scans_daily | Batman: The Dark Knight #21

From:

q99

Mad Hatter has *mind control*. Why would he torture anyone save in a psychological sense?

From:

protogarrett

Yeah I was going to ask the same thing. He literally could have whipped up any mind control device and just had her tell him. Instead: FRIDGE! ANGST! AAAANNNNNGSSSSSSSTTTTT!

From:

q99

It's more of the "every batvill must be a killer and do bloody stuff to people!" too.

The Riddler is supposed to be interesting because he makes smart challenges. Hatter scary because of his mind control (which doesn't need anything else to be scary!), and so on.

From:

icon_uk

This is what we used to have Rube Goldberg deathtraps for... and saved them for the Batclan. Randomly killing civilians to show how badass you are got old a long, long, loooooooooong time ago (Even the Joker used to do it sparingly, and often to gang members who spoke out of turn rather than complete innocents)

From:

q99

Exactly.

From:

icon_uk

They could have sort of worked that into the story, that his devices over-ride memory, so he takes control, but in doing so puts the actual mind/memories on hold. He can make them his puppets, but puppets aren't particularly chatty.

This just makes him seem like a tired variation of the Penguin in violent mode.

From:

lego_joker

Penguin has a violent mode? 0_o

I think you meant Black Mask.

From:

icon_uk

You mean Penguin, the crime lord who will cold bloodedly order multiple deaths without a qualm?

Yes, he has a violent side... also if his vanity is insulted he does not take it well.

From:

cypherfdp

I am going to offer the bold and hereto unprecedented opinion that I don't like this.

From:

xamda

I'm gonna second that opinion.

From:

skemono

I don't necessarily mind stories about a hero coming to the brink of breaking his own rules and retreating at the last moment (although they are fairly cliche and overdone at this point). But you have to really earn that--you have to set up something that is so important to the hero that its loss makes the hero really want to cross that line.

This? Well, admittedly I've not been reading the series, so perhaps the relationship with Natalya was built up that well... but I rather doubt it. She was introduced in issue 10 (and from the synopsis I read, it sounds like she was just brought in as already in an established relationship with Bruce?), and killed last issue. So that's ten, eleven issues with her--and at least part of that they were broken up.

I don't buy that she's this important to Bruce (nor, for that matter, that Bruce is so important to her that she'd die rather than give him up). It feels more like the writer wanted to do a "Bruce aaa~lmost kills, but then he doesn't!" take, so he just whipped up a scenario (and person) to cram into the scenario to set that up.

I will say, though, that I rather like the artwork here. The scene of Batman beating up the Mad Hatter sells the simple brutality of it--no martial arts, no finesse, just Batman stomping up to Tetch, and then stomping him. (Although the panels with Tetch flying through the air like he were a doll are just baffling.) And the half-page of Batman stopping, slumping resignedly, then diving in to save the man he just tried to kill, is masterful in its silent expressiveness.

From:

mistervader

I just don't see the need to extend this kind of rage to every individual member of Batman's Rogue Gallery.

I'm pretty sure Penguin, Riddler, and Joker had at least one each of this kind of arc where Batman *almost* kills them or something.

From:

donnblake

I get that Nike was a Greek goddess of Victory, and that Nike Missiles are/were an actual thing, but my first thought on reading "Decommissioned Nike Missile Launch Facility," was that that was some really aggressive marketing for sneakers. And then that I should reread Jennifer Government.

From:

icon_uk

I didn't know that Nike WAS a type of missile, so I was just VERY confused.

From:

silicondream

It's really helpful for Alfred and Bruce to have special radio code names here. No one eavesdropping on their frequency will ever suspect that "Bat One" is actually Batman!.

Also, I like the two panels of Batman's face (minus its lower half for some reason) when he's watching his girlfriend's corpse. Momentary woobie-face and then "grieving process completed. Time to be scowly again!"

Also, also, that's some very waterproof blood all over his costume on the last page.

From:

donnblake

"Bruce Wayne can't be Batman! The guy who supports and informs Batman over the radio is Pennyone! Bruce Wayne's Butler is PennyWORTH. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"

From:

lbd_nytetrayn

In fairness, it could be a reference to that giant penny he has...?

Yeah, I got nothin'.

