DC Comics Multimedia General - A crisis of infinite fuck ups

[Overly Serious]

Personally, I don't really mind either way it just kind of depends on what type of story it's in. I like both the total freak, weird but not quite sexless, just stunted Batman sort of like the Pattinson movie, and I also like James Bond Batman who goes through women as Bruce Wayne and Batman alike semi-regularly and he might have a true love in Selina or Talia or something but he doesn't really want a commitment because he's busy being Batman so he probably ducks out after sex to go back to work beating up henchmen with his son all night. Maybe someday he'll settle down with Catwoman but only because he knows she'll know she comes second to him being Batman and wouldn't bother him about it.

Or someone else...

 

[el bandito loco]

Or someone else...
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I know you're joking, but this is probably the only pairing that I'm not okay with. I really couldn't care either way on Batman screwing any of his rogues gallery, or zatanna, or even wonder woman, but I draw the line at his niece/son's first love. Either way you look at it there's no way to not make Bruce look horrible.

what kind of sick fuck watches their only friend's daughter grow up, basically being their uncle and then tries to fuck her? or what kind of sick fuck waits for his son to go to college then fucks who he presumably lost his virginity to? Batman is a real degenerate at best, serious groomer at worst.

If she's like 45 and he's like 65 or something, okay sure they're old enough that something forming between them while still gross, bothers me less, but I still don't like it.

 

[Overly Serious]

I know you're joking,

Who me?

Spoiler

But yes. I 100% knew that would wind you up. I am a baaaaad troll. Bad troll, Overly, no biscuit!

but this is probably the only pairing that I'm not okay with. I really couldn't care either way on Batman screwing any of his rogues gallery, or zatanna, or even wonder woman, but I draw the line at his niece/son's first love. Either way you look at it there's no way to not make Bruce look horrible.

I guess as this is the Killing Joke, he and Gordon are good friends in this so yes, she kind of is like a niece to him. She's older in this adaptation than some and I don't recall Nightwing / Dick being mentioned but anyway, what is interesting about this is an odd subtext I got from the film that I'm not sure most picked up on. It was widely criticised for the addition of the weird prologue plotline with the Paris guy and Batgirl. Leaving the pros and cons of its presence aside, what is interesting about it is that it's showing a nascent toxic relationship between Batgirl and the Paris guy that Batman seems to regard as a parallel to his own overly-tangled relationship with the Joker.

And he never shows sexual interest in Barbara before that moment and doesn't much seem to after. The subtext I speak of is that you can quite easily read it as Batman sleeping with her not out of any particular attraction but as recognising she is projecting some kind of sexual need (it's commented by her friend how she's not dating) and doing it to derail that being projected onto the villain. I read his sleeping with her as based on manipulation / calculation more than desire. This is the man of utmost discipline after all. He's the last person in DC that's going to give into temptation.

And going further there's more subtext. Joker shoots Barbara in the spine. He paralyses the lower half of her body. He does that in both the book and the movie but I think only the movie has the scene of the doctor's testing her feet with a needle and confirming that not merely is she paralysed but that she has no sensation in her lower body. With there having been a sexual relationship between Batman and Barbara, the Joker's actions take on a whole new layer. He hasn't merely disabled her, he's made her asexual. He's eliminated a romantic interest from Batman's life. I'm not suggesting a sexual layer between Joker and Batman (gross), but I am saying that in the movie he symbolically removes any third parties from the relationship between himself and Batman. He makes sure they are each other's only focus.

Notwithstanding any ickiness about Batcest, the movie adds a couple of interesting themes because of this.

If she's like 45 and he's like 65 or something, okay sure they're old enough that something forming between them while still gross, bothers me less, but I still don't like it.

I believe in Batman Beyond this is the reason he and Dick fell out.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

I know you're joking, but this is probably the only pairing that I'm not okay with. I really couldn't care either way on Batman screwing any of his rogues gallery, or zatanna, or even wonder woman, but I draw the line at his niece/son's first love. Either way you look at it there's no way to not make Bruce look horrible.

what kind of sick fuck watches their only friend's daughter grow up, basically being their uncle and then tries to fuck her? or what kind of sick fuck waits for his son to go to college then fucks who he presumably lost his virginity to? Batman is a real degenerate at best, serious groomer at worst.

If she's like 45 and he's like 65 or something, okay sure they're old enough that something forming between them while still gross, bothers me less, but I still don't like it.

Bruce Timm grew up with Batgirl being closer in age to Batman before they aged her down to be around Dick's age (supposedly to get him away from Starfire and the Teen Titans depending on what theory you subscribe to) so it probably wasn't that icky to him when you consider the relationship from that perspective. Gordon also isn't really Bruce's "friend", he's already generally a senior citizen with a teenage daughter (or niece depending on the continuity) by the time Bruce starts Batmanning in his 20s.

It's still distasteful the way Timm does it but there does exist a precedent for this.

