The Hoard Potato makes a note.
May. 2nd, 2010 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athelindI'm watching Justice League Unlimited again, a disc or two each week.
Man, Superman is really surly in this show. He comes off as snarky, sarcastic, and irritable—while Batman seems relaxed and comfortable and cracks a genuine smile now and then.
It's surreal.
Amanda Waller, however, remains the scariest person in the DCU.
Man, Superman is really surly in this show. He comes off as snarky, sarcastic, and irritable—while Batman seems relaxed and comfortable and cracks a genuine smile now and then.
It's surreal.
Amanda Waller, however, remains the scariest person in the DCU.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-05-03 02:44 am (UTC)My vote's still for the Joker as the creepiest recurring villain (almost self-evident) and Earth Mover as the scariest one-shot villain.
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Date: 2010-05-03 03:15 am (UTC)I mean, if I was Batman, I'd probably see the time in the League as a kind of pleasant escape from the constant barrage of horror that is Gotham City.
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Date: 2010-05-03 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-05-03 09:11 am (UTC)Plus, it isn't like the sci-cells of the GL Corps are any better than Arkham. Crooks walk in and out of them all the time, too. ;)
I would also hesitate to put the GL Corps up against the Joker. Eventually, the Joker would meet, say, Parallax and the gig would be up for the GL Corps!
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Date: 2010-05-03 11:23 am (UTC)The Guardians let Sinestro openly rule as an absolute monarch and execute people, so obviously there are alternative to sci-cells. If I was a GL living on earth and read about the Joker's tenth killing spree in the paper, I'd feel obligated to do something, like strand him on an asteroid or Bizarro World.
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Date: 2010-05-03 12:07 pm (UTC)The high-level supers need to have their hands free to deal with high-level threats. If they took on every low-level villain there was, there'd be no time for eating or sleeping.
Plus, there's probably some "we work WITH the authorities, not as vigilantes" thing there.
I'd recommend reading the "Astro City" comic at some point. One of the first stories involves that universe's Superman equivalent, who basically gets 2-3 hours of sleep every night, and spends pretty much every waking moment flying around the planet stopping natural disasters, rescuing people, stopping supervillains, etc.
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Date: 2010-05-03 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 05:38 pm (UTC)Frankly, I think the pasty bastard has a Wolverine-class Healing Factor. If Bats breaks his neck, alá The Dark Knight Returns, he's just gonna Get Better.
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Date: 2010-05-03 05:39 pm (UTC)I should note that I also solved the Batman problem in my game, by postulating that three different people wore the cowl over the years (not counting occasional stand-ins):
Bruce Wayne was Batman from 1939 to 1964. He married Selina Kyle around 1950, and Bruce Jr. is born around the same time.
Dick Grayson adopted the cowl in 1964, in his mid-30s. (I'm not sure if he was "Robin" in his 20s, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't wearing short-shorts and pixie boots). Bruce Jr. becomes his Robin. Dick's the Bronze Age Batman, the the Brave, Bold globetrotter who doesn't limit himself to Gotham City, has good working relationships with the rest of the superhero community, and is willing to get an expert opinion when he's over his head.
Dick dies around '85, killed by a two-bit thug named Miller who got lucky. Bruce Jr. takes over. He starts right off by getting Jason Todd killed, gets his back broken, names some loon off the street as his successor, takes the role back, comes up with intricate "contingency plans" that ALWAYS blow up in his face, (including methods to disable his closest friends and allies), alienates everyone around him by acting like an uncompromising martinet, and lets his most dangerous adversaries establish themselves solidly as untouchable crime lords. This is the Post-Crisis Batman, the grim, gritty paranoid obsessive.
And he's a total fuck-up.
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Date: 2010-05-03 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 06:11 pm (UTC)The people who snark about how Batman needs to "take it up a notch" don't really want an effective Bat. Batman was at his most effective during the period that everyone reviles. Those late-'50s/early-'60s stories where he's always running off to travel in time or deal with aliens are also the ones in which Gotham is depicted as a safe, pleasant place to live, and Batman is given full credit for cleaning up the town.
The push to make Batman more "realistic" and "gritty" by amping up his opposition and emphasizing the endemic corruption of Gotham has just made him pathetic and ineffectual. Using his Rogues Gallery as a supporting cast just exacerbates this. A confrontation with, say, Two-Face should be a Big Event, something to make the readers think, "oh, CRAP"; instead, he's a regular character, an established Gotham presence who appears in every issue.
The real solution to the "Joker Problem" is BETTER EDITORIAL CONTROL, and, maybe, keeping writers on the books for more than six months at a time, so they don't feel pressured to get THEIR Joker story squeezed in right after the LAST guy's.
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Date: 2010-05-03 06:34 pm (UTC)Is Miller a reference to a writer?
DING DING DING DING
Date: 2010-05-03 07:08 pm (UTC)See, this is the kind of Comic Book Guy stuff I carefully suppress at work.
Re: DING DING DING DING
Date: 2010-05-03 07:11 pm (UTC)So who's the Grant Morrison Batman?