From:

icon_uk

Dick is "Ass One" (He graduated to that after being "Hostage One" for a while)

Jason is "Angry One"

Tim is "Sneaky One"

Babs is "Girl One"

Cass is "Who?"

Steph is "No, reallly... Who?"

From:

akodo_rokku

...does that mean Damian was "Dead One"?

From:

icon_uk

That's more of a.... rotating codename, Jason, Steph and Bruce have all used it, now it's Damian's turn.

Prior to that, Damian insisted on being "Real One".

From:

joetuss

So when this guy wakes up,he's gonna be a little slow right? I mean,no one takes whoopins like that and doesn't lose a few IQ points

From:

dcbanacek

It's a rare thing for a writer to acknowledge the damage a beating like that would actually do.

The only time that I can remember a writer calling back to a hero utterly stomping a villain was when Peter David had Spider-Man beat three kinds of hell out of the "Sin-Eater" (the guy had it coming) and when the guy comes back, he's lost hearing in one ear, had to walk with a cane and stuttered.

Although, there was another Spider-Man fight in the original Secret Wars were he utterly humiliated Titania to the point where she was scared of facing him. Which was kind of funny because she would operate out of New York.

From:

icon_uk

In the case of Titania I think it was to emphasise that Skeeter (her pre Doom-enhanced name) was a bullying victim turned bully, but remained victim underneath.

She had been very much the weak, scared scrawny kid who had been picked on all her life. She gets given invulnerability and superstrength and turns bullly, beating heroes up for kicks. Spider-Man beats her and we see that she's still the scared little Skeeter inside when faced with someone stronger than she is.

One might view her working in New York as, in a way, facing her fears.... or just sloppy editing, either works for me....

From:

starwolf_oakley

The only time that I can remember a writer calling back to a hero utterly stomping a villain was when Peter David had Spider-Man beat three kinds of hell out of the "Sin-Eater" (the guy had it coming) and when the guy comes back, he's lost hearing in one ear, had to walk with a cane and stuttered.

While a great story, the last issue revealed that the Sin-Eater's injuries were psychosomatic. Stan Carter wasn't "healed" because he didn't want to because he felt so guilty. Stan Carter becomes the Sin-Eater again and his only problem seems to be the stutter. It's a great story, and a shame we can't post even the final few pages.

From:

joetuss

Speaking of which,when was the last time spidey/peter parker had a badass moment like the time he wailed on sin eater? Its like marvel just decided to turn him into the michael cera of comic books and forgot he was capable of being anything other than comic relief

From:

stolisomancer

You could make an argument for his first fight against Morlun in JMS's run.

A lot of modern Marvel writers use Spider-Man as the smart/pragmatic guy rather than the punch-up king. I liked the bit in Annihilators, for example, where he follows Quasar into the base and tries talking to him on the basis that they go way back and this can't be what's actually happening.

From:

joetuss

Yeah,I get that,and that's always been his draw as a character,but he is a ''superhero'' after all.

From:

stolisomancer

There are a lot of ways to be a superhero, and Spidey has traditionally not been the go-to guy if you want to watch a villain be justifiably beaten to within an inch of his life. In the MU, that's really more Daredevil's thing, or the Punisher's. Spidey is more about beating a guy by wits or smarts or heart than sheer punching.

From:

ablackraptor

The last time I remember was in American Son; after finding out Norman was planning to cause Harry to die publicly to boost PR and sympathy to his cause, Peter beat him black and blue and tore off parts of his face with his stickum powers. Had he not then been already pretty banged up and outnumbered by the Dark Avengers, he could've ended Dark Reign by leaving Stomrin' Norman in a hospital bed.

From:

joetuss

Ah yes...I forgot about that...thanks :)

From:

yvonmukluk

Wasn't that basically the whole deal with doc Ock, that his body was finally shutting down because of all the accumulated beatings?

From:

stolisomancer

Alfred, the Hatter walked dozens of mind-controlled Gothamites into the river last issue and left them to drown. He beat his high school not-girlfriend to death with an iron and shot a bunch of blonde women because none of them were quite what he wanted in an "Alice" for the play he was trying to put on. His personal death toll in the last few issues is probably around five hundred people, if not higher, not one of whom did a thing to him.

Bruce could lash him to the back bumper of the Batmobile and drive down Route 66 until all that's left is six inches of moist red rope and he'd still have the moral high ground here.

