Still has to track down his sources
"Superman told me he saw them with his own x-ray vision eyes."
Kinda like how Peter Parker gets all the best photographs of Spider-Man. Because they are friends.
You lost me at Bruce Wayne saying that the city should spend more on infrastructure.
This is ultra-Libertarian playboy Bruce Wayne who attends lavish rich guy parties in a city that's crumbling all around him. He could do so much to solve Gotham's problems by just paying higher taxes, but instead he spends his money coming up with cool gadgets he can use to beat up people who escaped from underfunded insane asylums.
Several comic lines have explored this issue. It's always come down to the fact that there are people just as rich as Wayne who are corrupt and bankrolling mob families, drug traffic, providing weapons, lobbying government, etc. Essentially it is one billionaire against a dozen billionaires. So, he still has to don the bat suit to do illegally the shit he can't do legally. Often he ends up using intel gathered as the bat for rich-people power plays to oust other corrupt rich people.
I think it's poignant of real life. If you want to stay rich, you don't fuck with the other rich people, because they will disappear you faster than you can blink. Being rich is a club that you are only part of until you start fucking with other people's wealth. If you are an ostracized solitary sod, who doesn't go to any social event and all you political stances are openly hostile against the entire rich class you are a part of, you won't stay rich for long and all the power that comes from that wealth will disappear, if you get to keep your life at all. Without all his money, Batman is just a really buff dude who is very smart and knows martial arts. I've met a few of those. Almost all of them broke as fuck.
Essentially it is one billionaire against a dozen billionaires.
One billionaire with all the high-tech toys in the world. He could easily bug all these billionaires and expose them. It seems to me that if he wanted real lasting change, they'd be his primary targets. Sure, occasionally there's a storyline like that, but it's rare.
If you want to stay rich, you don't fuck with the other rich people
Which is one of the most corrupt points of view you can have. Is staying rich so important to Batman that he'll turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of the other rich people?
It's basically the corrupt effective altruist playbook. Sure, I could help with these issues, but I can most effectively fix the world if I'm ultra rich, so my focus is going to be becoming / staying ultra rich, then I'll do a bit of charity on the side.
is this a specific comic storyline? because i read he spends most of his money on all sorts of programs and infrastructure and help, but gotham is cursed by a demon so it never improves
It's not a specific storyline, it's just the status quo in the Bat Universe.
Maybe he donates to various worthy causes here or there, but it doesn't seem to be a big enough donation to affect his rich playboy lifestyle at all, nor does it affect his budget for gadgets. What he never does is campaign for a major tax increase for billionaires. He's never meeting with the "Bernie Sanders" equivalent in Gotham, trying to push through progressive legislation.
The thing is, his character has the perfect excuse. He's really Batman, and Bruce Wayne is just a cover identity. But, to keep up appearances, he has to put on his tux and go to ultra-rich person parties as Bruce Wayne. It would seem suspicious and draw unwanted attention if his cover identity Bruce Wayne started lobbying for higher taxes on the rich, so he gets to use that as an excuse for why that filthy playboy Bruce Wayne never does those things. It's so that Batman can keep going out there and "fighting crime". AFAIK he's never outright said that that's his excuse for not lobbying for progressive causes. But, he has definitely said that he goes to ultra-rich person functions as Bruce Wayne and plays the idle rich guy because he needs to keep his cover story intact. It's mighty convenient, if you ask me.
Bro, I fucking hate Batman and think he's the worst comic book character of all time but when it comes to his philanthropy, you're just wrong.
Bruce Wayne spends an absurd amount of money keeping Gotham running. He's the one who actively funds all of the programs that are for orphanages, he hires thugs to keep them out of crime and he has a metric fuckload of low income programs.
Bruce Wayne CONSTANTLY lobbies for progressive causes. Straight up. He's aggressively leftist. The Wayne Foundation funds all manners of charities, medical research, and all kinds of stuff to fix the buildings he admittedly destroys. He will pay for college tuition for his employees and he will set up entire youth centers. The man perpetually puts all of his money back into Gotham.
