It’s often been remarked that Spider-Man’s schtick wouldn’t work nearly so well if he didn’t live in a town with so many tall buildings, but consider: how well would Batman’s “I am the night” routine work if he was operating out of a normal city where people actually live, rather than a perpetually twilit urban hellscape that looks like the Art Deco movement had a one-night stand with Soviet Brutalism in a wrought-iron-and-gargoyle factory?
That is my favorite description of the Batman aesthetic ever.
OMDFG that’s a perfect description.
Imagine Spiderman ballooning in wide open areas. No, sorry, can’t get to that crime, its against the prevailing wind.
Also, Batman brooding on top of a Wafflehouse.
Batman: God, this stupid city with its sufficient lighting and lack of crumbling infrastructure to shoot grappling hooks into
Superman: Everyone for miles has lead poisoning, I’ve spent the entire night stopping crossword puzzle museum robberies and heists at the Second National Bank of Gotham on the corner of second street and second avenue, and earlier the wall of…clouds? smog?…cleared up for a minute and I’m pretty sure the sky was literally blood red
The real reason Bruce Wayne keeps training kids is so that there’s eventually a gradually cascading order of vigilantes protecting Gotham. When you defeat one, there’s a slightly smaller one just behind, ready to pick up the slack.
One thing I really adore about Tom King’s Batman (This is from I Am Gotham with David Finch) is that he takes the Moore/Miller “Isn’t Batman craaaaaazyyyyyy” approach and then flips it on its head, showing the repetition and the obsession, the unhealthy coping mechanisms, and then asks the simple question, why are they unhealthy? They kept him alive, kept him together, helped him become a better person, didn’t they? It takes the mentally ill aspect of Batman’s character and separates it, utterly, from the “Sociopathic villain” perception it seemed to go hand in hand with, explaining that, yes, Batman can be mentally ill, and yes, Batman can still then be an inherently, unambiguously good person
you cant convince me that clark and diana don’t take every opportunity to inform people that they ‘trust batman exactly as far as they can throw him’ (which is probably amazingly far) and that bruce doesn’t mutter like a sullen child each time: ‘just you try and throw me’
LemonGrenade 