Why is Gotham such a crap hole?

[Admiral_Young]

We usually only see heroes go out of their cities and into their colleagues cities is when their particular villain is causing a problem. The only hero who has a hardline stance about his city is of course Batman. Bruce sees Gotham City as being his problem that he needs to deal with and is extremely reluctant to seek up or allow others to help him.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I wonder if Soap Opera fans spend any time wondering where their fictional towns are located and the population redistribution of those realities? Do West Wing fan try and figure out who Bartlett replaced in the real world?

Gotham is a "crap hole" because Batman, Gordon and others are in the middle of cleaning it up. Most comics take place in the middle. There will never be a point when the problem is solved because that problem is key to the character. Just like being stranded on an island is key to Gilligan's Island.

 

[Myasishchev]

Well technically EVERY city in the DCU has problems. Imagine living in Metropolis where the criminals have superpowers or you face rampaging aliens and threats from the future or parallel universes.

The face is that unlike a lot of other places in the DCU, Gotham is a fairly normal city. The criminals are heinous, but at least they are human and commit normal crimes.

In truth, Gotham is a lot like 1920s-30s New York or Chicago. Filled with crime and corruption, with no one really willing or able to do anything about it. Yet despite all of that...people still lived in Chicago and New York.

Hell...there are worse places in the world NOW with all sorts of crime and decay...and those cities tend to be even bigger

Oh, yeah, I meant to point out that I sorta like this notion: Gotham is often portrayed as shittier, but Gotham is not attacked by extinction-level threats nearly as often as Metropolis or Keystone-Central and was never entirely annihilated like Coast and Star. So worst city in America? Probably not even the most unsafe. How many people has Superman accidentally reduced to DNA samples during his skyscraper-toppling punchups in Metropolis?

So the real question is "how does the economy even begin to function in the DCU?" I mean, if you only looked at the death toll and property damage statistics, World War II might as well have never ended. And you might as well live in Kharkov.

I wonder if Soap Opera fans spend any time wondering where their fictional towns are located and the population redistribution of those realities? Do West Wing fan try and figure out who Bartlett replaced in the real world?

I don't doubt it. Nerds is nerds.

 

[Anwar]

Thing is, the Justice Society's HQ is IN Gotham. When Bruce was a boy Alan Scott/Green Lantern I was Gotham's defender.

If Batman ever pulls his "Gotham is my territory" BS, the JSA should just inform him that "We were here first, you whipper-snapper!"

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yes that is in the past and Bruce I believe has been very respect full of the past heroes that have guarded Gotham but in the present he has the mentality and the ego that Gotham is his city to protect and in many ways given his families statue and position in the city it kind of is. If he was so bull headed about this he wouldn't allow others like the Birds to operate in Gotham. This also seems to be a plot driven thing.

 

[Samurai8472]

If Batman ever pulls his "Gotham is my territory" BS, the JSA should just inform him that "We were here first, you whipper-snapper!"

Brooding Batman- Gotham's current state is partially because of me.

I don't think Gotham is all bad. If you're a millionaire you can live in your "Wayne Tower" on the 40th floor penthouse suite.

 

[Anwar]

If you're a millionaire you can live in your "Wayne Tower" on the 40th floor penthouse suite.

Kind of narrow demographic there .

 

[Admiral2]

Would it? That's what the Batman comics were for a good thirty years,

Not quite. The Joker and Catwoman made their first appearances in the earliest comics. Both were costumed (Catwoman and her masks, Joker and his harlequin face), and Batman wasn't exactly worshipped like a god by the police in those days...

and it's what the highly successful 1960s Batman television series was.

And the show had nothing but nutty costumed villains in it, the necessity of which is what we're discussing.

In the show (which was a far more faithful interpretation of the comics of the time than most people today realize),

Yes, at the time, then it got cancelled and Denny O'Neill brought the book back to its senses.

