Hi, Clair. I’d like to come in and talk with you. Would that be all right?
This is the Batman we need to see more often. The one who remembers what it was like to be a scared child, one who knows how to handle situations delicately.
One of the reason why I love batman so much. He is portrayed as a very careful and guarded man. But he is probably the most human out of anyone. It’s why he is the knight that gotham deserves.
Re: that last panel -
Batman, when he’s written correctly, is an extremely compassionate person.
I always feel the need to reblog this because it’s definitely something I feel was lost in the Nolan films.
The thing about Bruce is he believes he is not a good man, but he is.
“I’m stepping a little closer now, okay?”
That sentence means so much
I always see this post without the follow up, which is my favorite part
To quote Red from OSP - “Can you imagine your Batman comforting a scared child? If yes, congratulations, that’s a genuine Batman! If no, you haven’t written Batman, you’ve just written Punisher in a funny hat.”
^^^I agree with all of these aside from the Punisher bit.
The guy hunts down pedophiles after all, he is at least as compassionate of a person as Bruce is.
No he absolutely is not. The Punisher hunts people down out of his own sick need for ultraviolence that he dresses up as a noble calling for himself because he can’t admit he just wants to kill people. Not every take on him is like this, but a lot of the Punisher comics get into this and make it clear Frank’s got issues and that the war against crime is more for him and his blood lust than the people he’s potentially saving.
Bruce, when well written, hunts down criminals to save people. Saving people and making it so other people don’t have to feel what he felt in that alley is his primary motivation, regardless of his methods being brutal or requiring intimidation. And since it’s so deeply rooted in empathy he can drop the bat sturm and intimidation when he needs to to comfort victims just as well as someone who wears their empathy on their sleeve (like Spider-Man or Superman) can.
Regardless of whether or not someone is stopping a criminal, the why is what decides if you’re a hero or just another violent person who happens to hunt other violent people instead of innocent people. If the motivation is not to save people but because it makes you feel good to shoot someone, it’s not noble or compassionate.
I wouldn’t even argue that a antihero that kills bad guys is necessarily evil depending on the context and setting, but they’re not compassionate unless their motivations care most about who those bad guys hurt. Some comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, some of the Green Lanterns, Wolverine, Black Widow, Bucky, Nova, Starlord, (and a lot of the cosmic guys who fight people a jail wouldn’t hold), are willing to kill but care more the people they’re saving. A lot of them are very serious about stopping people from hurting others because they care about who they hurt, so if they put a criminal or villain down permanently they at least have motivations rooted in worry for potential future victims.
There are a few takes on Frank where he’s not as bad as the others, and I’ve seen a few times he was good to a victim, but more takes that play with the fact he’s really not doing it for anyone else but himself. So Frank in a funny hat is a perfect analogy.
