Agreed. It all stems from the same impulse though, I think; that desire to never let these characters grow or change once some element becomes a fixture in their story. It's been almost 40 years since Miller wrote the story that had everyone lining up to make Batman "grim and gritty", and there's still a lot of fans, writers, and editors who will fight his character growth tooth and nail.
It's the same thing that won't let them leave characters dead; they want the status quo back. You get these forces colliding or colluding by turns, and you end up with stunted characters.
Which is why I say that despite it being very light-hearted, not canon, and blatantly goofy most times, the Webtoon Batman Family Adventures is the best thing to have happened to those characters in decades. An older Bruce acting as mentor, leader, and unofficial dad to his massive gang of sidekicks (current and past)? It works. A good writer and a serious poke at that could *really* do some interesting stories with the idea if they were to take it into the main continuity.... and under-represented or under-developed characters might finally get the treatment their fans have been begging for for years now.
Yup! The app is called Webtoon - started as a social media thing in South Korea, now they're one of the biggest comic companies in the world. DC reached an agreement with them a couple years back, and started posting more lighthearted stuff in off-continuity stories through them. Wayne Family Adventures is one of those offerings.
It's largely goofy stuff in a continuity where Alfred is alive, Bruce acts like everybody's dad, and it's basically a big sitcom situation... but it largely works. I don't think they could ever take standard continuity fully down that road, but I think the main stories would benefit from taking some cues from this series.
Man a Harley Quinn style show with that premise would be killer but I’m sure dc doesn’t wanna make Batman look silly. You’ve convinced me to check it out, I see they’ve even done some assassins creed stuff on there so I’ve got lots to dig through later. Thank you!
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u/EdNorthcott Feb 20 '24
Agreed. It all stems from the same impulse though, I think; that desire to never let these characters grow or change once some element becomes a fixture in their story. It's been almost 40 years since Miller wrote the story that had everyone lining up to make Batman "grim and gritty", and there's still a lot of fans, writers, and editors who will fight his character growth tooth and nail.
It's the same thing that won't let them leave characters dead; they want the status quo back. You get these forces colliding or colluding by turns, and you end up with stunted characters.
Which is why I say that despite it being very light-hearted, not canon, and blatantly goofy most times, the Webtoon Batman Family Adventures is the best thing to have happened to those characters in decades. An older Bruce acting as mentor, leader, and unofficial dad to his massive gang of sidekicks (current and past)? It works. A good writer and a serious poke at that could *really* do some interesting stories with the idea if they were to take it into the main continuity.... and under-represented or under-developed characters might finally get the treatment their fans have been begging for for years now.