If you want an example of this, issue #32 of Gotham Knights does a lot to focus on that. The entirety of that issue, and a lot of that series, is just Bruce Wayne living his normal life and the whole life is just philanthropy. He ends up supporting environmental policies, takes old people out to lunch, tells a mailroom employee to go to college and pays for his tuition. He goes off to a dedication ceremony for a statue and then goes golfing with a rich fuck and convinces her to build a recreation center instead of a Starbucks. Even shows an ex-con applying to a new job, and Wayne sending a ton of new bulletproof vests to Bludhaven PD.
Gotham itself literally would not exist without Wayne as it currently stands. It is a cesspit? Yes. But it would be worse without Wayne by a significant margin. Why? Because, and I feel like this isn't mentioned nearly often enough, Gotham is cursed to be this way. Like straight up literally cursed. You've got a bat-demon who's locked in the center of Gotham, that the city was built around an asylum that was created by a serial killer, and that Arkham Asylum has a literal portal to hell inside of it.
Bruce Wayne is another side of Batman. As in Bruce's own words: "As Bruce Wayne, I can utilize every division at Wayne Enterprises and the money we possess to improve the social and urban infrastructures in Gotham. And as The Batman, I can help the Gotham City police take on the criminals who prey on our city."
Saying that Bruce isn't a leftist and doesn't push for social change could not be further from the truth. He's a playboy, 100%, but he's a playboy philanthropist through and through. And I say all of this as someone who up until a few months ago thought the same thing. Still hate him for all those other reasons but that one had to be dropped when I realized it wasn't true. Dude is a genuine force for good in the world when it comes to his money. He got all of it from inheritance and the only things he does with it publicly is invest in Gotham and the world as a whole and be a rampant slut. Privately... yeah he's using a whole lot of toys.
Bruce Wayne spends an absurd amount of money keeping Gotham running.
Is there any hint that the amount he spends is having any meaningful impact on his wealth?
If he's a billionaire and his wealth goes up by $100m/year but he only spends $50m on charity, his charity is nowhere near enough.
The man perpetually puts all of his money back into Gotham.
If that were true he wouldn't be rich.
a lot of that series, is just Bruce Wayne living his normal life and the whole life is just philanthropy
You say that as if it's a good thing. Unless that philanthropy is actively making him poor, it's just something he does to make himself feel good.
He ends up supporting environmental policies ... Bludhaven PD.
And then he goes back to his mansion where his butler helps him get ready for bed.
His money is the source of the problem, and he never seems to get any poorer. Is he cursed to be rich? Or is he telling the "effective altruist" lie that he can only continue to good things if he's insanely rich?
First off, having that much money in and of itself is going to generate fuckloads of money. He is also the CEO of one of the largest companies on Earth in his world. There are no numbers on the amount of income he has or the amount that he donates, just stupidly high numbers constantly thrown on either side. Like in the billions or trillions.
If that were true he wouldn’t be rich.
You know exactly what I meant and that is just being absurdly pedantic.
You say that as if it’s a good thing. Unless that philanthropy is actively making him poor, it’s just something he does to make himself feel good.
I am utterly incapable of seeing how someone helping others to make themselves better is actually a bad thing overall.
And then he goes back to his mansion where his butler helps him get ready for bed.
And?
His money is the source of the problem, and he never seems to get any poorer.
His money? HIS money? No. Money. You seem to be conflating the two and getting weirdly angry over the wrong dude.
Is he cursed to be rich?
No but he is cursed to be intelligent and realize that he can do more good with his absurd riches than he can without it. His character builds Orphanages and community centers because he is rich. If he was broke he'd help in that way. But he's not. Because he's rich. He's just taking advantage of a world that's fucked and using the fucked things for good. He was born rich and knows how to be rich. He also wants to use that rich for good. By being rich, he just becomes more rich because that is how the world works. Unless you give away literally every dollar, you're going to make money just by being rich. It's stupid but that's how it works.
The problem isn't Bruce Wayne, the problem is the system. The dude cannot fix the system by snapping his fingers because he is dude. There are other rich people in this world who want to keep things the status quo. Batman has openly said on multiple occasions that he doesn't want to be rich and have this type of inequality but what's the other option? Seriously. I want you to actually name me a legitimate option of what he could do and then I will demonstrate when that happened in the comics or when it was pointed out in the comics that it cannot happened.
First off, having that much money in and of itself is going to generate fuckloads of money.
