…after seeing Harley in a thousand Christmas posts…
Harley is actually from an interfaith Jewish and Catholic family, so she could very well celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah! But the fact that her Jewish side is so rarely mentioned to the point that no one knows about it is obviously annoying and likely intentional.
It portrays Bruce and his life after his parents’ deaths in a way that makes you go “Ah yes, this would be the type of child to grow up fighting crime while dressed as a bat”
It portrays Gotham and its citizens in a way that makes you go “Of course, this city can only be cleansed by a man fighting crime while dressed as a bat”
It’s often been remarked that Spider-Man’s schtick wouldn’t work nearly so well if he didn’t live in a town with so many tall buildings, but consider: how well would Batman’s “I am the night” routine work if he was operating out of a normal city where people actually live, rather than a perpetually twilit urban hellscape that looks like the Art Deco movement had a one-night stand with Soviet Brutalism in a wrought-iron-and-gargoyle factory?
That is my favorite description of the Batman aesthetic ever.
OMDFG that’s a perfect description.
Imagine Spiderman ballooning in wide open areas. No, sorry, can’t get to that crime, its against the prevailing wind.
Also, Batman brooding on top of a Wafflehouse.
Batman: God, this stupid city with its sufficient lighting and lack of crumbling infrastructure to shoot grappling hooks into
Superman: Everyone for miles has lead poisoning, I’ve spent the entire night stopping crossword puzzle museum robberies and heists at the Second National Bank of Gotham on the corner of second street and second avenue, and earlier the wall of…clouds? smog?…cleared up for a minute and I’m pretty sure the sky was literally blood red
The Riddler hijacks the local TV airwaves and appears onscreen holding a comically long roll of paper. After dramatically clearing his throat, he proceeds to read from it.
“The following is a list of people who can suck it. Number One: The Joker. I don’t think I need to explain that one. Number Two: Cluemaster. Fuck you, you stole my bit, and I will be like a plague unto your house. Number Three: King Tut. You also stole my bit, but did it while killing people and got me arrested for murder. Also, I’m, like, 93% sure you’re a white guy and your costume is racist.
“Number Four: The Scarecrow. I know you ate my leftover Chinese, Jon, even though I wrote my name on it. I was saving that for lunch. I had to eat a goddamn peanut butter and jelly sandwich like a five-year-old. It was all you had in the hideout. For fuck’s sake, go shopping, not all of us can live like a bridge troll.
“Number Five: The Penguin. You- No, no, wait, wait… That one should be crossed out. He replaced that and apologized. Never mind, Oswald, you’re fine. Drinks at 7:00 tomorrow, right?
“Anyway, where was…? Ah, yes. Number Six: The Mad Hatter. You carded me and left me like that for six hours because I, and I quote, ‘would not stop talking about Mythbusters.’ Well, excuse me for trying to make intellectually stimulating conversation on a level you could understand. I suppose every time you prattle on about mome raths and borogoves it’s goddamn Shakespeare? Well… Well, it’s Carroll, but… Oh, you know what I mean!
“Number Seven: Catwoman. You left me hanging by one hand from a ledge five stories up and holding a twenty-pound bag of jewels and very pointy
objets d’art while you ‘distracted’ the Dark Knight. I know you were making out with him, Selina. You were gone for fifteen minutes. My shoulder almost dislocated. Very unprofessional.
“Number Eight: Kite Man.”
Here the Riddler pauses, lifting his narrowed gaze to glare at the camera, voice dropping to an ominous tone.
“You know what you did…”
His demeanor shifts quickly, and he’s back to reading from his list almost cheerfully.
“Number Nine! Th-”
He’s interrupted by a crashing noise in the background and looks over his shoulder just an instant before a deep voice angrily growls, “Riddler!”
“Oh, for the love of-” He turns to glare at the camera, speaking quickly. “Number Nine: Batman! Interrupting me while I’m on television making very important- Hm-mmph!”
He’s reduced to muffled curses as a black gloved hand covers his mouth and pulls him out of frame. The camera tilts, a cracking noise is heard, and the broadcast turns to static.
KITE MAN’S CRIMES WERE NUMEROUS AND TERRIBLE
If I were batman I’d give him like a five minute warning, because this actually sounds theraputic.
Batman: Riddler, you’ve hijacked the TV airwaves and you know that’s wrong but I think this is actually theraputic. So I’m giving you five minutes, and then I’m taking you to Arkham
Robin: Geez get a facebook account for this crap, hell if you wanna vent to millions of strangers just get youtube.
