be a hallucination of who he claims to be God who convinces him to change and he becomes more destructive. As Batman and Robin deal with the matter, the two are stuck in a generational gap as Batman believes rock and roll is inherently evil and Robin believes Batman's being overreactive. Can the two solve their differences and find Izaak before he does something deadly?
While the book didn't make much noise when it was released, it became well known thanks to Linkara's review of it on Atop the Fourth Wall, mocking Batman's ridiculousness such as his idea that "Punk is nothing but death... and crime... and the rage of a beast" and considering rock & roll to be one of his most nefarious foes.
Tropes! From a gun!
- Artistic License – Economics: Crossing over a bit with Artistic License – Religion as well: Izaak raids the former home of "The God" — which happens to preserve the man's body on display a la Vladimir Lenin — and announces that he's going to make it free to access for all, directly comparing to how "In Europe, the relics of saints are available to all worshipers — free!" This comparison doesn't work for a variety of reasons: the US government already subsidizes sites of cultural importance, including those related to music, making it unclear what Izaak is trying to fight here that would prevent access from being "free" in the first place. Even if one buys into the equation that a for-profit musician should be venerated and maintained on the same level of holy saints, the display of saints in European countries isn't free either — they're paid for by the Catholic Church, who don't receive any government or tax benefits and thus maintain (and profit off of) this practice out of pocket.
- Compressed Vice: Batman is given a hatred for rock and roll and punk rock that never appears anywhere else in the books before or after.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Roy Lazarus is this, intending on boosting sales of Izaak's music by pushing his psychotic break as far as it can go.
- Dead Artists Are Better: The evil villain's plan was to capitalize on Izaak's profile as an artist largely posthumously, turning him into a legend whose story and talents would rival that of "The God". That said, he felt that death alone wasn't enough to inspire such veneration, and thus screwed up Izaak's life to a massive degree to ensure he went out in a psychotic blaze of glory.
- Dead Guy on Display: The body of the Elvis Impersonator is preserved like Lenin's.
- Dramatic TV Shut-Off: Thomas Wayne shuts off a radio that the young Bruce is listening to in a flashback, saying that the rock-and-roll playing on it is just noise and they have to get to "that Zorro movie", essentially implying that the reason Batman thinks so little of rock and roll is because he associates it with his parent's deaths.
- Elvis Impersonator: An unstable rock musician who has frequent hallucinations of the unnamed "god of rock and roll" and other rock legends. When he travels to Las Vegas, he's disgusted by the many "god" impersonators he sees, viewing "the god" himself as having chosen money and fame over music, and consequently begins repressing his hallucinations.
- Freudian Excuse: Batman’s excuse for hating rock & roll is due to Thomas Wayne telling him they don’t listen to it the same night they would be murdered. His hatred for punk stems from a psychotic punk rocker murdering a woman before Bruce had realized it.
- Gaslighting: Both Roy Lazarus and Evangeline Dove do this to Izaak in order to drive up sales of his music before he goes out in a blaze of glory, even putting in people dressed up as "God" to continue to fool and make Izaak go insane.
- Informed Ability: Izaak is frequently touted as being an incredibly skilled and gifted musician, but comics being a non-auditory medium, we as an audience only get to read his lyrics, taking the comic's word for the rest.
- Instant Expert: Partway through, Batman realizes that, if he's going to understand his opponent, he needs to find out about rock & roll and asks Lazarus to set him up with microfilm and music. Robin suitably lampshades this by pointing out that there's no way he can do such a thing, but somehow he does.
- Jerkass: Despite this being set in the early days of his career with Dick being Robin, Batman is a major asshole in this book, especially since he hates rock & roll and other "new music" with a burning passion.
- Lost Aesop: So... is Rock & Roll actually rotten or not? On one hand, the narrative and most characters within it frame Izaak Crowe in a sympathetic light despite his violent Sanity Slippage, suggesting we're meant to agree with his dissatisfaction with selling out for a cushy celebrity lifestyle, as well as his crusade to have his music be distributed entirely on his own terms (which also includes bombing a music studio just to stop a video he didn't like from being broadcast). However, we also have Batman, who ardently hates rock music in this comic, especially the type that Izaak is trying to act for, yet the plot also sides with him in his claims that it's a force for evil that corrupts people into becoming murderous psychopaths, with Bats never having any sort of epiphany on the matter or otherwise changing his mind. Mixed into this is a vilification of the music industry, with it being revealed that Izaak's breakdown was engineered in large part by his manager, whose Evil Plan is revealed to be of trying to make Izaak into a martyr for the sake of sales... using the breakdown entirely motivated by Izaak's own bizarre manifesto. To make the topic especially confusing, the book (according to its own writer in the dedication) was made to be a tribute to rock music by creators who loved the genre, not as an anti-rock diatribe, yet how exactly the plot ends up respecting rock music is vague at best.
- Made of Iron: For some reason, Izaak seems to shrug off a lot of stuff, such as being shot in the arm and downing a bunch of drugs with alcohol. It doesn't last as he's shot by trigger-happy police near the end.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- The mysterious "God of Rock & Roll" is easily a blonde expy of Elvis Presley, who instead of being referred to as "The King" is called "The God".note
- Their appearances are quite different, but Izaak Crowe — based on his status as a highly popular but greatly-troubled rockstar who struggles with his relationship with fame and the music industry before his untimely death — appears to be a very loose caricature of Kurt Cobain.
- The big incident in Batman's past that convinced him that punk rock was evil was witnessing a punk musician murdering a woman in a club. Said punk is a thinly-veiled caricature of Sid Vicious, with his victim appearing to be based on Nancy Spungen.
- No Name Given: The Elvis expy is never given a name, just referred to as “God” or “The God of Rock & Roll”.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Batman is right that Izaak is a threat and his music is connected to this, but he's wrong because he doesn't realize he's being gaslit.
- Rotten Rock & Roll: The main gist of the book seems to have Batman seeing things like rock & roll as inherently evil, as he compares it to how his parents refused to let him listen to it, especially the day they ended up dying. He also considers punk evil due to one psychopath deciding to murder a girl early in his career.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Batman tries to scare Robin straight by hauling him to Arkham Asylum and showing him the various criminals locked up as proof that things like rock & roll are evil and can create people like them. It just pisses Robin off more and he bails.
- Two Decades Behind: The book was released in 1999 and ostensibly takes place in its "modern day", and yet its approach to Rock music seems exclusively limited to discussion of classic Rock & Roll from The '50s (referencing the likes of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, etc.), only acknowledging the Punk Rock scenes of The '70s at the absolute latest. Despite the narratively largely centering around a "rock" musician in the present day, there's zero mention of the likes of Grunge or Heavy Metal.