How? Money doesn't magically just appear. That money comes from somewhere. Every dollar Wayne receives is profit, profit that could go instead to lowering costs for Wayne Enterprises customers. Given that Wayne Enterprises is a huge conglomerate that seems to have its fingers in everything, he's probably literally taking money from the pockets of Gotham residents and putting it into his own bank account.
I am utterly incapable of seeing how someone helping others to make themselves better is actually a bad thing overall.
Because he's doing small individual things for individual people when he's simultaneously making the world a worse place by vacuuming up absurd amounts of profit from all the Wayne Enterprises customers.
It's like a chemical company that's poisoning a river, sickening millions, while simultaneously offering a scholarship to one kid, and getting all the good press that scholarship can offer.
His character builds Orphanages and community centers because he is rich.
Yes, individual orphanages, costing what, a few million to build? Meanwhile, Wayne Enterprises is generating massive profits that bring in billions of dollars. His vast enterprise is probably creating the orphans in the first place.
He's just taking advantage of a world that's fucked and using the fucked things for good.
He's certainly taking advantage of the world, and yeah, he does some individual small-scale good, but it doesn't outweigh the large scale evil that Wayne Enterprises does.
By being rich, he just becomes more rich because that is how the world works.
It doesn't just work like that. Getting richer is a decision. Instead of taking massive profits from his worldwide enterprises, he could reduce prices and run his companies at break even. But, he prefers to get insanely rich off the backs of all the Wayne Enterprises customers.
Unless you give away literally every dollar, you're going to make money just by being rich. It's stupid but that's how it works.
No it isn't, getting rich is a decision. Especially true when you're the poweful head of a company where it would be the simplest possible thing to just lower prices.
The problem isn't Bruce Wayne, the problem is the system.
And Wayne loves the system because it allows him to get fabulously wealthy while pretending that he's doing good.
Batman has openly said on multiple occasions that he doesn't want to be rich
Gee, if only there were a way to not be rich. I guess a genius like Bruce Wayne can't figure out how to not be rich, so it's not possible, so he's cursed to just be fabulously rich.
Seriously. I want you to actually name me a legitimate option of what he could do
Basically, the only reason he's rich is that he chooses to have Wayne Enterprises make a profit. There are a lot of ways that he could either choose to not have Wayne Enterprises make a profit, or could choose to give away all his Wayne Enterprises stock.
You know, I've spent a good chunk of my morning dumpster diving for food. I don't have the energy for any of this but I still did it anyway because why not have a discussion. I'm not some rich simp, I absolutely hate them considering I have to dig through the trash to find something to eat today. Hopefully. But seeing you just straight up ignore giant chunks of my comment because you either cannot explain it away or just because it challenges your narrative makes me walking away from this comment and going to take a nap a whole lot easier.
Have a good day.
Yep, bail out of a discussion when your points are being wrecked and blame it on the other person. Stay classy.
Yep. Points being wrecked. Uh huh.
Alright. I'm out. Have fun, Republican.
Hahaha, ok. You're the guy defending the billionare, but I'm the Republican. Good one.
It's impossible for me to see him as anything other than the sole villain in the series
metro man is objectively a better person than superman
Were there any superman comics that were just about the Clark Kent personality and him using super hearing or this example to find a story and then having to find the right leads and ask the right questions to find the story that he already knows is true? Cause I would read the hell out of that.
I've never heard of that. But, I've heard that writers say it's really hard to write good Superman stories because of his super hearing. This guy is portrayed as someone who is always fighting for what he believes in. With his super hearing, he is never unaware of the crimes going on around him. He hears every case of domestic violence, every mugging, every rape, every suicide attempt in a huge city of millions of people. But, sometimes he wants to be Clark Kent, so he has to just ignore all those horrors going on around him.
Kurt Busiek's Astro City's Samaritan is a good take on that.
He's basically Superman (except from the future, not another planet), down to working for a newspaper.
I don't recall if he's got superhearing, but he's got a pocket supercomputer that tells him where he's needed in the optimum order to maximise how much he can help.
He counts every fraction of a second he spends flying from place to place, because that's the only part of the job he really enjoys, the only time he can relax. Forty-five seconds is a great day.
And when he finally gets home, exhausted, to sleep for a few hours before starting the next day, he dreams of flying.
Does his supercomputer compute how much sleep and downtime he needs?
I don't recall, but probably.
I think he got a day off once to go on a date, with the whole equivalent of the Justice League covering for him, if I'm not misremembering.
