Sure he killed Thomas and Martha Wayne. But their deaths led their son to dedicate his life to fighting crime and his efforts saved the lives of thousands.
Joe Chill was a random nobody, who died himself from unrelated causes shortly afterwards (well, not directly related: Criminals tend to have short lifespans in general). That’s an essential element of the Batman mythos. Bruce spends so much time and effort on trying to get revenge, because fundamentally, he can’t.
Not always. There are many variations of the story where he doesn’t die, or dies many years later.
The answer is “No, unless a DC writer comes up with the idea then he will be for at least one story”.
Has anyone ever proposed that Joe Chill is a time traveling…Bruce Wayne? Creating himself like the narrator in “All You Zombies…”.
Because that would be totally awesome!
To Kill A Legend is built around a completely different, but weirdly similar, idea: the Phantom Stranger explains to Batman that, in another timeline, a young Bruce Wayne is about to be orphaned when his parents are gunned down right in front of him by a mugger in an alley — but, hey, you and Robin can save that Thomas and Martha, to keep that from happening!
Robin passionately argues that maybe they should let it happen, because this alternate world is really going to need a Batman; Batman has no interest in that argument, but, well, Robin just keeps at it…
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/ToKillALegend
Relevant SMBC from a couple of days ago.
There’s been a lot of different takes on Joe Chill over the years. In the story that first introduced him by name (as opposed to the origin story where he’s an unnamed mugger) he’s a minor crime boss being investigated by Batman, when Batman discovers the connection to his parents’ death. He reveals his identity to Chill, who is later murdered by his own henchmen after he tells them that he was responsible for the existence of Batman. That was in 1948. A story a few years later reveals that it wasn’t a random mugging, but a targeted hit.
Chill gets retconned a lot after that, and goes back and forth from a hardened career criminal to a down-on-his-luck schmo who panicked during a routine robbery, but he’s almost always around by the time Batman starts up his crime fighting career (but usually not for long). I believe in the current iteration, he’s dying from cancer and genuinely remorseful over the Waynes’ killing when Batman catches up to him, and is forgiven by Batman on his death bed.
Of course he was remorseful. He didn’t want to kill the Waynes. But he did it for the greater good.
Rather hilariously, acting in unison, they immediately shoot Chill dead right then and there. Like it’s a reflex: “You created Batman? Die, scum!”
Only as they’re standing over his still-twitching corpse does it occur to them that they should have waited until he told them Batman’s real name before blowing him away. Oops.
Don’t forget, for what it’s worth, that in the Michael Keaton Batman, the Joker killed Bruce’s parents.
If so, maybe he was instead seeking to maximize evil, because Bruce Wayne focusing his wealth into gadgets and one-on-one fights is arguably the least effective way of using his resources against crime. Just furthering public education would probably do a lot more in terms of prevention, perhaps combined with a reform of the prison system and effective mental health counseling for at-risk individuals. In fact, maybe the most effective way to prevent harm would’ve been to never acquire all this wealth in the first place.
Yes! One where prisoners stay locked up! And not bust out every several issues.
This is such a tired cliche. Bruce Wayne canonically donates billions of dollars to charity. He runs jobs programs, soup kitchens, domestic violence programs, scholarships, and more. He’s explicitly the largest philanthropist in the DC universe.
Yes, in the real world billionaires are bad. So are vigilantes. This isn’t the real world, this is comic books.
Considering how many of his villains have PhDs, maybe not.
But he does that anyway.
I’d still question the relative utility of the bat plane versus, I don’t know, an affordable housing program. He can still dress up in tights and beat people up in the streets if that’s his thing, but anything beyond just has to be a terribly inefficient use of resources.
Well, I meant like basic education. Grad school is enough to drive anyone mad.
He does that too. But there’s only so much stuff in Gotham that can be solved by a social safety net. Joker isn’t poisoning the reservoir because he can’t afford rent.
And then you get into the Justice League stuff, where he’s fighting aliens and shit, where that sort of thing isn’t really an option. It’s not like he can build soup kitchens on Apokolips.
I think the writers shot themselves in the foot by making Bruce Wayne so ridiculously rich, it would’ve worked better if he was just a run of the mill millionaire playboy, with enough money not to have to work (and thus train himself to near super-human fitness) but not enough to fix all Gotham’s problems.
That would’ve taken from them the crutch of all the Bat-thingamabobs to solve problems though.
Massive, massive disagreement. Nothing about Batman is improved by making him “more realistic.” “A millionaire who’s good at judo and fights muggers,” is inferior in every way to “the richest man in the world who is a master of literally every single martial art, and punches space gods in the face.”
Superhero comics are supposed to be extra. Making them less extra just makes them more boring.
I don’t see why he needs to be so rich, is being rich somehow a “good” quality like being the master of every martial art?
He can be extra-smart, extra-ballsy, extra-batman, those are positive qualities on a person, being rich? specially having inherited the money? I don’t see how that makes him special, except in inviting the obvious conclusion that Gotham would be better served by him donating all his money to the poor.