 

[Overly Serious]

Bruce Timm grew up with Batgirl being closer in age to Batman before they aged her down to be around Dick's age (supposedly to get him away from Starfire and the Teen Titans depending on what theory you subscribe to) so it probably wasn't that icky to him when you consider the relationship from that perspective. Gordon also isn't really Bruce's "friend", he's already generally a senior citizen with a teenage daughter (or niece depending on the continuity) by the time Bruce starts Batmanning in his 20s.

It's still distasteful the way Timm does it but there does exist a precedent for this.

She also only appeared in the Sixties making this one of the original Batgirls:


And the Killing Joke comic she looks pretty mature:



I'm not arguing for the affair. But I recognise there's a difference between those above and this:


So it does depend on the iteration. And her antecedent Batwoman was allegedly first introduced specifically to create a romantic interest for Batman as well.

I did however originally post it to (affectionately) troll our crazy bandit, so perhaps I shouldn't argue the case overmuch.

 

[Giga_Nigga_28]

(supposedly to get him away from Starfire and the Teen Titans depending on what theory you subscribe to)

Less of a theory and more like a hard truth. Obviously they're writers who like the pairing - Loeb - but it was clearly a way to further separate Nightwing from the Titans sphere of influence.

 

[Humble Architect]

Less of a theory and more like a hard truth. Obviously they're writers who like the pairing - Loeb - but it was clearly a way to further separate Nightwing from the Titans sphere of influence.

Which is crazy to me, that’s like separating Batman from his cop friends or Superman from the Kents.

Such a misread of what the Titans are, it’s just Robin (Dick) getting his formal acknowledgement as the true third member of the Trinity, we’ve mentioned it here but that’s what he is, the boy raised by Batman and mentored by both members of the World’s Finest. Even getting his own identity and name from Superman. It’s that legacy shit that DC used to have down to an art.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I've never cared that much about the Batgirl/Batman pairing, mostly because I've never seen Batgirl as apart of the Batfamily in the same way the Robins are. Always saw her in more like 'Dad's friend from work who probably used to baby sit you' sorta position.

I always find the 'Batman is practically Jim's brother' stuff hilarious because, in most iterations, Gordon's old enough that he was in his twenties-thirties when the Wayne's were shot. Dude is more like an uncle figure sometimes.

 

[Basic Blond Boy]

VTuber Hakos Baelz snuck her way into the new Superman AD

 

[PrettySneakyCis]

On Batman and a lack of romance:

I've always explained it in my head as a combination of 3 things:
1) He's concerned about getting his identity exposed (I know a million people already know it - it's just one of those things you have to accept about comic books that have run for a 100 years), so he tries to avoid interpersonal relationships with "normies."
2) A lot of emotional development stopped when his parents were killed, so he legitimately has trouble connecting to people on an adult level. From a cynical consumerist standpoint, that makes him more accessible to the youth audience who don't want to read about Batman kissing girls.
3) He's been Batman for a while now, and it's "fun" for authors and readers to imagine he bears the scars of his adventures. It makes it feel more real, like the stories we read aren't completely wiped away at the end of the book. It's pretty frickin' hard to gaslight anyone other than a rock-stupid laxative addict supermodel that the Poison Ivy chemical burns on your back and the Scarecrow meathook lacerations on your gut are from being into extreme sports.

 

[Halbschwanz]

Jason Todd and Shadow the Hedgehog are respected for literally the same things, they died once and suddenly they're allowed to dual-wield Glocks and talk about how “trust is a weakness.”

Slight off topic, but generally the most agreed on best depictions of Shadow are the ones where he gets over himself and actually learns to work with others and have a character arc. There's a reason the Sonic fandom complained about how much he sucked from about 2009-2023. Other than that your bit about Jason Todd was correct.

 

[el bandito loco]

Bruce Timm grew up with Batgirl being closer in age to Batman before they aged her down to be around Dick's age (supposedly to get him away from Starfire and the Teen Titans depending on what theory you subscribe to) so it probably wasn't that icky to him when you consider the relationship from that perspective. Gordon also isn't really Bruce's "friend", he's already generally a senior citizen with a teenage daughter (or niece depending on the continuity) by the time Bruce starts Batmanning in his 20s.

It's still distasteful the way Timm does it but there does exist a precedent for this.

I will say with their paring in particular most of my problem comes down to the fact we have had the status quo we have had with them since the 80s pretty much ever since, and it ends up weird to put those two together.

if we're not doing the basic familiar modern batman status quo, I wouldn't really care. in that movie they tried to do something interesting with her, but it imo ended up making her feel like even more of just a sex object to me, because it's like Batman fucks her, then look now Joker made it so she can't (enjoyably? I guess) fuck anyone. I get what they were going for with it, it just didn't play.

that movie I already thinks sucks even when we get to the killing joke portion, because it doesn't really look like the killing joke. which, shit, buy a copy of it off the shelf, the book doesn't even look like the killing joke anymore with the modern recolor but Bolland did that himself and says he prefers it so whatcha gonna do?