Re: DING DING DING DING
Date: 2010-05-03 07:44 pm (UTC)There's more commentary here, which you may have seen before; it's friends-locked cuz it's chock fulla campaign spoilers, and I don't want
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Date: 2010-05-03 09:56 pm (UTC)Besides, it's not like Supes has any room to criticize, given how Baldy hasn't spent more than twenty minutes in custody since 1985.
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Date: 2010-05-03 10:08 pm (UTC)On the other claw, the needs of the game require a Gotham without a Batman for more than a decade, an old and bitter BJ sitting alone in his mansion, and a Wayne lineage that's at an end.
Oh, something I didn't mention: the world at large assumes that Batman was a single, long-lived metahuman who just changed his costume and improved his technology over the years. The idea that different people took over the role is dismissed as a goofy conspiracy theory.
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Date: 2010-05-03 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-03 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-04 03:49 am (UTC)Even though Batman already does a certain amount of that, I'm not asking for him to change his methods, just to explore the methods of the other Leagers when they realize the Joker's still a big threat despite all Batman can do.
I mentioned Wonder Woman as a joke, but really, is there a compelling reason she wouldn't whip out her sword and split the Joker's bet permanently if she got a chance? As a quasi-Hellene, she might be reluctant to shame her teammate by killing his archenemy for him, but at least she could lasso him and make him reveal all his nefarious plans, safehouses, corrupt people in his pay, his weaknesses, etc.
And I imagine the Joker's already under sentence of execution from various of his plots; his plot to nuke New York was attempted murder against all the diplomats at the UN, and places like Saudi Arabia probably would convict him of a capital crime in absentia, so there cold be superheros, superagents, supercops, vigilantes, etc from various countries gunning for the Joker as well, and they for sure won't respect Batman's turf. Not that they should succeed, but they ought to be shown trying.
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Date: 2010-05-04 04:01 am (UTC)But there are all kinds of reasons why WW shouldn't kill the Joker, or anyone else, really. She's doesn't have a lot of legal status in the US and killing a US citizen would make her a murderer.
Plus, why focus on the Joker? I mean, pretty much all of Batman's bad guys are irredeemable mass murderers, most of them quite insane. And, frankly, the Joker isn't the worst of the lot. Ra's al-Ghul is. But even in terms of body count, well, he's just not exceptional in Batman's rogues gallery. Does the Joker really have a higher body count than Two-Face? Killer Croc's a cannibal as well as a mass murderer. Mr. Freeze has wiped out a whole lot of people. Even reasonably goofy guys like the Mad Hatter have enormous body counts. I don't think it is morally possible to justify murdering the Joker because of the inevitability that he will kill again without also killing pretty much every serious bad guy that Batman - and nearly every other superhero - runs into.
Which is the crux of the issue. The reason why Batman doesn't kill or permanently incarcerate anyone is because he's not a policeman, judge or prison warden. If he were to start judging who lives and who dies - or any other superhero - he would become the problem, an unaccountable mass murderer who has made a mockery of civil society and rule of law. Which is why the Joker should live. Because Batman is not the problem. The problem is, first, the Joker and, second, Gotham City and the state's inability or unwillingness to either legally execute him or permanently incarcerate him. But Batman nor any of his friends should kill the Joker because then they would be unaccountable executioner murderers that make a mockery of justice, arrogating to themselves the power to unilaterally decide who lives and who dies.
Which is not only, I think, inarguably the legal and moral case but also the good storytelling decision. Let's face it, there's a reason why the Authority has never seriously caught on and a reason why the Punisher has so many ups and downs. They're not really that interesting of stories.
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Date: 2010-05-04 05:14 am (UTC)I doubt Wonder Woman would care that destroying such a depraved monster would be considered murder by some Americans, and it's not like there would be any motivation for a DA to indict and try her. And what's 20 years to an immortal if she did go to prison and declined to break out? There would be about 4 opportunities a year to earn a pardon by helping save the world if the governor didn't give her one or at least a commuted sentence because she finally killed the friggin' Joker! Much the same goes for various other Leaguers.
I didn't mean that Batman kills people, but he does take part of the "judge" role in that he gives himself leave to make invasive searches and holds people against their will for considerable times on occasion. He's not an executioner because he doesn't kill, but he does usurp the perogative of a jury when he decides to let some minor baddies go or leave them to their fate instead of taking them in.
And all superheroes do this to some degree; they all draw a line somewhere between the laws they feel okay in breaking and the laws that they won't.
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Date: 2010-05-04 05:15 am (UTC)I doubt Wonder Woman would care that destroying such a depraved monster would be considered murder by some Americans, and it's not like there would be any motivation for a DA to indict and try her. And what's 20 years to an immortal if she did go to prison and declined to break out? There would be about 4 opportunities a year to earn a pardon by helping save the world if the governor didn't give her one or at least a commuted sentence because she finally killed the friggin' Joker! Much the same goes for various other Leaguers.
I didn't mean that Batman kills people, but he does take part of the "judge" role in that he gives himself leave to make invasive searches and holds people against their will for considerable times on occasion. He's not an executioner because he doesn't kill, but he does usurp the prerogative of a jury when he decides to let some minor baddies go or leave them to their fate instead of taking them in.