"Just like him" my entire ass.

From:

blunderbuss

I know. They make their villians do utterly wretched things but STILL do the whole 'moral high ground!' thing. The balance is not going to hold if the writers weigh down one side with a dozen dead bodies, damn it!

From:

sadoeuphemist

You don't - or rather you shouldn't - stick to a moral code for the purpose of keeping the 'moral high ground', particularly when that 'high ground' is really low to begin with. If you need to compare yourself to a murdering degenerate to say, 'oh but I'm still better than him,' then you are already morally bereft. You follow a moral code because you believe that these are the right and just things to do, regardless of what anyone else is doing.

"You'll be no different from them" is hyperbole, not a legitimate attempt at comparison. The point is to remind Bruce that he aspires to higher ideals than murdering a helpless human being, not to make him feel morally superior to the Mad Hatter.

From:

stolisomancer

By the same token, however, there's a remarkably low bar where an adherence to personal morality in the face of tremendous wrongdoing just makes the character look weak, as it does here. Jarvis Tetch has, in the last few issues, killed hundreds of men, women, and children for no other reason than his own psychosis. For him to get off with a vicious beating and an overhand toss into an asylum cell is ludicrous.

Call it the Joker rule: there's an easy-to-reach threshold where an antagonist must be punished in some lasting way that permanently impacts the character or it makes the protagonist look weak and ineffectual. These are not adjectives that should apply to Batman. All he's doing is forestalling the next atrocity.

From:

ablackraptor

"All he's doing is forestalling the next atrocity."

But, honestly, is that fair to Bruce? I mean, when a cop arrests a murderer, are they to blame if the psycho escapes jail and kills again? And if so, is the cop expected to hunt them down personally and kill them himself?

Bruce isn't the head of state, he's a man who tries to protect innocent people, not punish the guilty. He's free to give them beatings when they escape, but killing them would make him a hypocrite.

From:

stolisomancer

The appropriate comparison here is not if a cop arrests a murderer. The Hatter's killed hundreds. At this point, were this taking place in even a vague analogue to the real world, he would be the single most prolific spree killer in human history.

It's a flaw with the superhero narrative and the morality attached to it. If nobody but Batman can stop this guy, and Batman just slings him back into the cheesecloth jail of Arkham Asylum, he's voluntarily participating in what's clearly a broken cycle. It turns the infinite status quo of superhero comics into a millstone around the character's neck, because every single encounter with one of his villains ends with multiple innocent people dead and he just keeps playing out the string.

The easiest way to get around this is for Batman villains to not be homicidal maniacs with three-digit body counts, but apparently that's what sells or that's how you communicate a character is serious/gritty/adult/realistic.

From:

sadoeuphemist

Similarly, the solution is not , as you put it, to have Batman "lash him to the back bumper of the Batmobile and drive down Route 66 until all that's left is six inches of moist red rope." The Punisher for example murders villains quite frequently, yet also only serves to forestall the next atrocity, because he is faced with an endless supply of equally terrible people and is equally incapable of changing the status quo.

From:

stolisomancer

I don't recall mentioning it as a solution. I'm making a statement that "if you kill him, you'll be just like him" is both morally and logically impossible when it comes to crimes of this magnitude. Batman could beat the Hatter into a lumpy stain on the floor during the Super Bowl halftime show and no jury in the world would convict him.

From:

sadoeuphemist

And as I said before, it's hyperbole, not meant to be taken literally. The comparison is not made so that Batman can continue to feel superior to the Hatter. It's made to remind Batman of the moral standard he tries to live up to, using Hatter as a contrast. In response you started talking about Tetch 'get[ting] off with a vicious beating' and permanent punishment and broken cycles, so I don't know what your argument is if not that Batman should start killing.

And if Batman beat Hatter to death on the halftime show, a jury should and ought to convict him of that under rule of law, and I believe that there are in fact many possible juries that would indeed convict him. That sounds like ridiculous hyperbole on your account.

From:

stolisomancer

Hyperbole or not, it's still utter bullshit. It's an increasingly transparent attempt by the writer to keep the Hatter on the board despite his committing multiple crimes that should get him permanently taken out of circulation.

