Microblog Memes

Bruce has been routinely demonstrated as using his wealth in the most socially conscious, progressive, and generous ways. He is always shown in stark contrast with the likes of Lex Luthor.

Depends heavily on the author.

In "Kingdom Come", for instance, Wayne and Luthor are partners and Wayne's main contribution to Gotham is a fully automated dragnet of police-robots across a city he effectively owns lock-stock-and-barrel.

In "Batman 2099", he's a recluse whose personal tragedies have rendered him incapable of engaging in more than self-pity, while his board of directors does all sorts of evil shit completely off the leash.

In Joaquin Phoenix's "Joker", his family is just another one of the members of the criminal cartel that has corrupted the city, with Bruce's doctor-father spending more time hob-nobbing with the elite socialites than attending to the city collapsing under his feet.

There are definitely more utopian takes on Bruce and his family. But Gotham is inherently dystopian, and you can't escape how the city's wealthiest family is - at least somewhat - responsible.

Of course he does.

The point is that Batman is the archetype of a right-wing superhero. Batman is how rightwingers understand social justice: accumulate as much wealth as you can, use crushing physical violence to punish bad guys, act charitably at an individual level but do not ever work to solve social issues at a systemic level.
Even in-universe he's nowhere near as much of a positive force as he could be if he used his money to force political and social change instead of as an outlet for his mental issues.

He's not actively villainous because right-wingers don't see themselves as such. But when that fantasy meets reality, you get Elon Musk.

Stark contrast… you could have done something with that.

Still goes around beating people without trial. Reminds me of the comic run where all these low level criminals who Batman has crippled and left for dead for small offences, come after him for revenge since he fucked them up for life, while letting the Joker escape or go to Arkham yet again

If anything, Batman single-handledly escalated the matter.

Considering there's, variously,

1. the Lazarus pit leeching into the groundwater,
2. The ~~Illuminati~~ Court of Owls enabling more crime alongside the general pervasive corruption by the ruling class,
3. The buried evil bat god Barbatos who was summoned and remains under the city
4. The corruption of insane wizard Dr. Gotham who has also been buried under the city for over 40,000 years (Who gave him a doctorate 40,000 years ago is what I want to know.),
5. Amadeus Arkham (and seemingly every warden of Arkham since) grossly mistreating the patients there.
6. The city being surrounded by swampland lending it to be perpetually gloomy.

One can see why the city might not have the best base to positively grow from.

Depending on the timeline, that's not true, but that's the problem with resetting a timeline a dozen or whatever times. We see an endless amount of him fighting the crime and never the results.

They didn't explore it as much as I thought they should. Batman created Bane, indirectly, and in some ways attracted Bane to Gotham which set off the events that lead to all of Arkham criminals being released. Which in turn led Arzial to Gotham. Which brought about the events of Contagion and Cataclysm which lead to No Man's Land.

So in a way the entire city of Gotham was brought down by him being there.

Yeah people that make this joke don't pay attention the actual content. Bruce is routinely demonstrated to be a positive force with his wealth. He's socially conscious, generous, invests in progressive causes, runs numerous charities, restricts his company from participating in unethical practices, creates jobs for convicts, and treats his employees very well.

Now, I'm not suggesting this is realistic. No one of Bruce's wealth, in the real world, would be anywhere near as good as Wayne is depicted.

But within the context we of this world, the actual text of the stories tells us quite plainly he is a positive, progressive influence.

I mean, somebody must have agreed, because they made a whole movie about it.

This tweet is the entire premise of The Batman.

It does end kinda going back to justifying why he's more useful in the suit instead, but at least they spend a bunch of time talking about it, I suppose.

I like TAS Batman A LOT especailly since he gave his villains every shot at redemeption, many of them were simply too damaged to live a normal life.... Heck, for Harley Quinn all it took for her to start being evil again was a single PTSD attack, and it was induced by a mall cop, implying her trauma was started by police brutality

Couldn't he use his batman persona to intimidate the rich to affect social change? Like Bruce Wayne can do so much if he had a dude in the night breaking into other billionaires houses in Gotham and telling them to raise wages or stop influencing politicians to not raise taxes and let healthcare for all go through

Several versions also have him channeling huge amounts of money to charities as Bruce. Also trying to influence local politics with his company or hiring petty criminals he runs into as Batman to work at Wayne Enterprises so they have legitimate income. Batman is working on things that are happening right this second, but Bruce is trying to fix systemic issues so that Batman eventually won't be needed.

Yeah, one of my favorite depictions of him are the Year One movies/comics, where Batman is fighting corrupt cops just as much as he's fighting the mafia and other villains of the week.

Except that actual super villains exist in their universes.

She's also an environment strawman. Think of how often mainstream media portrays environments as radicals vs how often they're portrayed as reasonable heroes. Thanos? Kingman's villain? Think that's by accident? Well, maybe some of it is. Being able to find success within a power structure means you may find it reasonable and fair, so you end up writing stories that reinforce that power structure.

Which Bruce helps him with in the end. He could of sent Nora to a hospital, Freeze to jail, and washed his hands of it. Instead he makes an effort to transfer her to Arkham so Freeze can continue his work.

He does something similar in virtually every single iteration. Of his principle Rogues Gallery, Freeze is nearly always the villain Bruce makes the most effort to assist.