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Well...no. I'm sorry, but your fan-fiction "good" version of the character doesn't take precedence over the actual character for the sake of discussing it with others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Raziere
You're more than welcome to pick and choose what type of stories you like for the character, but the people who own the character and write the actual stories get to decide what's the character is capable of.
Well, your "actual" character is just a fan fiction batman that is just going to be replaced with another fan fic batman with an "official" license. doesn't matter either way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
Comic book continuity is like fashion: a few obsessed people go to the shows, geek out at the whacky outfits that the top models sport this season, proclaim its whats "fashionable" these days while everyone else has no time for this bull and just puts on the clothes they like to wear and get on with their day, because no one actually wears the stupid whacky outfits on show, they just look at it. I don't care, because there is no actual Batman, he is a fictional character and not real. We are not bound by what a few writers up in some studio think is him, thats stupid. I don't do semantic or canonical nonsense thats just bull being thrown around for the sake of it. :smallannoyed:
And I don't care what you think of that, because comic book canon is so mutable and transient, there is no point to it existing. There is so many alternate continuities, the stories are so convoluted these days, that you might as well dissolve canon altogether and just have all of these be standalone stories, completely episodic, and no one would tell the difference. There is no point to whether any of these Batmans are canon or not, because there are so many, I don't know or care to find out which Batman I want to care about at all, or whether that Batman is canon, because every writer creates their own new Batman, and Batmen might as well be vampires or elves for as much variance they have. There is honestly no point is picking out one Batman over the other, they all blend together. :smallannoyed:
and thats not counting all the parodies and expies of Batman. he is no longer a character, he is an archetype just as fluid as any fantasy race or magic. :smallmad:
The problem is that there isn't a single actual character. There's a bunch of distinct characters that pull from what is essentially a named archetype - much like King Arthur, or Sherlock Holmes (although at least in that case there's an obvious primary canon in a way there isn't for the other two).Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
Please do not infer that simply because I enjoy different stories than you that I don't actually read the books I talk about reading. I've got no reason to lie and make up stories about being a fan. I am a fan. And in universe In the actual comics, there are plenty of people accepted as better than batman at things. Fanfic and people overblowing things are the actual problems when it comes to Batman's image.
Bronze Tiger, Rok Krin are both non powered people considered better fighters. Detective Chimp Tim Drake and Ralph Dibney for decades were considered better detectives. In Universe people have talked about how Bruce while wealthy is nowhere near the richest person on the planet like some people seem to think.
And in terms of raw brain power Batman isn't even in the top 5 in DC.
That’s going too far. There is essential attributes that tie all or mostly all the distinct depictions of Batman together. Batman is Bruce Wayne, he lives in Gotham in a manor in proximity to a giant cave, he has a butler and all-around badass named Alfred. There’s quite enough to suggest something of a consistent personality and modus oprendi. The fact that the versions of the character differ in some aspects (some more than others) doesn’t change the fact that people think of one guy when they talk about Batman and most of the time for most of what is said, share a very similar idea of what the character it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
Archetypes are vague outlines such as “the warrior” or “the rogue.” They aren’t anchored to particular people, or stories or copyrights. Batman is a fictional person with a rich identity. Its just that he is a person with so many stories written about him a lot of them are contradictory in some respects.
Sherlock Holmes himself has two birthplaces, and numerous facts about him get mixed up over the course of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles writing. At one point he was dead, and then he retroactively wasn’t (in perhaps the first and greatest retcon in history). Holmes is in many ways similar to Batman in not just being written for a popular audience or solving crime, but in having a long run and changing as a character over time. All that is before multiple authors get ahold of Sherlock Holmes and now, since he is public domain, there are a ton of stories about him without even an single company or editor trying to keep them straight. But most keep to a very particular character that lives at a particular address, has a particular job, with a particular friend, and likes to do particular things.
You can and should talk about these characters as characters if we are going to talk about them. Just note that not everything that can be said about a character is true in every story nor is it quite certain what’s essential to the character and what can be written away.