And all superheroes do this to some degree; they all draw a line somewhere between the laws they feel okay in breaking and the laws that they won't.
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Date: 2010-05-04 05:27 am (UTC)And, no, breaking into people's houses and interrogation techniques that quite often go into assault territory is both morally and legally different from premeditated mass murder - which isn't just committing a crime but becoming the government. It is quite literally taking the law into your own hands, which is why it would be treated far more seriously than the B&Es and violent interrogations that Batman does. It wouldn't be walking in a moral gray area, it would be undermining the foundations of the state and quite likely to turn the people against them because in a democratic state we don't really like that kind of thing.
You can't just handwave away the differences between some B&E and simple assault and undermining the authority of the state. The differences are real and really there - and they are as "there" for WW as Batman. So, yes, they all do draw the line at what laws they're willing to break and there are a . . . lot of very good reasons for them to forgo taking the law into their own hands, which is a direct challenge to government authority and taken extremely seriously for a whole raft of reasons.
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Date: 2010-05-04 06:22 am (UTC)Not necessarily premeditated mass murder. She could be out to apprehend the Joker and when he reaches to spray gas on the crowd or to set off a detonator, she used lethal force to stop him.
Or she could be on the government's side. After the Troubalert flashes the Joker's eleventh escape from Arkham and subsequent hostage situation, she decides its time for woman's touch and offers her services to the governor, and he deputizes her and sends her in to neutralize the Joker so no more policemen or hostages have have to die.
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Date: 2010-05-04 06:35 am (UTC)Well, that would be murder. Because, frankly, the Joker couldn't hurt Wonder Woman at all would mean she would be morally and legally obligated to use a minimum of force in her apprehension. Her tremendous power would be a factor in her restraint, which would certainly be the case if she was a law enforcement officer.
I don't think you've levelled a serious justification why superheroes - or anyone else - could take the law into their own hands, either in a moral sense, a legal sense or in a practical one. The essence of your argument seems to be that once a criminal becomes sufficiently awful that it's okay to just murder them, which is both illegal and immoral. The other end of your argument seems to be that since superheroes already break the law that it would be acceptable for them to break this law, which is an argument of absurdity - there are compelling moral and legal differences between breaking into someone's house to look for clues and taking the law into your own hands to dispense private justice (by which I mean murder).
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Date: 2010-05-04 12:43 pm (UTC)Flash and Green Arrow burping about moral philosophy, or 22 pages of suspense over 'My God, is Wonder Woman really going to kill the Joker?!?!?'
(And of course the Joker could hurt Wonder Woman, she breathes like everyone else, and dropping a building on her could kill her, as would enough bullets.)
Homework Assignment
Date: 2010-05-04 03:53 pm (UTC)In other words, because he's right up there at the top of the slippery slope, just like he was in Kingdom Come.
Have you read that? You should; consider it your homework. It's all about "superheroes" who do just what you're talking about.
It's not the only example, either. DC has revisited the idea of costumed vigilantes resorting to murder again and again in the Iron Age, and they've done it at least twice right here, right here in Gotham City, with a capital "V" and that rhymes with "B" and that stands for "Batman". The whole point of Knightfall was a response to the readers who kept insisting, as you do, that Batman needed to "take things seriously" and act more like the Punisher.
Re: Homework Assignment
Date: 2010-05-04 05:40 pm (UTC)who kept insisting, as you do, that Batman needed to "take things seriously"
If you can find where I said Batman should change his behavior in any way in this thread or anywhere else and link to it, I'll kiss your foot. Without Batman's restraint from killing, the temptation to kill on the part of another hero is much less alarming.
Re: Homework Assignment
Date: 2010-05-04 06:48 pm (UTC)ONOES A TECHNICALITY ALL MY ARGUMENTS ARE INVALIDATED NAO
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Date: 2010-05-04 11:11 pm (UTC)It is my opinion that the reason the Joker isn't dead is because he's the greatest supervillain of all time. If he were killed, no one would believe he would stay dead - and, indeed, he has appeared to have been killed on numerous occasions. So, since there is no chance whatsoever that DC is going to let the Joker stay dead, as a matter of fact I would definitely prefer it if they didn't kill him. I strongly dislike comics that fake ass kill characters without acknowledging something even more profound than the inevitability of superhero recidivism - which is the resurrection of characters. I would much rather see the recidivist Joker than the back from the dead Joker.
And while it is true that moral quandaries make for good stories, that was simply not what you were attempting to originally address. Sure, I like to see moral quandaries, but that wasn't the way you presented it until just now. Before, you were, y'know, that someone should "take care of the Joker permanently" - no moral quandary involved. We have spent most of this discussion going over the fact that there WOULD IN FACT BE a moral quandary and everyone wouldn't just cheer the newly minted murderer. Which means that this will probably be my last post on the subject because you're now trying to get me to agree to a whole different conversation - one that has no relevance to this conversation.
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Date: 2010-05-05 01:12 am (UTC)I have been all along, starting with the hypothetical plot in my first comment: "...why doesn't Green Lantern or Dr Fate or anyone else with ineffable powers say, 'Batman, let me help you with that Joker problem.'..."