“RIDDLER YOU CAN’T JUST GO ON TV AND SCREAM AT PEOPLE
THAT’S WHAT YOUTUBE IS FOR”
Riddler takes this advice. He gets his own youtube channel called RiddleMe_Th15. It starts out as being purely therapeutic, a platform for publically calling out those who have annoyed him. Then someone leaves him a pathetically easy riddle to solve in the comments, and he spends his next segment ranting about it, and then posing a better one.
This starts a dialogue with a number of other youtube users who both attempt to answer his riddles and pose their own riddles in return.
Riddler has found his people, and his hit count is climbing.
Seriously, Riddler would KILL IT (metaphorically speaking) on YouTube. He just does those weird animated puzzle videos where he poses lengthy, overly complicated puzzles, game theories, and riddles, then gives away…fuck I don’t know…Amazon or iTunes cards to whoever gets them right.
“Riddle me this: How can I ensure there are more videos like this one? The answer, my little quest solvers, is simple: Like and subscribe, and consider donating to my Patreon! Which isn’t much of a Riddle, but seriously I’m down to eating crackers and ramen right now and YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain.”
Bringing this back because “YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain” has to be shared and because I have some followers who have not experienced The Riddler Post.
Seriously, if you ever need a good time, just read all the responses in the notes. This post still ranks as one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Batman sees all of this and donates a substantial amount. He still can’t believe YouTube was the answer all along.
This is especially true with BTAS Riddler.
“Riddle me this… who’s the biggest asshole in games development this side of Ubisoft? It’s Daniel Mockridge who screwed the dev team, myself included, out of our royalties for Riddle of the Minotaur-”
Two days later Jim Sterling is calling Mockridge out, there’s a gofundme for the other people on the dev team, and Nigma’s halfway to funding the spiritual sequel on Kickstarter.
“Okay, more backer questions… Puzzlemaster323 sent says “Riddle Me This, will there be VR support.”, and I say of course there is! Ten years ago I trapped Batman and Robin a VR version of the first game and I threw that rig together in two months. We’ve worked out the motion sickness problems for 90% of users and the game will not kill you for real if you die in the game, but hardcore players can set it to give them a harmless jolt if they’re into that kind of thing.”
The Scarecrow: “I *did* eat his leftover Chinese. It’s messed up that he knows.”
I want a comic about Batman who actually goes through therapy and has to take medication and has panic and anxiety attacks that he has to fight through to do what he wants to do
who is shown using his wealth to positively impact Gotham, who makes connections within Arkham and is actively trying to make that place fucking better and some of the real villains are the assholes who don’t want to fix the system, who are apathetic or complacent or actively benefiting from how things are and will fight both Bruce Wayne politically and Batman domestically to maintain the status quo
I want a Batman universe where Harley and Ivy and Freeze and Dent are all given the care and respect they deserve. Where there’s a clear distinction between people who are using their doctorates to be asshats and people who want to improve the world and have suffered for it. Where Bruce can learn to trust these people and they to trust him–because he’s just as fucked up as they are and will try and help them become a better version of themselves, as they are, if they want that.
Where mental illness isn’t stigmatized, its the fucking people and their choices that determine who’s good and who’s bad. Not evil, not necessarily, but bad, abusive, selfish, sadistic. More interested in spreading pain than spreading change. Because everyone is fucked up and has to work, and everyone is gonna make mistakes and everyone is gonna hurt themselves and others, but at the end of the day, there’s an underlying message of not just ‘you can choose to be better’ but also ‘we will help you, we want to help you, we want to understand’
There’s just so much left to fester in the Bat Universe and the only reason is to maintain the status-quo of ‘Bruce is like this and the villains are like that’. Like there’s no possible way to take these people wHO ALL SHARE A VERY COMMON PROBLEM and give them not happy endings, but a journey within a narrative that treats them and their problems with some fucking goddamn respect
One thing I really adore about Tom King’s Batman (This is from I Am Gotham with David Finch) is that he takes the Moore/Miller “Isn’t Batman craaaaaazyyyyyy” approach and then flips it on its head, showing the repetition and the obsession, the unhealthy coping mechanisms, and then asks the simple question, why are they unhealthy? They kept him alive, kept him together, helped him become a better person, didn’t they? It takes the mentally ill aspect of Batman’s character and separates it, utterly, from the “Sociopathic villain” perception it seemed to go hand in hand with, explaining that, yes, Batman can be mentally ill, and yes, Batman can still then be an inherently, unambiguously good person
SliceOSunshine 