Now, all previous posting aside. Bruce Wayne arguing to a jury of his peers that a villain being ready to fight Batman in costume upon Batman's arrival isn't actually particularly good evidence that he did the specific thing that Batman was after him for? On the grounds that it's entirely rational for even a totally reformed villain who's gotten advance warning of Batman Being After Him For Something Really Bad to get ready for a really horrible fight? Because there's very little reason to assume that Batman in Righteous Crusader Mode is going to open with a friendly chat? All serving as a dialogue that Batman is having with himself about the moral veracity of his SOP if you take away the genre assumptions of his innate righteousness? Is a really really good beat
This whole arc is a little bit like the setup to Superior Spider-Man where, if you take the abrupt intrusion of real-world moral logic into the comic book power fantasy super seriously, it does a lot of damage going forwards and backwards to all of the stories that it's commenting on, where the realistic consequences didn't manifest despite it still being the same continuity. That said. Batman bribing his way onto the jury in order to talk-no-jitsu everyone else out of their culturally-inculcated worship of the idea of Batman is possibly the most Batman way possible for him to address this core tension at the heart of the genre. Can Batman, with Prep time, Beat the Cultural Specter of Batman. Can God Create A Rock So Heavy Even He Could Not Lift IT
