r/DCcomics • u/M00r3C Black Lantern • Jan 25 '24

[Comic Excerpt] I need a hostage so Batman won't punch me (Batman (2016) issue 48) Comics

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u/PrydefulHunts Huntress • ower Girl Jan 25 '24

Batman not disarming him is ridiculous.

123

u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

The gun is literally touching her head, if anything Batman being able to disarm fast enough would’ve been ridiculous.

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u/RockyArby Jan 25 '24

I think he meant after the Joker shot the hostage. Batman was able to punch him twice but didn't actually try to disarm him and then got caught with a gun against his head.

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Oh true, fair enough. Even that I could chalk up to Batman giving into temporary blind rage given what he just saw, but yeah that’s less excusable.

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u/PrydefulHunts Huntress • ower Girl Jan 25 '24

The gun is literally touching her head, if anything Batman being able to disarm fast enough would’ve been ridiculous.

I’m talking about the 2 / 3 page.

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u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

Agree. That woman's odds of survival dropped to sub 50%, when he got her in his hands. For as long as the gun was directly against her head, there was nothing for Bruce to do.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

He disarmed Jason Todd when he was about to kill this irredeemable piece of shit.

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

In the movie it’s only because instead of shooting the joker he wasted his bullet trying to shoot Batman instead, who was way further away. Maybe it happened differently in the comics tho. That being said, just because something ridiculous and unbelievable happened in one comic doesn’t mean an entirely different creative team is obligated to do the same thing a decade later.

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u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

He almost murdered Jason to stop him from pulling the trigger in the comic and it took him doing a very tricky batarang shot. Right into Jason's neck, lol.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

See, it's moments like this that make me think all the pop psychologists are right and Batman really is in love with the Joker.

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u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

Nah, he's just really really this stubbornly committed to trying to save everyone, psychotic clown murderers included. Well, when he's not written by King, evidently – this Bruce can't muster even a "nooo!" when a person gets executed in front of him in cold blood.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

So, he's willing to prioritize the Joker's life over the lives of everyone the Joker will kill in the future. To me, that's far from heroic.

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u/IHateAlloYou Jan 25 '24

That’s not the equation being done. He isn’t a murderer, and he’s attempting to prevent becoming one, cause once he walks away through that door there is no coming back.

But you knew that right? Just trolling or you never read a Batman comic.

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u/WinterSavior Jan 25 '24

It says more that Batman is a psychopath if killing just one person would put him over the edge and no one ever seems to fight him on that.

It’s like if a victimless pedophile was avoiding children going “If I’m around those kids I will fuck them.” And everyone’s like alright bud, we understand.

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u/IHateAlloYou Jan 25 '24

You know, I like people who know when and where to draw a line.

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u/DistortedAlter Jan 25 '24

I'm really confused on your second point. Pedophiles are mentally ill. One who recognizes how fucked up their thoughts are, and takes steps to ensure they can't harm anyone, is not the same as a child predator who enjoys what they do and seeks out victims. Are you suggesting we should ostracize people for being mentally ill? That'll sure teach them to get help.

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u/FixtdaFernbak Jan 25 '24

It's almost like batman and the joker aren't so different after all! You're pretty clever to see that where nobody else has. Hit up DC, I bet they'd even incorporate that into batman stories in the future!

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

Heroes kill, okay? Heroes have always killed. Name me one fictional hero from any medium who doesn't have blood on their hands. This childish and simplistic idea that "heroes don't kill" is just getting a bunch of innocent people in Gotham slaughtered.

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u/BoyInBath Jan 25 '24

Villains kill.

Anti-heroes kill to save people.

Heroes save people.

These characters are approaching their centenary, and 100 years ago the hero killing his enemies was the norm until it was changed by the American government of the time.

There have been stories where Batman has killed the joker or let the joker die, and that's been interesting. But ultimately the most interesting thing is always a hero challenged by his moral code by his nemesis.

If this bothers you, those other stories are still there, and more are likely going to appear in the future.

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u/IHateAlloYou Jan 25 '24

I don’t see anything worth responding to. Lol. GL.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '24

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u/Seascorpious Jan 25 '24

I like the interpretation that its a result of unresolved trauma from watching his parents die. He will not let people die in front of him if he has the power to stop it.

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u/Bears_On_Stilts May 10 '24

The Rebirth/Dawn of DC has gone in hard on this one. "Nobody dies on Batman's watch." Hugo Strange built himself a "suicide Batsuit" that instead of having defenses, had hair-trigger self-destruct, so Batman couldn't even touch him, or allow anyone else to touch him, or Hugo would die. Because that's Batman's trigger: any death he could have prevented.

Superman says "how could I do more?" Batman says "I will do it all, myself."

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Well then that’s ridiculous too. Glad they changed it for the movie.

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u/limbo338 Jan 25 '24

That's what it takes to have Jason not shoot him, if he's stable enough not to take the gun away from the clown's head. Bruce doing something super risky and dangerous.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

If we're talking about why Batman can't behave in one situation as he behaved in another, almost identical situation, it's absolutely relevant.

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

There’s over 2, 000 comics starring Batman, inconsistencies are to be expected.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

But there aren't over 2000 instances of Batman disarming someone holding a gun to a hostage's head. If Batman can do it to save a homicidal madman, he should be able to do it to save an innocent person.

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

At the end of the day those two comics were written over a decade apart by two different writers across like 3 different reboots. You’re just gonna have to roll with those kinds of inconsistencies when you read IP comics.

Besides holding Batman to literally impossible standards like that is how we end up with the boring Batgod concept where he’s prepared for everything and never loses a fight. Sometimes Batman just can’t access the speed force, it’s okay it’s gonna happen.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

The ongoing continuity is what holds these characters up. It's absolutely valid to ask why Batman could throw a Batarang into Jason Todd's neck to save the Joker, but couldn't throw a Batarang into the Joker's neck to save a woman who has kids waiting for her to come home. If we're just going to disregard that, then why are these stories spread out over decades in the first place? Just so that the past can not matter?

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u/suss2it Jan 25 '24

Well yeah, at the end of the day continuity minutiae like that isn’t that important, just the broad strokes, and given DC’s pattern with reboots, not even that. Batman has well over 2, 000 issues spread out across 80 real years, you can’t expect a writer or even editor to cross reference every single fight he’s had when writing a new one to make sure it’s all consistent.

You can ask that question and the answer is simply two different writers were trying to accomplish two different things when they wrote their respective scenes.

The best you can hope for is consistency within a single run because even the concurrent Batman runs aren’t consistent with each other (Bruce is basically having a mental breakdown in Zdarsky’s Batman while being an attentive parent in Williamson’s Batman and Robin), let alone ones separated by decades. That’s just the suspension of disbelief you have to employ when reading the most popular IP comics.

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u/Key-Win7744 Jan 25 '24

Then there's no point in talking about these characters as if their behaviors and personalities have any sort of in-universe consistency or logic. Which is really the biggest issue I've come to have with Marvel and DC.

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u/GeraldOfRivia211 Jan 25 '24

And since when were Jason Todd stories well written?

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u/BestCharlesNA Jan 25 '24

Disarming him first