@Basic Blonde Boy
Decided to move this into a more appropriate thread so we're not shitting up an MCU one with Batman talk.
I would say the first 40 years of Batman, pre-Returns is basically a different beast from the current. Most of Batman’s popularity nowadays comes from post-Returns content, and even then a good chunk of Batman’s world could be chalked up to being created outside the comics with shit like TAS having such a major influence on future works.
No, this is completely wrong -- modern Batman essentially begins in 1970. DC realized that the goofy, Adam West-esque Batman was no longer popular and decided to shift focus, with writers Frank Robbins and Dennis O'Neil heading the books and focusing on detective stories and more grounded crime stuff. Some of Robbins' stuff is on the goofy side but pretty much everything O'Neil did is still considered classic Batman stories, with his Ra's al Ghul stories in particular still being referenced in modern books today, and basically creating the Dark Knight Detective that we know today.
Steve Englehart also had a seminal run in the '70s which re-introduced the Joker as a homicidal maniac. Gerry Conway and Doug Moench also had strong runs in this era that introduced characters like Black Mask and re-introduced modern incarnations of other characters, like Deadshot. Decades later Greg Rucka actually did a sort of sequel story to a Two-Face story from this era. Then you have Grant Morrison who did his best to incorporate a little bit of everything from every era, forcing DC to actually publish a TPB called the Black Casebook which re-printed some of the stories he referenced so that readers knew what the fuck was going on in his stories.
This idea that modern Batman is a creation of Frank Miller and maybe Tim Burton is largely an invention of Miller and people who have read like... five Batman stories.
I took this from TAS, here is the direct scene:
For context, Bruce is in love with a woman named Andrea, but believes he will have to give up the cowl to pursue her. This creates conflict as he believes he is not honoring his parents if he is happy.
My point with the post was to highlight this scene as showing Batman is not exactly well. He is a man who thinks that he cannot be happy. I believe this notion that Batman cannot be happy was used recently as a justification for the cop out with him not marrying Catwoman, because she believed a marriage with him would ruin the Bat.
Is this notion stupid, perhaps? It has been used for dumb ass shit, but when the “best piece of Batman media” made it a point, I doubt most writers could get rid of it. My use of it was to show that he is not a happy character or a person you should want to be.
There's a gigantic leap from Batman being unhappy and brooding to him being a lunatic that's nearly as bad as the Joker. Also, that scene is from when he first starts his crusade, isn't fully committed to it, and feels like he isn't having the impact that he should -- which is to say that he's young, unsure of his place in the world, and is in a bad place. I said in my initial post on this subject that Batman is driven and even obsessive, which this all fits to a T.
Is it? I believe this notion has been building since the 80s, which would be about half of Batman’s life span. The Dark Knight Returns has Joker retire until Batman appears again, hinging his antics solely on Batman’s existence. Then The Killing Joke was written to be about Joker trying to show people are one bad day away from him, and attempting to get Batman to “get the joke.” While not definitive, the relationship has been building to be more centered around Bats. Even TAS has Joker speak about how “crime has no punchline” if Batman is not around.
The Dark Knight is really where the notion took off from as we have Joker speaking about how Batman completes him and what-not. This was then followed up in the Arkham games with Asylum being a push to get Batman to go insane, then City straight up comparing the two to the Biblical Cain and Abel. That said, these works are 10 years or older at this point, not exactly modern, and I do feel they are an evolution of works made decades prior when Batman was getting to be more serious and somewhat psychological.
'Very modern' may have been a bit hyperbolic and flippant but for a character that's been around since 1940, yes, I'd say an idea presented in 1986 is relatively new.
Batman is a good person, but there has been an idea that he is not completely right for the longest time. I get your post with the Holiday special, but Dini has written tons of other material or been a part of the project. One of his stories would be Hush, which has Batman say the opposite, and Arkham City makes it very clear that Dini takes pride in the Hush story with his push for Hush to be big in a 3rd game.
As far as I know Paul Dini's only work with Hush was Heart of Hush, which was largely a (pretty much failed) attempt at making Hush into an anti-hero similar to Redhood and had little to do with Batman himself, he had nothing to do with the original Hush story as far as I recall. From what I remember of Arkham City there's a couple of easter eggs related to Hush but that's it. Both Asylum and City are filled with similar easter eggs related to DC characters and doesn't really imply intent towards anything; Asylum had quite a few related to Jack Ryder yet the Creeper never showed up in City.
He was also a large hand in the Arkham series, which has a running theme of Batman being close to his villains, ending with a line drawn to make the distinction. Asylum is Joker wanting nothing more than for Batman to give in to Arkham’s insanity. City has Hugo Strange tell the player they belong in the hell hole, as well as furthering the Joker-Batman thing with the blood-buddies story.
He only worked on Asylum and City and despite the hellish situations Batman's forced into in each he remains fully sane and dedicated to helping everyone he possibly can, including the Joker (had the Joker not broken the vial with the antidote Batman says he would have cured him).
The Trial, which is a famous TAS episode was one of the first to tackle the Batman is not so different story, throwing him in Arkham and having the villains blame him for their creation. Of course the verdict is they are all crazy even without Bats, but again, a good theme in some of Dini’s bigger works is that of questioning Batman and whether or not he is a hero, or sane? The end is always Batman not giving in due to his perseverance and determination, but that insanity angle really adds a deeper conflict to a good chunk of narratives.
The episode ends with Batman saying he'll continue to work towards a city that doesn't need him. Dini very obviously believes he's a hero.