As for the Gordon/Bruce brother thing, their typical ages is sort of irrelevant to me because they're both lonely men with basically each other as their only friends and have more of that type of dynamic then Bruce looking up to Gordon as some sort of father/uncle figure. I'm not a lonely man with one friend who isn't my adopted dad or in Gordon's case one friend who isn't my fat slob coworker, but just because a friend of mine is like 50 and I'm 30 doesn't make them less of a brother in my eyes and more of something else.

but most of that is just hyperbole anyways and just in my personal mental version of the Batman world they're more like brothers, whether they're 10 years apart or 35.

but the thing about Batman and his world is I can pretty much take whatever with it. It's more malleable than a lot of franchises to me where you can shift tones styles and dynamics pretty much however the fuck you want and as long as he dresses up like a bat and punches people somewhere in there I'll accept it. You can give me Dick Sprang or Frank Miller and I don't give a shit it just has to be entertaining.

 

[Mayor Cody Travers]

An all-but-random aside I take on talk on Babs's age: now that I think about it, in their original, organically-created (and not rebooted) pre-Crisis forms, Supergirl and Batgirl DID occupy vaguely odd positions in-between DC superhero "generations" - not an adult like the Justice League/founding generation, but older than Dick Grayson's Teen Titan/first sidekick generation.

I am generally fine with the sort-of "gradual retcon" of them being shoved into the Titan generation, if a bit older, and obviously focusing on working with only their mentor hero, since it matches nicely with Batgirl unintentionally graduating into the Oracle identity and my own dream timeline where Supergirl can graduate into becoming Power Girl (as Karen did in the New52 Earth-2). This "gradual retcon" in terms of aging is, I'd say, equivalent to how Rogue over in X-Men gradually became younger-hotter-sexier looking as time went on from her initial introduction in the 80s.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

if we're not doing the basic familiar modern batman status quo, I wouldn't really care. in that movie they tried to do something interesting with her, but it imo ended up making her feel like even more of just a sex object to me, because it's like Batman fucks her, then look now Joker made it so she can't (enjoyably? I guess) fuck anyone. I get what they were going for with it, it just didn't play.

The problem with the whole addition to the movie was pointless and just amounted to dedicating time to Barbara because people think she needs more focus in the story. It's a fundamental problem with every proposed re-write of Killing Joke; no, Batgirl doesn't need a bigger role in the story, and any idea of having her be there to fight the Joker as well in the climax or some shit is retarded. The Killing Joke isn't about Barbra or Gordon, they are just elements that contribute to the overall theme of the story: Joker and Batman both desperately trying to find a conclusion to their conflicting ideals in the face of their inevitable conclusion. If you were gonna do a prologue, do it about the events that lead to the Joker's plan and Batman seeking out Joker for that fateful talk.

 

[The greater a'tuin]

She did the surgery on Lois to wire the detonator into her and sprayed Superman with the gas; she's a bit more than guilt by association. Like, Joker's the one who made the plan, but she's the one who pulled the trigger.

The injustice movie had one job to rectify Harley's undeserved dog shit redemption and speed-ran it even worse.

 

[Basic Blond Boy]

I think Gunn misses the point that Lex addresses people by Mr. or Mrs. because he sees himself as higher class and that is the more professional thing to do. Even if it seems condescending now, that just as much fits Lex.

Also, incase you are wondering about the line, it is from Superman The Movie:

 

[The greater a'tuin]

Streaky the Supercat is mad he wasn't in the movie.

 

[Basic Blond Boy]

Also, lmao

 

[Cactus Concerto]

What in the fuck is this new Superman film aiming for? I wouldn't consider myself a big comic book person and I had honestly forgotten about it past the casting but I clicked onto this video and it reads like they're sucking every ounce of masculinity out of the character. From the little I had heard and seen I figured perhaps they were just going for a lighter color palette and a grounded story but boy, was I off the damn mark.

I asked that question and I'm reminded of how media expects me to believe masculinity is Gayro Pestcal so I suppose it's obvious. Along with the casting for Lex Luthor somehow being worse than their last attempt.

All the clips read like fanfiction. And I understand the appeal of fanfiction, of a 'softer, goofier' Superman, but that only works in the context of a non-canonical and fan-created work. Something akin to what some manga artists do: they'll have their actual story and then cute drawings and non-canon interactions outside of that which isn't an actual nor entirely faithful portrayal of the characters or their dynamics, but a fun bit of fluff in-between the real thing. A nice break, something akin to a nap with sweet dreams. It's a snack, not the whole meal.

But then women can just read fanfiction if that's the Superman they want. Who the fuck is this movie for? Gay men? The same women who don't show up for the regular beta male bullshit? People who want to justify the death of Superman and all of his American/Christian values?

The more I watch Hollywood make the same mistakes, the less I understand.

 

[Newcomer 42]

and it reads like they're sucking every ounce of masculinity out of the character.

Because they are. Adam West Batman would be too manly for wokes in Current Year (seriously, he was quite manly funnily enough, in the sense that he was very responsible and thoughtful despite the wackiness).

Who the fuck is this movie for?

Investors?
The movie is going to fail for sure. Even if it had a 100% approval rating, they spent waay too much money to be profitable, and James Gunn still needs someone to check his hard drive/s.