Batman actually was a duly deputized officer of the law. In fact, a lot of the time, he and Robin basically operated as the Gotham Police Department's CSI unit -- the ones who did the scientific analysis of the clues that were gathered, because they were the only ones who had the high-tech equipment and scientific knowhow.

Then they invaded the villains' lairs and beat the snot out of a bunch of henchmen. It's not like lab work is all they did.

And it wasn't boring, because the crimes and the criminals weren't boring. They weren't corrupt politicians or brutal gangsters or insane serial killers or whatever,

No, just derived from them, as in the case of The Joker, the Penguin and the Riddler.

but they were flamboyant, gimmick-driven supervillains with devious and convoluted masterplans.

And so was the hero, with gimmicky and convoluted tools. In a sitcom. A serious Batman would look foolish wasting his energy on clowns like that, which is why when the comic Batman turned serious, Gotham city and its criminal element darkened to suit, and likely why no one has ever tried going the sitcom route with the movies or TV since. (except Joel Shumacher. Remember how that went?)

The idea was that you needed unusual crimefighters to take on unusual criminals. The modern idea isn't so different; it's just that "unusual" has come to mean "unusually violent/entrenched/pervasive" rather than "unusually creative/ingenious/bizarre."

It's also not so modern. Costumed crimefighters of all stripes faced plenty of murderous criminals in the early days. It's not like it just happened with modern Batman. It's just that it suits modern Batman best.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Thing is, the Justice Society's HQ is IN Gotham. When Bruce was a boy Alan Scott/Green Lantern I was Gotham's defender.

If Batman ever pulls his "Gotham is my territory" BS, the JSA should just inform him that "We were here first, you whipper-snapper!"

The JSA retired in 1951. Was post crisis Bruce even born by then?

 

[Admiral_Young]

Post Crisis Bruce was born in the 1960's according to recent timelines...

 

[Sci]

Post Crisis Bruce was born in the 1960's according to recent timelines...

Which post-Crisis Bruce are we talking about? There've been a fair number of Crises since Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In particular, it's usually been my understanding that DC uses a sliding timeline, where the first appearance of Batman and Superman is always about 15 years ago. But there again, I haven't followed Batman comics regularly since Officer Down.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yes DC uses a sliding timeline...most recent timeline would have been Post Infinite Crisis. Bruce's debut is still accepted as Batman: Year One which made him 25 years old. I believe that the 52 Verse has him as the longest active superhero and that the 52 Verse is around five years old this would make him about 30 which makes no sense like most of the 52 Verse continuity.

 

[Christopher]

Would it? That's what the Batman comics were for a good thirty years,

Not quite. The Joker and Catwoman made their first appearances in the earliest comics. Both were costumed (Catwoman and her masks, Joker and his harlequin face), and Batman wasn't exactly worshipped like a god by the police in those days...

and it's what the highly successful 1960s Batman television series was.

And the show had nothing but nutty costumed villains in it, the necessity of which is what we're discussing.

I wasn't talking about the villains, but about the hero. I was responding to the sentence, "You'd have a guy in a bat suit doing the respectable cops jobs for them, which would eventually be boring." I was pointing out that from about the mid-40s to the mid-70s at least, Batman was portrayed as a respectable authority figure working in close partnership with the police, and even being duly deputized as police, without the stories being boring.

Your points about whether it's a comedy approach or a dramatic approach are beside the point; I'm simply saying that a respectable Batman in partnership with the police isn't automatically a recipe for boredom, because there are ways to tell that story entertainingly. And a comedy approach may not be the only way to do it. Heck, the late-'40s comics weren't nearly as goofy as the '60s comics or the TV show, and they featured some classic, fairly "dark" (for the time) stories like the ones about Batman tracking down Joe Chill and Lew Moxon and uncovering the secrets behind the Wayne murders; but they still showed Batman as a respectable part of the law-enforcement establishment.