But there is. It's an inconsistent and often poorly written character, and there are a ton of elseworld stories about it, but it does exist and have a set canon. It's not an archetype with no set canon like Arthur.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
Even if it were, one of the many things the stories all agree on is that Batman gets up to these kind of super exceptional shenanigans anyway.
There are people who are better at things, but not the two things explicitly mentioned (brains, and money). Batman is almost always depicted as the second smartest human in DC behind Luthor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Devonix
http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Doom...&readType=0#22
Maybe you don't think that depiction makes sense with people like Toyman, Roy Palmer, or Mr. Terrific running around. That's fine and I even agree with it. It's still what the character creators are writing though, so no amount of complaining about fanfic or fanboys will change it.
As for money, the only character who even comes close within the setting is Luthor, and Wayne explicitly has more money but less political clout than him.
The DC Universe has either had a hard Reboot or simply "shifted" to be viewing a differant universe at least once a decade.
And Batman gets more over the top with each one while still being treated as a street-level hero in his main titles.
Part of the reason that Stark and Richards get away with so much crap is that Marvel doesn't throw out it's entire canon every 5-15 years, which means that Stark and Richards have much more history to draw on for precedence than Batman does for when they pull crap out their butts.
Hell, if anything, they have the opposite problem: Reed Richards once proved the existence of the After Life and built a device that allowed him to physically travel there for the sake of ressurecting The Thing who had been killed off in an earliar storyline. While in Heaven, the Fantastic Four beat up a couple of Angels and met the Abrahamic God who ressurected Ben for them on the groundsthat there was more Ben needed to do and he was only ever "visiting" Heaven.
After scientifically proving the existence of the afterlife and of the Divine, people are more likely to call bull when he can't science up a solution(Like how he couldn't fix a gunshot wound in OMD.)
And people keep posting this while it isn't even true. They rebooted it one time with the New 52. The reboot flopped, and so they went back to the original canon. Corny 1960s Zebra suit Batman and all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rater202
The Golden Age Comics were explicitly a differant universe than the Silver Age ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
After Crisis on Inifinite Earths, Those two universes and a couple of others were merged together and rebooted to make the "post Crisis" continuity, which isn't really one continuity becuase each "crisis" crossover resulted in major universe wide retcons up until Flashpoint expelled the golden Age Universe and then merged two other Universes DC owned that werne't connected to the DCU with the main DCu, then hard Rebooted both the Main and Golden Age DCUs to make The New 52. And it's my Understanding that DC Rebirth isn't so much undoing Flashpoint as it is killing off 52 Superman and replacing him with the Pre-Retcon Superman and then retconing bits of New 52 to make it more similar to Post Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint comics.
What about that time Batman was Eliot Ness or the time he was British and living in London? And did he have a butler in the run where he was a knight under King King Arthur cursed with immorality? Well, since Cobblepot murdered his parents with an Avada Kedavra maybe we can get him to cast some kind of divination. Maybe then I could figure out if they plan to ever retcon Damiam into a universe like lonely-Bruce in Earth 12 (batman beyond) or his and Salina's daughter Helena in Earth 2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
You can't really compare Batman to Sherlock, despite Sherlock's IP being up for anyone the people using it have stuck to the same general motifs and they have more respect for the source material than DC Comics has ever shown with any of it's licensed media.
It varies, in WW everything was an illusion, in Flash is was a time travel mistake corrected by Dr Manhattan, in GL they didn't even acknowledge the New 52 and just picked up before Flashpoint.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rater202
And Rebirth isn't even the most recent alteration. Back in April of last year they officially patched up pre/post Flashpoint when Superman merged them and this year Dr Manhattan's changes are supposed to have some kind of fall out for one of their arcs. I've given up trying to track it and mostly just read completed series these days. They are a little less confusing.
