Batman General Discussion

I don't think it's bad to deconstruct those elements.

The problem is people forget that it needs to be followed by a Reconstruction.

Many don't seem to bother having answers to the questions they ask with their deconstructions (which a lot of people, myself included, tend to misunderstand) so they just say this guy sucks without then saying how do we fix him.

The contingencies are annoying. At this point it's an excuse to be a dick and it's excused by some fans cause "Oh superheroes can lose control and be brainwashed"

Meanwhile Bruce gets his money or tech stolen a bunch of times.

Far enough. The contingencies might be better if the other heroes were in on them.

Because it is true. Heroes get mind controlled all the time, and there needs to be a way to counter that and stop said mind controlled hero before they hurt themselves or others.

Hell, quite a few members of the league actually understood Bruce's logic, even if they were angry about the breach of trust.

Of course, there would need to be a lot of hoops jumped through. How far should these precautions go. Who should have and know what? How do you prevent the Mind controlled hero from telling whoever's controlling them that there's a counter against them if said mind controller thinks to ask.

Of course, Bruce believed if he ever went rogue, the league would just kick his ass....until Superman pointed out that might not be as feasible as he thinks, which lead to Failsafe, which also ended up proving Superman right.

I admit, as much as I like Batman, I do want to see a story where he goes rogue, and the league just beats him into the ground. Like, mercilessly. He's crossed the line, and our heroes are done with his paranoia, jerk-assery, etc.

Not to mention Failsafe rampaged across Gotham and caused tons of damage.

A contingency against you which you know about is not much of a contingency. Because then you can think ways around it if you turn evil.

Most disaster workers do train for the worst case scenarios and usually that's a good thing. Batman having training in a bunch of different fields like chemistry and physics makes sense because you never know what weird supervillain scenario will require knowing all the properties of Zinc and Copper wires.

However, Batman's superhero contingencies usually do way more harm than good. Why that is the case is a more interesting angle to explore. In Tower of Babel, the heroes were able to escape from most of them on there own so not only were the contingencies a huge violation of trust but they were also ineffective. The entire situation with Brother Eye was a disaster. In the current story line, Failsafe didn't actually prevent the disaster (a rogue Batman) and caused a lot of unnecessary destruction.

There are lots of reasons why Batman's superhero contingencies go from reasonable to horrific or disastrous. Sometimes, it's because Batman goes way too far because of his paranoia. Failsafe is way too ridiculous as just an anti-Batman protocol. It also has few if any controls and ironically enough fail-safes. Most of his anti-justice league plans are also way too far towards the bizarrely cruel side like the mind control induced exhaustion death for WW or dehydration death for Aqua man.

A more optimistic look at Batman's contingency plans would probably involve him scrapping the bizarrely edgy stuff like failsafe or Tower of Babel and focusing more on disaster prevention and relief. And for Superhero stuff, it would focus on ways of detecting shapeshifters, mind control, and body swaps so that plans can be made depending on the context.

In the new Titans run one of the first things Dick did was state to his team that he does have plans to neutralize them if they ever go rogue but he's telling them about it instead of keeping it a secret.

Huh. So Dick agrees it's necessary, but decides to fill them in on it so that he doesn't lose their trust.

Now, if they do go evil, they'll come straight at him....but since he knows that (and since he hasn't told them what the plans actually are), it still gives him some advantage.

Wonder what he has planned for Raven considering the current arc.

If you are entering a team with Batman in it you probably should assume from the start he already has a plan against you if you ever go rogue.

Even before Tower of Babel the man was supposed to be Crazy-Prepared among the superheroes so it isn't like they should be surprised when the guy who got there without powers by prepping like crazy actually prepped against you too...

And with how much of a control freak jackass he might be at a given point, many heroes would probably suspect him using them if any guy gets snipy at him or as some weird flex.

I don't know if that's entirely fair. That wasn't and isn't always the case. Batman's M.O. is constantly evolving with both time and different writers. The idea that Batman would make contingency plans against other members of the league was relatively new during the Tower of Babel story line. That's what made the JL reaction make sense. They didn't realize that Batman had become so paranoid and that he would make (honestly pretty brutal) plans in secret against them. Other Stories in the 90s dabbled with the idea of Batman being a darker more paranoid figure who clashed with other heroes, but the early 2000s were really a turning point for the character.

