Growing up my favorite hero boy was Batman, but its getting really hard to appreciate a character whos main premise is “I’m a billionaire that beats up poor people in a capitalist hellscape because I don’t have a healthy way to deal with my personal trauma”.
Is there any saving him or is there a version of batman that can exist inside of a left narrative? Maybe there’s an existing comic that has tackled this problem, but I’m not really deep into the…ahem…literature.
Is there any saving him or is there a version of batman that can exist inside of a left narrative?
I’d point to Spiderman as Batman-done-Right. On his face, he’s a working class guy from a low-rent corner of town whose primary antagonists range from billionaire war profiteers (Wilson Fisk and Norman Osborne) to callous violent mercenaries (Hobgoblin, Scorpion, Rhino, Mysterio, Venom) to corporate scientists caught up in their pursuit of fame/fortune and corrupted by their own inventions (Octopus, Lizard, Spencer Smythe).
Its not a perfect picture, because Spiderman is still very much a creature caught within American Capitalist ideology. But a lot of what he struggles with - poverty, work/life balance, stress, sick family members, the allure of selling out - fits neatly into leftist narratives and themes. Meanwhile, a lot of what he opposes - corporate greed, institutional corruption, the perils of fame and a hostile media - reflect struggles that leftist leaders have historically wrestled with.
Best of all, Spiderman often turns to the community at-large to get out of tight spots, rather than just throwing money at the problem or pulling a crazy new invention out of his ass. The Andrew Garfield “Amazing Spiderman” has a great bit at the end in which he relies on a line of construction towers to race to a destination. The Sam Rami produced Spiderman movies both heavily play up the Working Man Hero angle, with Spiderman alternately saving and being saved by NYC residents.
There was a great script made by Daren Aronofsky and Frank Miller. based on Batman: year one :
After Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot, Bruce loses his fortune and becomes homeless. Alfred’s character changed to a African-American man named "Little"Al who runs a Auto-Repair shop and acts as Bruce’s mentor. Bruce doesn’t travel the world, he instead reads books on various types of combat and practices them. Unlike the comic it would have focused more on Bruce. Bruce uses mostly chemical based weapons when fighting (like the original Bill Finger Batman). Bruce Wayne gets his persona from an intertwined T and W on a ring he wore while fighting crime that was mistaken for a bat. Many key scenes from the comic are omitted from the script. The Batmobile and Batcave are present. The Batmobile was a modified car in “Little-Al”'s garage. The Batcave is located in a abandoned subway station. Gordon has lived in Gotham for years, and is trying to leave for the sake of his pregnant wife. Gordon’s wife is renamed Ann. Carmine Falcone is omitted from the script and Gillain B.Loeb would have replaced him as the Master of the Organized crime. Selina Kyle would have been African-American and would have had a more prominent role. Gordon’s character would have been suicidal. The Batmobile would have been a Lincoln Continental. There would have been many new characters that were not in the comic.
I mean Court of Owls is basically Batman naively teeing up against the demonic bourgeois of Gotham and them absolutely wrecking his ass
The earliest history of the Court of Owls dates back to Gotham’s earliest days in the 1600s and it has been involved in many criminal acts in Gotham over the years. The Court of Owls took notice when billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne announces plans to rebuild and reshape Gotham City for the future. The Court sentences Bruce to death and their assassin, the Talon William Cobb, attempts to murder him during a meeting with Lincoln March. They struggle at the top of Wayne Tower and the killer survives a fall from the top. Batman discovers that their society has various secret headquarters throughout hidden rooms in every building established by the Alan Wayne Trust, created by Bruce’s great-grandfather, Alan Wayne. Bruce recounts that, as a child, he believed the Court of Owls responsible for the death of his parents and personally investigated the conspiracy before determining that there was no evidence. Batman is caught and tortured by the Court, but escapes
beats up poor people
He beats up rich powerful people like The Penguin and Falcone.
I googled “communist batman” but it was complete brainrot: https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Batman_(Earth-30)
“The Superman-led Soviet Union has grown without resorting to war, and has virtually eliminated poverty, disease and the like”
:party-sicko:
“but this has started to infringe on individual liberties, and Superman is fast becoming a Big Brother-like figure. A brain surgery technique that turns dissidents into obedient drones, or “Superman Robots,” is in use.”
:chumpsky: Randomly inserting anti communism because otherwise your stuff won’t get printed is the worst. Also mentioning :1984: on the wiki is cringe libshit.
Batman eventually became a grown man and the head of an anarchistic terrorist network that sees the abundance forced upon the people by Superman’s system as little more than oppression
The people want the freedom to starve! Think of all the poor bourgeois pigs, unable to extract surplus value from the workers.
And then he joins forces with Lexcorp rofl
Yeah the Red Son comics are such a great premise, but absolutely ruined by American anticommunist brain worms.
I honestly don’t know how you would write “Red Son” without anticommunist brainworms, since Superman is a litteral Great Man who can reshape society at a whim, and the people have no serious way to stop him. If you wanted to write a superman story about him being a weapon for the USSR and used for the liberation of Mankind, that would be fun for like a minute, but wouldn’t really allow for any conflict, since, again, Superman is for all intents and purposes a God.
Modern Superman is pretty explicit that Supes doesn’t really have loyalty to the US Government, he just believes in “the American Way”, ie liberal freedoms. There’s one story in particular where Superman rescues a North Korean submarine from sinking, and Americans get pissed off at him, so he has to try and explain that he values all human lives and doesn’t put stock in who the government’s current enemies are. If I did a Superman in the USSR story, it would be like that - Superman is raised as a socialist and believes in the international project, but while he would defend the USSR from capitalist aggression he wouldn’t let himself be used as a “weapon” by it.
Under no circumstance can Bruce Wayne be a capitalist critic when he himself exploits the labor of those who work for Wayne Enterprise.
He can be written up as a Class Traitor. There are a few instances in the Animated Series where that angle is emphasized. Even a couple of the movies flirt with the inherently corrupt nature of Wayne Enterprises.
But yeah, the more common trope is simply that Bruce Wayne has Unlimited Money as a superpower. We’re not forced to ask where it comes from.
Anarchist Batman from Red Son was pretty based iirc
edit: nvm he wasn’t. what a waste of a good idea.
nothing about Red Son was good and its conception of socialism is “what if everyone were lobotomized with lasers”
