Joining this series already in progress, the Scarecrow has finally managed to force a breakthrough out of Batman with his fear gas: has Batman helped Gotham City in the slightest? Would the city have been a better place if he never was? Sounds like the worst It's a Wonderful Life riff yet, Bats really should have got around to watching that. Although caught, the Scarecrow knows something happened, he might have gotten to him this time; but Batman isn't about to tell him.
Batman tells Gordon the Scarecrow has made him question some things; but Gordon advises him to consider the source, with a surprisingly heartfelt moment that he knows Batman probably ducked out of midway through. Batman takes Scarecrow back to Arkham, along with a guard that had been working with him but turned on him in the end: Bats appears to be giving him a second chance. He also bumps into a young doctor, who tells him he saved not only her once, but her husband: he had been a goon for the Riddler, but one meet-up with Batman put him on the straight-and-narrow, and he was able to make something of his life. She also advises that while the recidivism rate in Gotham was usually around 50%, for criminals stopped by Batman it was less than two. That two percent was largely Arkham inmates, the usual suspects, and just went to prove they were crazy.
After stopping a break-in with a stern look on his way home, Batman is more emotionally exhausted than anything when he gets back to the Batcave. Alfred doesn't mince words with him: if it came down to Bruce leading a happy, long life; and Gotham going up in flames, well, let it burn. He hates Batman--that Bruce has chosen to do that with his life--but still believes Batman has done good for the city. Otherwise, what was the point of everything they had been through?
In fairly typical Bat-fashion, Bruce gets about two whole seconds to mull on that, before the radio announces a breakout at Blackgate. I had thought it was Arkham for a moment, since we do see the Joker briefly welcoming the Scarecrow back, and I could absolutely see the humor in him busting out after he figures Batman is home and about to go to bed...
The argument hopefully hasn't come back to Twitter since posting this; that Batman should take all the money he puts into Bat-crap instead into making Gotham a more livable place to reduce crime. First, I don't think Bruce as that cash as liquid assets, a lot of his gear is embezzled. That and doesn't Bruce do all of that already; it's just that Gotham is so bad it still has crime?
That's certainly been a long-time criticism of Bruce for a while, with that exact argument that instead of beating up on the poor & mentally ill, he instead use his money, influence & resources into helping them. The thing is, he HAS! They either don't remember or never read comics during the 70's when Bruce poured a SHIT TON of money into doing just that, as well as the fact as through Wayne Enterprises, he's always attempted to provide jobs for those looking to turn their lives around.
ReplyDeleteSo he clearly does both, but let's face it, it's a lot more entertaining visually & story-wise for him to be beating up criminals more than watching the long & arduous process of attempting to play Gotham's wealthy social worker.
Yeah, Wayne definitely pumps money into local education programs, the arts, hiring people out jail at Wayne Enterprises like Mr. Morbid said. I assume he buys up apartment districts and turns them into nice, affordable homes for lower-income families and stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteI think Chris Sims pointed out a long time ago that Bruce Wayne does do all that stuff, but none of it helps when an insane clown is trying to poison the city's water supply. That's where Batman comes in (and, as Mr. Morbid said, it's more visually interesting to watch him Batmanning it up than dealing with bureaucracy.)
@CalvinPitt: It's why it's BEYOND understandable for Batman to occasionally lose hope when he's locked in a never-ending war on crime. You're fighting against so many things that enable & fuel crime, mainly people. Without people, there'd be no crime. Ra's basically tried to tell him this over & over again, but Bruce just wasn't into killing millions upon millions of people.
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