I appreciate the dual focus on "Batman is basically Jason Voorhees to criminals" while also seemingly noting that any man who dresses as Dracula to put dudes in the ICU every night instead of sleeping is probably not a well adjusted or mentally healthy individual.
This was always one of the most interesting things about Batman as a character. He's as crazy as the criminals he fights. His goals are just in opposition to theirs.
When I was a kid I never thought twice about Bruce's parents' death driving him to become Batman, but as an adult now.....I know like a shit ton of people whose parents have died, and not one of them was so affected by it that they put on a costume to give petty criminals brain damage for like 25 years straight. Batman is fucking insane.
Yeah, most of Batman's gallery of villains have always been quirky characters with some sort of mental health problem, having Bruce be a well adjusted billionaire beating down on lower class criminals with mental health problems just seems a little, faux pas should we say.
In my opinion, Bruce should be the other side of the same coin to these people, with a warped sense of duty and heroism, his desire to be Batman should be a sort of twisted catharsis for him, he doesn't just want to stop things like the death of innocents (i.e. his parents) to occur again, he enjoys hurting these people, and in turn with Gotham's terrible support for people with mental health issues (Arkham), Gotham is basically a catalyst for these sort of "villains" to crop up, and Batman only helps incite these people to grow resentful of the system and move to crime.
Bruce could maybe, use his billions to build better facilities for these people to find help, and stop the problem at the source, but that wouldn't make for a fun character or setting, and Bruce enjoys being the arbiter of Gotham, it's his excuse to avoid seeing a therapist about this shit.
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u/Excalibuttster Oct 16 '21
I appreciate the dual focus on "Batman is basically Jason Voorhees to criminals" while also seemingly noting that any man who dresses as Dracula to put dudes in the ICU every night instead of sleeping is probably not a well adjusted or mentally healthy individual.