Funny you should mention the Giffen Justice League, since he’s a writer who really knows how to make a non-powered character work when he’s surrounded by a bunch of people with cool superpowers.
If you read those issues, you notice that more often than not, it’s characters like Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, and Guy Gardner who actually do the heavy lifting. Batman and Blue Beetle hang back with the former barking orders and the latter cracking wise. Giffen was also good about giving Batman his comeuppance. His Batman was a jerk, but the other characters all knew it and Martian Manhunter had zero problem taking authority and putting Batman in his place.
Grant Morrison could use lessons on both those counts, since his JLA basically ruined the character in the DCU. On the plus side, he’s dead or stuck in the past or whatever the fuck after Final Crisis (wretch).
I hated Batman until I read The Dark Knight Returns about 6 years ago. Now I like him very conditionally:
-Love The Dark Knight Returns
-Hate The Dark Knight Strikes Again
-Love Year One
-Hate The Long Halloween / all the Jeph Loeb stuff
-Love The Killing Joke
-Hate the Tim Burton movie and all its sequels. Didn’t even like it when it came out and I was a kid who loved Batman and had Batman shoes
-Don’t care much for much of the regular comic series over the years
-Lukewarm to TAS and the JLA toons (pretty lukewarm to the JLA and mainstream DC in general actually)
-Love Batman Begins
-Thought The Dark Knight (2008 movie) was alright but way too long and… what’s the word for a movie that looks like the editor suffers from extreme ADD?
Edit: And if that seems like excessive familiarity with a character I don’t care too much for, ask me about someone I like sometime
My favorite Batman stories are those of the usually forgotten and maligned early 1950s. Bats was neutralized by the Powers That Be and had to have adventures that had no violence in them. He was the daytime Batman, a beloved national idol. Which is why most people hate these stories.
But to give the character something to do, they really had to illustrate what they now sometimes mention only for lip service: that Batman was the World’s Greatest Detective.
Many of the stories were true mysteries, with a range of suspects and occasionally even a least likely murderer. Batman had to know everything about Gotham City, its criminals, its activities, and everything else, in a world before computers and the Internet. When he had time for this we never learned, but he had time to make the Batmobile and Batplane by himself, so…
The stories may have been sunny, and it all went to hell in the late 50s when he started fighting aliens every issue, but they were worlds more fun than stories of a psychotic with father issues, maniacs who tortured children, and a city where no one in or out of their right minds would ever want to live real lives.
Yeah, you still don’t ignore Batman (or Flash, Black Canary, Black Lightning, or any other single/low powered member of the team).
By the very fact that they’re members of the Justice League, they’re clearly a threat, and there’s only so many times you can have villains forget that before they stop being mistaken, and start being complete idiots.
For some villains - the ones I mentioned, for a start - the number of times is ‘0’, because that particular mistake doesn’t fit with their character.
My favorite Batman moment was in the “Detroit basement” days of the JLA, after Aquaman disbanded the satellite-era group and recruited the street kids. Guy Gardner was a member at the time and so was Batman. I can’t remember what Guy said or did, but I do remember that Bats popped him a good one right in the nose. Like I said, easily my favorite Batman moment.
One Punch wasn’t during the Detroit era, it was not long after the League reformed after Legends. Guy was never a member of the Detroit team (which never actually had a Lantern)*.
(My favourite part is mentioned, but not shown - the rest of the team showing up, and getting upset because they missed it.)
He was, in fact, only a member of the Giffen/DiMatteis/Maguire team, because Batman and Green Lantern were the only big names they were given access to, and they figured ‘hey, if we’re going to have a team of second stringers, we might as well skip Hal and grab a second string Lantern, too’.
One of the things that always bugs me about the “if he’s prepared” stuff when applied in actual comics is that the idea only works if Batman is a master strategist and tactician, and no comic book writer is. So Batman’s plans are either something a reasonably bright 6th-grader could come up with or hinge on some bullshit gadget he pulls out of his ass.
I bring this up whenever I run into a “Batman vs.” thread on a comic book board - everything that can be said in Batman’s favor also applies to Black Canary, but people are way less willing to say that she could beat up Superman.
The same thing bugs me about a character I like a lot more than Batman - Captain America. For someone who’s supposed to be one of the greatest tactical minds and leaders in history, his campaigns against supervillains look remarkably like having the Avengers run at them head-on while screaming their motto.
And yes, Cap would hand Batman his ass ten times out of ten without breaking a sweat.
Hey, I love Batman and I’m willing to concede you have a point. But I only relegate myself to a few Batmans anyway and don’t read any of the comics.
He only works if there are no other superheroes around. He can’t fit in a world of superheroes! That’s what makes him cool, but they keep trying to wedge him into everything else.
But Batman, pure Batman, like in the movies, I love.
Ah-HA! I just figured out my mistake. I could have sworn I remembered Gypsy walking in afterward, being told what happened, and indignantly stating that she’d been waiting to see Batman punch Guy for weeks. But it was actually Dinah, not Gypsy!
I knew who Batman was before the Burton’s movie, but at eight or nine, the movie pretty much fleshed out his character for me, and I used to think he was pretty lame. As a kid I was even thinking about the fact that this adult dressing up and fights crime at night. I think Batman Begins really set a tone for some of the things I used to roll my eyes at. It wasn’t great, but it was about as realized I think the comic hero can get. I think the TDK movie is better than it’s hero. One thing that still bugs me about him is his ‘accent’.