And this is why I stopped following DC with any regularity. Marvel might screw up a lot, but at least they keep continuity for the most part.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mato
...Did Rebirth keep that "There's a limited amoutn of emotional energy in the universe" bit of drama that got pulled from nowhere in that one GL storyline? Is Cyborg Superman still Supergirl's father modified by Braniac or is he back to being Hank Henshaw possesing a body made from Superman's DNA and a combination of Kryptonian, Manhunter, Qwrdian, Apokolitian, and Oan technology
Yeah, I'll drop in on that. Original Holmes was a doped-up misandristic misanthrope who was eternally bored with the world and wanted a roommate to pay rent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mato
TV (modern) Sherlock is someone with bad social skills who solves problems with the power of being smart and occasionally friendship.
There is very little respect for the source material where Holmes is concerned. And that's fairly constant. The difference between Holmes and say... Ghostbusters is that people reacted heavily to Ghostbusters because it was a well-known movie. And that's on the viewers. If people actually read Dirk Gently and realized how full of wonder that series actually is they'd decry the TV show in a heartbeat as something that's pulled a bunch of things that are popular now, and used them to cover up something fantastic then. (probably more likely to make excuses for the show but the point is still there.)
You are equating Batman with ‘Batman.’ When another person has the title it’s clearly another character. It’s like saying Sherlock Holmes is also the name of someone’s cat. That isn’t Sherlock HolmesQuote:
Originally Posted by Mato
Also, Elseworld stories and What Ifs are explicitly altering the character in ways that don’t stick.
Holmes was described by Arthur Conan Doyle in terms of being an eccentric and a loner. England was a very conformist society at the time. Poor social skills was heavily implied.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chives
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
Assumed. Holmes was a bit of a rover who had organized bands of information trawlers, (the baker street irregulars) a decent relationship with the police department, (to the point where he's okay with them taking credit for his cases) and friends who thought of him memorably and positively after their first meetings. (Watson is recommended to Holmes by a third party) In addition, Doyle was very precise and would have said so directly if his character had poor social skills.
Holmes is as much a victim of being rewritten by the public as Batman.
The recent series that place Holmes in the 21st Century (as well as the movies that don't) are explicit in revisioning the detective. However, they attach to an under appreciated part of Holmes' character that prior adaptions often downplayed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chives
Here is a full length treatment of Holmes' poor social skills. By the way, I cite that article only for the support it brings from the text that his social skills were rather poor, not to make the case that he was intended to have Aspergers or some form of autism.
It's a well-written article, but it's also speculation that draws from the Doyle's personal life rather then the writing. It's also an excellent example of what I'm talking about, the author is unfamiliar with the character and works based off cultural assumptions (and if I'm being snarky, Doyle's Wikipedia page) instead of any familiarity with the character.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
Actually, now that I've gone through it a third time, there's nothing there. The (roughly) first eleven paragraphs are all an introduction that work off assumption, the middle three are character analysis (of Doyle, not Holmes) and the rest is wrapping up. It's utterly baseless.
Here's is a New York Times article that analyzes Holmes based on the character's actual actions and history rather than bringing in Doyle's. Interestingly enough the article is written back in 2009 and suggests he had Aspergers.
Keep in mind that diagnoses of Asperger's syndrome and other forms of autism aren't really a thing back then.
Back then, if you were moderate or low functioning you were insane or mentally defective, and if you were high functioning you were eccentric and/or anti-social.
So it would make perfect sense for Holmes to be read as Aspergic or otherwise as having high functioning autism, as he's meant to be eccentric and/or anti-social, and thus would have been potentially modeled on people who would have, had they been alive today, been diagnossed as high fucntioning autists.
However, that really has no bearing on whether Holmes is or is not someone with Asperger's syndrome in the original stories as Asperger's syndrome wasn't a know phenomena at the time and Doyle certaintly didn't intend for Holmes to have some kind of social or emotional disabillity(unless you count his cocain habit)
We're getting a tad off topic though, I think. Were we discussing Batman?
The point was it isn’t far and away inconsistent with the original character to portray Sherlock Holmes as autistic. I was initially arguing against the position that Batman (and Sherlock Holmes) are so inconsistently portrayed it doesn’t make sense to speak of a singular “character.”Quote:
Originally Posted by Rater202
Batman vs. Black Panther. The question before this came up was whether Batman could be a “street level” hero (whatever that means) and also fight global threats. I think plenty of cosmic-level heroes do “street level” stuff (Superman acts as a supplement to Metropolis’ 911 service) and that Batman’s rogues can’t be characterized as on the level of a run of the mill bank robber and are acting on a scale above.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rater202
I suppose this plays into whether there is one Batman and whether he has the skills to take on Black Panther.