I have to reread Astro City one of these days. It was a nice series. A homage to classic superhero books.
Sounds interesting. I like it when they find a quirk like that and explore what it would mean.
I feel like that's more a limitation of writers imagination than an actual block to stories. The whole reason why Superman is my favorite hero is because while every other hero focuses on having an actual physical weakness or limitation, Supermans often focuses on his mental limitations of being the goodest boy to ever scout. Lazy Superman writers fall back on Kryptonite being the key weakness and have it all revolve around that. Good writers focus on his emotional state and Kryptonite would be used as a representation of that emotional state.
For example, I can see why Superman wouldn't involve himself in everything that he hears. His whole thing is to inspire hope and goodness but by showing up to every single crime all the time, he'd just instill fear in everyone. He also can't rock up to every Dictator or everything on the planet because then you've just got a God who is showing up to tell you how to run your country and there are already people who are terrified of that idea becoming a reality. He's also aggressively American and the imagery of an American rolling around the world telling you how to do your shit also won't fly. Not then and ESPECIALLY not today.
For Superman to continue inspiring people, and not scaring them into submission, he just... can't react to all of those things around him. Not without inherently changing the entire status quo of the whole planet.
And that's just one idea as to how you could explain that off to write a good Superman story...
Genuinely and fully believe that the reason most people don't like Superman is because most writers of Superman don't understand the source material. Also genuinely believe that Zach Snyder got it better than anyone wants to give him credit for because he actually demonstrated those sides of Superman and had him deal with it. That's the origin story I wanted. Not something sanitized to high heaven and dripping with nothing but optimism. Reality doesn't work like that. Clark isn't blind to reality. He had to learn his lessons in hard ways and has limits he has to deal with that no one else can relate to. Also not like he can easily go through therapy. Cavills Superman was both a genuinely good person but also struggling to find out how to be one with the person he was and the person the planet expected him to be. People can not like it all they want, that's fine, but he created a more realistic version of Superman as a man instead of just a Superhero.
James Gunn is going to churn out YET ANOTHER FUCKING ORIGIN STORY FOR SUPERMAN AND THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, slap bright colors on everything, have him flying around with a fucking Dog and just spam Donner references repeatedly while not even demonstrating a single hint of a struggle and everyone is going to shit themselves over it because it will be pure nostalgia with nothing new and no hint of Superman beyond a lunchbox image of him. I have no fucking faith for Gunn whatsoever. Don't get me started on the suit looking like it came from a fucking Spirit Halloween. Also Krypto can fuck off.
God dammit I am so fucking sick of James Gunn. And this isn't me being like "Oh Snyder got it better therefore fuck Gunn." It's because I genuinely have no faith for anything that Gunn ever touches. He ends up backflipping away from the source material with his head up his own ass. Asshole called the 2023 Flash movie the "Greatest Superhero Movie of All Time". Dude oversaw both that movie and Aquaman 2, coming in to fix both of them but given they're both dogshit I don't know how much he fixed. Don't get me started on calling the second Suicide Squad movie the same fucking name.
His movies don't amount to anything in the run of story. The only thing he does is find a ridiculous character and make the audience emotionally invested. Every goddamn movie. Groot in Guardians and it's going to be Krypton in this upcoming bullshit. They don't have ANY STORY. They're just surface level garbage that builds tension only to slap a joke in to remove it because the made is terrified of any suspense. His movies just end up being the same schlock over and over and over again, being wildly self indulgent on pop-culture or meta-references without any hint of a vision or linking thread.
Worst Director currently working because he keeps getting jobs he isn't qualified for.
I've heard James Gunn referred as the “Loser's director”. Because he turns all the characters he touches into pathetic losers and ridiculous versions of themselves. Then he comes out and shows superman in the fucking Yamcha pose. This movie is gonna suck so bad. Like he is riddled in bed unconscious for over half of the trailer. His own fucking dog kicks him and abuses him. He is even humiliated by Lois with the most basic journalist questions that he should know because he is fucking Clark Kent and a damn good journalist himself. The poster gif of the movie is Superman being hit in the back of the head with a water bottle, and flinching (which they fixed with CGI for the trailer because the criticism went viral). The big monster at the end is literally a giant dick shaped jellyfish.
James Gunn is such a bad director.
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