You’re sort of describing Doc Savage’s backup team, although Savage himself was of course more of a general expert in everything than Batman.
Batman does have Oracle’s resources to call upon; although I don’t know how secret her existence is in the DCU.
I thought Oracle told him to get bent after War Games. Have I missed something?
I could be a Batman, no problem. Find an army, volunteer, find an officer to look after…doesn’t seem that hard. I should hope to become as famous asmy forbearer
A similar question:
Has there ever been an actual person that has attempted to be a night vigilante?
Or a serial vigilante?
Or a group like the one from the movie “Star Chamber”? A group of judges who are tired of criminals walking so they meet secretly and hire a hitman to take out selected offenders?
Would the media or the police even report such a thing or would they keep it unreported to prevent copycats?
I know they say that, but hasn’t Batman defeated them before? I now he’s gone toe to toe with Lady Shiva and won, and the Cains and Bronze Tiger aren’t better than that. Now, granted, Bats won because he used his smarts, but that just sort of proves the point, dunnit?
Consider the Guardian Angels, prevented from greatness mostly because of their poncy taste in headgear.
Faced at an early age with a life-altering trauma, I folded. I’m practically the anti-Batman.
According to this article from CityPages: By most observers’ reckoning, between 150 and 200 real-life superheroes, or “Reals” as some call themselves, operate in the United States, with another 50 or so donning the cowl internationally. These crusaders range in age from 15 to 50 and patrol cities from Indianapolis to Cambridgeshire, England. They create heroic identities with names like Black Arrow, Green Scorpion, and Mr. Silent, and wear bright Superman spandex or black ninja suits. Almost all share two traits in common: a love of comic books and a desire to improve their communities.
I’m sure it’s in the best interest of the police to discourage private citizens, no matter how skilled, trained, equipped, well intentioned and/or funded, from taking law enforcement into their own hands unless specifically engaged for assistance (a la a Bat-signal).
As the afore-linked-to article mentions: Unlike in the comics, real-life Commissioner Gordons rarely express gratitude for superheroes’ help. One evening when Master Legend was on patrol, he heard a woman scream and ran to investigate. But when he located the damsel in distress, she thought he was attacking her and called the cops. “They wanted to know if I was some kind of insane man, a 41-year-old man running around in a costume,” he recounts. “Apparently, they had never heard of me.”
Ya think?
Another guy dropped $4,000 to outfit himself as “Citizen Prime”, with “custom-made armor with a chest plate, a bright yellow cape and a sloping steel helmet”, only to conclude: “There’s a reason why police are always coming after crimes,” he says. “It’s one of those fictions in comics when superheroes are walking down the street and hear a scream. I found out real quickly that patrolling for patrolling’s sake seems like a lost effort.”
Yeah, if I had to choose a role model for such an enterprise, I’d definitely go with Doc Savage instead. All the gadgets, all the crimefighting, and I don’t have to dress like a bat.
Everybody loved Doc Savage. Nobody ever caught him drafting up plans to kill off his teammates on the sly.
Batman’s too big an ass to think he has to justify himself, of course, but I’m sure if he heard someone say that, he’d point out that the plans he wrote were less lethal than unbelievably, sadistically tortorous.
One thing that annoyed me about that storyline (which I did like overall) was everyone expressing surprise. I kept wanting Kyle, being the youngest and the biggest fanboy, to say “I can’t believe Batman would plot against all of us!”–only to be told by Arthur “Um…have you MET Batman?”
You remember the fat guy in the bat suit who got tortured to death by the Joker in The Dark Knight?
I could be that guy.
See, that’s a perfect illustration of Batman’s little bubble of self-righteous delusion. Sure, Doc Savage could respond that no one ever caught him devising plans to torture his teammates either; but he wouldn’t do that, because he’d already have subdued Batman and whisked the poor fellow off to his secret private hospital in upstate New York, where Doc’s unparalleled neuropsychological techniques would cure the Dark Knight of his destructive sociopathic tendencies once and for all.
Doc doesn’t merely hand his foes off to the care of others, he personally works toward their cure. And when Doc Savage cures someone, they stay cured, even if it takes brain surgery to do it. That’s why Doc doesn’t have much of a “Rogues’ Gallery” that he needs to keep constantly recapturing like Batman does. The Joker would go up against Doc Savage once, maybe twice; and then he’d suddenly experience a medically assisted life epiphany and wind up living a fulfilling, productive new life under an assumed name as a moderately successful morning radio personality or something.
Be Doc Savage. Don’t fight criminals; fight their brains.
:: turns around to see who is behind me that Terrifel is talking to ::
I’m totally sidekick material. Actually it’s worse than that, I’m more of a sidekick to the sidekick.
Patrolling only works if you’re Superman. Even then, the point is to be seen, and thus deter crime; Kal-El, after all, can keep an eye on most of Metropolis from his armchair just by turning around every once in a while.
The KKK certainly saw itself as working for right, outside the law.
Back To The Op
I see myself more as the Man Bat type. I have a biochemist friend working on the serum.
Batman’s out of my league. Maybe with a few years of work, I could be Nite Owl.
Hrrrm. Interesting. ronch ronch ronch
On the one hand, if you’re Batman you get to be bazillionaire. Nite Owl is at best a less-than-20-millionaire.
On the other hand, as Nite Owl you get to boff Silk Spectre. If you’re Batman you are, basically a monk. And an asshole control freak. And your enemies always come back, as do your dead sidekicks.
(Third
Similairly stupid costumes either way. Nite Owl, for the win!
Well, maybe not Batman level, but we had a discussion on real-life people with the highest “stats” that went pretty far.
Byron White, Kris Kristofferson, and astronaut William Shepherd were fairly impressive.
Personally, I think I just qualify at the “The Tin Dog” level of heroics.