Even within the context of the universe and the character, it's flawed, because apparently Batman's precious moral standard is more important to him than the five hundred people lying dead in the Gotham harbor and the guaranteed fatalities in the future whenever the Hatter feels like busting out of the asylum. It's a solipsistic worldview at the best of times and a story like this only highlights how ridiculous it is.

And I think you're placing too much faith in juries if you think they'd convict anyone of anything other than maybe involuntary manslaughter in those circumstances. "Your honor, my client beat this man to death after the deceased killed several hundred innocent citizens via mind-control and subsequently dropping my client's significant other out of a helicopter onto the roof of the Gotham P.D." They'd treat that shit like it was a misdemeanor and try not to look like they were happy about it.

From:

sadoeuphemist

This is why I brought up the Punisher, who frequently kills terrible dudes, and is rewarded for it with more terrible dudes to kill. Heck, the Punisher even has Jigsaw as a recurring nemesis, as well as several villains that keep popping up on a lesser scale. Punisher ends up in the same pointless violent cycle Batman does, even though they have polar opposite views on killing, simply because they are both serial superhero comic book protagonists.

I'm not sure what your point is with the juries. Is it to say that people are inherently vengeful and bloodthirsty and willing to disregard the rule of law? I disagree with you, but I also don't know what this has to do with Batman and his own refusal to kill.

From:

ablackraptor

...And it would still be expected that the police bring them in alive so they can try them legally. And again, if they escape, its not the arresting officer's fault. To merely kill them is to say that justice as it is, is flawed and doesn't work, which can e seen as insulting to those who work in the justice system.

Expecting Batman to kill his enemies because they're dangerous and the justice system can't control them would require Bruce to admit his way doesn't work, and that the police force are useless. Which, given that include one of his closest allies, would go against his character.

"The easiest way to get around this is for Batman villains to not be homicidal maniacs with three-digit body counts, but apparently that's what sells or that's how you communicate a character is serious/gritty/adult/realistic."

...I agree, it would be better if the weren't all psychopaths.

From:

thatnickguy

Wait a minute, he told his girlfriend his secret identity and then she died?

Good lord, how many times has that happened to him, now? I mean, does he get a free toaster oven every fiftieth girlfriend that gets killed?

From:

icon_uk

DCNu presumably wiped the slate clean, who knows if there's even a Silver St Cloud in this DCU.

From:

lego_joker

And even before that, Ed Brubaker had officially retconned away Silver knowing Bruce's secret identity. (The Laughing Fish parts of the story were presumably retained).

From:

damar148

I know Jervis isn't sane or rational begin with, but I do hope in the future he will be utterly terrified to even think of going up against the Bat again, who first nearly beat him to death before letting him drown and than sadistically save him again.

From:

lego_joker

Eh... too bad this is taking place in "Batman: The Dark Knight". AKA the Batman publication that no one quite cares about (in comparison to Batman and 'tec, anyways). Unless Hurwitz graduates to writing one of those two books, I think that the "main" Bat-continuity will probably ignore it.

This isn't exactly a new development - DC's Batman line has always had a sort of "third wheel" publication to tell stories that are less tied into continuity than Batman and 'tec. Pre-Crisis, it was "The Brave and the Bold". During the 90s, it was "Shadow of the Bat". During the 00s, it was "Gotham Knights". And now, it's "The Dark Knight".

("Legends of the Dark Knight" could also fit, but I think they've made that particular book's non-canon status more explicit in the past.)

From:

junipepper

Wow, that cowl is very expressive! That's an impressive bit of technology -- a mask that can show your emotions for you, while completely hiding your face. Cool.

From:

an_idol_mind

This has got to be the most recycled plot ever. Batman's girlfriend dies because he revealed his secret identity, Batman almost but doesn't quite kill a villain...does this story add anything original to Batman's mythos at all?

Also, in a comic book written in 2013, "You'll be no different from them" should never, ever be uttered in a serious manner. It is painfully cliché by now.

From:

jcbaggee

I guess the "girlfriend dies after finding out your secret identity" trope is to be expected at this point, but didn't they literally JUST introduce her for this arc? It kinda loses all impact when she's around for less than a handful of issues.

Plus Batman being super upset and furious over this loss is just kinda laughable considering he's still dealing with the loss of Damian in other books.

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Batman: The Dark Knight #21

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