The problem is usually Batman's methods. If he just made disaster preparedness plans that would be one thing. But sometimes, he makes extremely dangerous stuff because of his paranoia that causes both disaster and mistrust.

Unrelated but has anyone ever made Oliver and Harley distantly related?

I'm not sure if it's still in continuity, but the Justice League getting brainwashed and needing to be taken out by other heroes was the original origin for the Teen Titans in like the sixties.

And that's why the kid sidekicks were the best contingency. Didn't Batman ever say that Robin was the contingency plan to stop Batman being mind controlled or turning evil?

It's working.

Dick has a much better relationship with the heroes community than Bruce does with many, beyond Superman, Wonder-Woman, and I guess Blue Beetle (Jaime).

A hero who is less experienced and more often than not weaker than the adult hero is not the best of contingencies if said older hero becomes evil.

Dick knows everything Bruce knows, and is a much better acrobat than Bruce.

He's got tricks of his own that Bruce might not have in his arsenal.

And people like Dick.

He once managed to save the world by convincing the entirety of the DC Superhero community to run into a portal that protected them from a world ending threat, thwarting said threats plan to kick all their asses.

Why did they do it? Because Dick said they needed to go. He didn't say what, but he said it needed to happen, and everyone trusted him enough to follow his instructions.

I'd say Batman has very much succeeded in creating his perfect counter.

And then you have a great marksman he trained and isn't afraid to kill.

Or the next candidate to become the great detective.

Or the one that has the cyberspace at her fingertips.

Or the one that's straight up a better martial artist than him.

The batkids need to show why they are the successors and not Batman's sideshow more often.

Edited by Blueace on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:46:05 AM

The heroes being mind controlled and needing to be stopped/saved by the Younger was also the Infinity Inc origin. Of course works like Justice and was it "Forever Evil" or Year of The Villain? I know there are also two stories where the younger generation gets brainwashed instead.

Kind of funny, in DC civilians getting brainwashed/mind controlled/emotion controlled is Tuesday but a superhero? That's a crisis, even though you'd think the heroes would be more obvious to recognize "yep, something's definitely wrong with Superman, must be some red K or brain worm" have better means/support systems for dealing with it "well we know Wonder Woman/Supergirl/Martian/Power Girl/Superboy will get him back to normal soon enough". The direct threat guys like Doctor Psycho, Hypnota and Eros pose to the general populace is often criminally understated. Nine times out of ten they just cut out the middle man and have people jumping off bridges and what not before the hero even realizes there is a problem. Eros at least got vaporized for emotion bombing an entire district but Apollo remains unpunished for inflicting future sight torture on a city. Doctor Psycho straight up demanded an application to ICEAXE and got accepted. You knew you were dealing with a mood swinging psychic murderer prone to mass deception and didn't even make him work for entry!

In Marvel civilians being mind manipulated drives paranoia, but superheroes? They're going to fight each other anyway, plus more teams have some psychic buffer than not.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Apr 19th 2024 at 7:43:53 AM

One could argue that's because superheroes in DC trend to being stronger and bigger scale in terms of power compared to Marvel. Superman alone could probably solo some iterations of the Avengers, for instance, so the idea of someone like that being taken over by a villain is what's known as a Big Fucking Deal.

If I remember correctly, Batman said that the rest of the League was the failsafe in case he ever went bad/was mind controlled. Though, in practice, it's usually been whoever the Robin is at the time who takes down an out of control Batman (I know Dick's done it, and I'm pretty sure a few of the others have too).

One thing to always remember about Dick Grayson is that he's been doing the super-hero thing since he was pretty young—he's got more experience than a lot of heroes who are older than he is. He's certainly got more practical experience than Bruce did at his age (I expect that, if somehow Dick found himself in a contest with a young Bruce Wayne, Dick would smoke him something fierce).

Yeah but the Failsafe arc calls bullshit on that, and reveals robot Batman is his real failsafe.

Failsafe only makes sense if Zur was planning from the start to get his own body.

Meaning the robot was never an actual contingency, that was a front to hide the true reason for his existence.

Wait why?

Despite my critique, I do think Failsafe makes sense as some kind of anti Batman robot to stop him should he start killing. Granted, Zur SHOULD have put in some safeguards to prevent said robot from doing collateral damage.

Zur uploading himself to Failsafe read to me like a opportunity he took advantage of, rather than it being the plan.