Lost is the important discussion of whether Scrooge McDuck is richer than Black Panther. Yes, yes he is. He has all the gold and loads of magical artifacts in a vault the size of a skyscraper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
Street level means he fights people who cant destroy cities with casual ease. His bad guys tend to be low or no powered individuals. They might be able to develop say, a giant ice gun that can freeze gotham, but its not an intrinsic ability they have. Take his physically strongest foe, Bane. Hopped on on strength enhancing drugs he is basically at the car tossing stage. Superhuman sure, but the dude isnt going to be pulling a juggernaut and toppling the world trade center. Spiderman is another street level hero, though his enemies are stronger than the ones batman generally faces i think. But again, the sinister six arent going around blowing up neighborhoods, or shattering buildings as they get punched through them without getting bruised.
Yes, pretty much all heroes do street level stuff, but their rogues galleries tend to be on a higher level. Superman isnt fighting The Bank Robber! Able to empty teller drawers with a single gesture (from his loaded gun) on a monthly basis. He is fighting beings that can and have decimated large swathes of metropolis as a side effect of their fights. Thats his primary focus. Batman on the other hand, is generally more focused on The Bank Robber level stuff while sometimes being called in to fight darkseid or whoever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Traab
Exactly. Most of the villains that Batman fights aren't really dangerous combat people. The problem is defeating their schemes. The second Batman actually gets to the villain the fight is over.
I note you have to add "with casual ease" to destroying cities. Batman opponents can (and often do) threaten to destroy Gotham but typically need elaborate plans to put that into action.Quote:
Originally Posted by Traab
I question how much power is necessary. So what if Batman's solo-comic rogues don't tend to have Superman-levels of strength, speed or the fantastical sorts of technology. What they do have though is perfectly suitable for the job, and that job is way above street crime. At times some of them have shown they can threaten the nation or the world.
Superman himself has plenty of rogues that threaten things at a local level. Silver Banshee, Morgan Edge, Toy Man, not every one of Superman's villains is always threatening the entire world or meeting Superman blow for blow. Even, Lex Luthor himself has no powers.
I assume "The Bank Robber!" is a hypothetical supervillain or a characterization of perhaps The Joker. I think that's selling Batman's villains short.
I accept that Batman's main villains don't tend to have similar superpowers as Superman villains, but that doesn't mean they are lacking in their own version of super-resourcefulness. Batman doesn't have to take on foes like Darkseid everyday to help out against Darkseid, he just has to take on foes that are powerful enough that he idea that he can take on Darkseid isn't the exaggerated joke you make it out to be.
Batman is making a leap when he takes on Justice League level threats, the question is how much of a leap. Its no where near the absurd levels you are making it out to be.
Didn't they eventually state that the Joker DOES have super powers?
Honestly, my beef with bats ( and cap by extension) is that they are always portrayed as just 'human but at peak capacity. The hits they tank alone makes me believe that I'm being lied to.
You actually expect consistency in the way physics work in comics? You haven’t been reading this forum enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by HolyDraconus
By the way, I looked up the Joker’s superhuman powers and got this screen rant.
https://screenrant.com/joker-superpowers-abilities-dc-comics-batman-villain/
I read those 15 powers and see they are all alternative versions, one-offs, or things that aren’t actually superpowers (i.e. Joker’s poison immunity through poison exposure overtime).
The durability thing is applies to both Batman and Joker. However, its a pretty regular thing to see character’s survive things that should kill anyone, like huge explosions, falls (Holmes survived that one, in the rewritten version fo the story), blows that dent walls or break furniture or things like support beams behind the character and so on. I think you have to chalk those things up to extremely lucky one-offs (happening on a semi-regular basis) or comic-book liberties. The comic book idea of what it means to be operating at peak-human levels is way cooler than actually being at that atheletic peak.