 

[Anwar]

Thing is, the Justice Society's HQ is IN Gotham. When Bruce was a boy Alan Scott/Green Lantern I was Gotham's defender.

If Batman ever pulls his "Gotham is my territory" BS, the JSA should just inform him that "We were here first, you whipper-snapper!"

The JSA retired in 1951. Was post crisis Bruce even born by then?

One of the "Hugh" issues had a flashback of little Bruce and little Tommy Elliot watching Alan Scott fighting a guy, so post-Crisis he was around (or they changed when the JSA officially retired).

 

[Christopher]

^You mean one of the "Hush" issues?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Thing is, the Justice Society's HQ is IN Gotham. When Bruce was a boy Alan Scott/Green Lantern I was Gotham's defender.

If Batman ever pulls his "Gotham is my territory" BS, the JSA should just inform him that "We were here first, you whipper-snapper!"

The JSA retired in 1951. Was post crisis Bruce even born by then?

One of the "Hugh" issues had a flashback of little Bruce and little Tommy Elliot watching Alan Scott fighting a guy, so post-Crisis he was around (or they changed when the JSA officially retired).

The official date is when they were called before the HUAC hearings and asked to reveal their true identities. That hasn't changed. They did come out retirement to handle a problem or two, like Rag Doll's cult.

 

[Anwar]

Ugh, yeah I meant "Hush" (for God's Sake, he was just a hyped up version of the Superman villain Conduit!).

But we still see young Bruce watching Alan Scott fight a guy. And Bruce actually talked to Alan about how crime had gotten bad in Gotham while Alan was around (Alan admitted that the night Bruce's Parents were killed, he had been incapacitated fighting the Reaper).

I think what changed was just how "retired" the JSA was after HUAC.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I like that panel because it shows I believe Bruce clutching a DK Publishing-esque book on Metropolis (it is just a generic kids tourist book but I like to think it is a DK book ).

 

[doubleohfive]

Metropolis has been shown to be a East Coast city since the forties. More or less a fictionalized version of New York

I always understood that Metropolis was "Good/Clean New York" and Gotham was "Bad/Dirty New York."

I apply the same theory to Burbank, actually.

 

[Admiral2]

I wasn't talking about the villains, but about the hero. I was responding to the sentence, "You'd have a guy in a bat suit doing the respectable cops jobs for them, which would eventually be boring." I was pointing out that from about the mid-40s to the mid-70s at least, Batman was portrayed as a respectable authority figure working in close partnership with the police, and even being duly deputized as police, without the stories being boring.

Your points about whether it's a comedy approach or a dramatic approach are beside the point; I'm simply saying that a respectable Batman in partnership with the police isn't automatically a recipe for boredom, because there are ways to tell that story entertainingly. And a comedy approach may not be the only way to do it. Heck, the late-'40s comics weren't nearly as goofy as the '60s comics or the TV show, and they featured some classic, fairly "dark" (for the time) stories like the ones about Batman tracking down Joe Chill and Lew Moxon and uncovering the secrets behind the Wayne murders; but they still showed Batman as a respectable part of the law-enforcement establishment.

But the type of Batman storytelling you're talking about peaked in popularity with the show and declined through the Superfriends era. Now we have a Batman who's kinda off because his parents were murdered dealing with corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, really corrupt mob bosses and the occasional psychotic costumed nut. This has been the formula for a couple' decades and Batman fans old and new cheer their asses off every time someone adds onto it, and that looks to be the state of the game for a long time coming. It doesn't matter if it's possible to tell Batman stories the other way if you're one of the only two guys that actually wants that.

And to really dig into the thread topic, you can't have all these corrupt heroes and villains running around a city that's gleaming and smiling and brushes its teeth three times a day. Gotham City is a shithole because the city itself must be corrupt to a certain degree to bring forth the characters and situations that make up the stories that are popular now. I'm not the one saying this. The guys who write Batman today say this. I just happen to agree.