No, but he may well have modeled Holmes off of people who did have Aspergers - just because it hasn't been diagnosed doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Similarly some of the people who die of old age in older texts can be assumed to have probably died of cancer; the writers didn't know about it but the symptoms look familiar today and they may well have known people with the symptoms.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rater202
Yes, I said that in the post you quoted from.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
I feel that this is a very key point that would clarify the whole Mary Sue issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
Could you elaborate a bit? I don't read comics, so my exposure to these characters may be different from yours.
For example, to my knowledge the usual "scale" of characters like bane, riddler, penguin are very low (usually not even threatening the whole town), with some like Joker potentially going higher (whole town, possibly higher?)
(Please add more villains if the ones I picked are not relevant or appropriate)
Meanwhile, what are the usual villains of Iron man or Mr Fantastic? And what's their "scale"?
Your asking me to give the history of quite a number of Batman’s rogues and compare that to several of Iron Man’s and Mr. Fantastic. That’s quite a feat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandariel
Joker doesn’t just threaten the city, he has threatened genocide, and joined up with Lex Luthor to threaten both Gotham and Metropolis.
Bane comes from the country of Pena Duro and has caused wars there. He has cross paths with Ra’s Al Ghul and King Snake and been involved in world spanning plots. To say he doesn’t “even threaten the whole town” is a gross diminishment of his capabilities.
Penguin’s earlier stories include stealing a lethal drug from Ra’s Al Ghul and using it to blackmail the entire city. He also has the capacity to threaten the entire city and wreak large-scale mayhem
Ra’s of course, is another frequent rogue, if not one of the top central rogues (just look at how tangled the Batman family tree is with his). He controls an international society of criminals that control world events. He’s also immortal born centuries ago and has used that centuries to build the league of assassins.
The capabilities of these villains are clear in the comics and the new movies and DC TV shows are consistent with the scale of the mayhem they can unleash. Perhaps the older TV shows you watched downplayed their immense capacity for destruction.
This is not to say every plot is an existential threat to the city or the world. The best and most memorable Batman comics revolve around threats to him personally, his family, and his legacy, but the DC continuity have long established that Batman rogues are capable of world-scale threats.
Iron Man’s rogues don’t always threaten the world. Justin Hammer wants to get a leg up on Tony Stark’s business and is willing to murder to get there, but his goals is essentially to gain a competitive advantage, not bring ruin upon the world. Obadiah Stane is a similar character, often up to industrial sabotage and espionage (and threatening to kill Iron Man) but not usually bent on breaking the world.
Blizzard and many other of Iron Man’s rogues are usually recruits for these sorts of missions. Note however, Blizzard can also be found attacking the Avengers on occasion.
Madame Masque has that international crime background that wouldn’t be out of place for a Batman villain. She gets involved with Stark by committing crimes against his organization.
Iron Man and the Fantastic Four regularly battle world-spanning threats (the F4 face their share of galaxy spanning threats as well, which is a whole new step on the scale of villain reach). However, that doesn’t mean that sometimes the villains aren’t seeking destruction on the small scale, often against the heroes themselves or things important to them.
Iron Man’s villains are going to tend to have an international aspect to them, and the F4 villains may tend to be of alien origin, but that is the stage on which these comics are set, not an indication that these villains are necessarily more powerful than say, one of Spiderman’s villians (who are likely to just threaten Manhattan).
Batman’s villians may not tend to have Superman levels of strength or speed but they are quite capable of threatening the world all the same. They do so quite frequently in the solo comics. That is why they don’t miss a beat when the Batman’s rogues cross over and act as villians in other comics or as Justice League level threats.
All of these things would matter if we were talking about defeating schemes and plots. But the discussion is about who he"fights". And his combat is almost exclusively street level and henchmen. A major element of his villains is that almost none of them pose an actual physical threat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reddish Mage
Or the ones that do often have serious flaws for a brilliant detective with access to lots of money can research and exploit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Devonix