Batman is one of the most popular, impactful, and beloved superheroes of all time. Heck, he’s one of the most popular fictional characters ever, period. And yet despite his popularity, or perhaps because of it, a lot of people get a lot of things wrong about Batman. The majority of these incorrect ideas about who the Dark Knight is usually stem from weird and out of context panels or storylines that often contradict the actual grander whole, and misunderstandings or bad takes on the character being prevalent in popular media. Of course, Batman has been around for over eighty years at this point, and the character has evolved so much in that time and been interpreted in so many different ways, so many say that there can’t be a true canon for a character like that. While it’s undeniable that Batman has changed incredibly across the decades, there are also some aspects that have become so ingrained with his character that they are core traits, because if you don’t have those, you can’t have a character. These core traits are often what are most misunderstood by uninformed or casual fans, however.
Batman is a complex and storied character with hundreds upon hundreds of interpretations, but some things about him are true and should always be so. It’s natural and perfectly understandable that some bad information is swirling about a character as well known as Batman, but I think we should set the record straight and actually break down what people get wrong about the Caped Crusader, and why those things are wrong. So without further ado, let’s take a look at ten things that everyone gets wrong about Batman.
1) He’s a Brooding Loner
Many people’s mental picture of Batman is a lone, broken man who crouches on gargoyles in the rain, never happy, humorlessly and seriously driven solely by his mission. However, while Batman is certainly a serious character who does brood way more than someone like Superman, he’s never really been alone, and he’s much happier than people think. First off, Batman has worked with allies since the very beginning. There was always Commissioner Gordan, and Robin first appeared before Batman even had his own comic book. Ever since, Batman has only gained more allies and family members who take up the stand against him, from Batgirl to the Justice League. As for brooding, yes he does do that, but he’s not all gloom all the time. Batman treats situations with the seriousness they deserve, but he also cracks jokes when it’s lighter. Batman actually has a great dry sense of humor, believe it or not. He’s not all Dark Knight, plenty of times he’s the funny Caped Crusader.
2) Bruce Wayne is the Mask
There’s plenty of people and interpretations that align with this philosophy, but frankly it just isn’t true. There will always be scenes like the famous Batman Beyond line where an older Bruce says he calls himself Batman, Wonder Woman Rebirth Annual #1 where he calls himself Batman while holding the Lasso of Truth, and of course the ever present, unending quote: Bruce Wayne died in Crime Alley. Except, his real name isn’t Batman. Bruce Wayne will always be his true heart, even when he is consumed by his mission and thinks otherwise. Batman couldn’t exist without Bruce Wayne because Bruce is the humanity that drives him. The reason Batman doesn’t kill and tries to help is because he is the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, he was raised to love and care and that is what spurs Batman’s mission. Yes, the public-facing playboy persona is a mask, but at the same time so is Batman, the untouchable, unstoppable facade Bruce puts on to scare criminals and save Gotham. The real Bruce is only seen by his closest friends, when he drops the cowl and playboy grin and lets himself admit that he is just a man, but a man trying to do good. Zur-En-Arrh is the embodiment of what Batman without Bruce would be, and his cold and detached obsession with the mission is something Batman will never have because Bruce will never give up his humanity. Bruce Wayne is Batman’s heart.
3) He’s a Bad Dad
I will be the first to admit that Bruce Wayne is far from a perfect father. He can be pretty bad at communicating how he feels, and has the tendency to push away those closest to him when he’s hurting, but while he’s flawed he’s still a good dad. Bruce tries his best to connect with and support his children, and only wants the best for them. He’s there when they need him, and will have their backs when they need his support. He’s definitely overbearing and expects a lot from them, but it comes from a place of care and his desire to have them grow to be better than him. Based on how each of his five official children have turned out, I’d say that Bruce does a pretty darn good job. His children and him clash sometimes, especially with DC’s constant villain-to-hero-and-back whipping with Jason Todd, but they always come together in the end and deeply, deeply love each other. There’s nothing Bruce won’t do for his kids, and they know that.
4) Prep Time
Everyone has heard the meme of Batman stopping everybody with prep time, and yes that is absolutely untrue, but the most egregious part of the prep time aspect of Batman is how even most writers misunderstand that this was supposed to be something Batman grew past. Tower of Babel, the story that famously revealed Batman had plans to disable the Justice League if they ever turned evil, was Batman’s direct response to learning his memories had been erased in the infamous Identity Crisis storyline. This was the start of Batman’s paranoid distrust of his fellow heroes, especially metahumans, and Tower of Babel fractured the trust between Batman and his friends. However, what people often overlook is how this was the first part of a character arc, culminating in JLA #50, where Bruce revealed his identity to the Justice League of America in an effort to show them that they have his trust, and to hopefully regain theirs. Batman’s contingency plans have become a core part of his character when they were meant to be a small, emotional trust issue he overcame. And besides, I don’t care how much time Batman has to prep, him beating characters like the Flash or Wonder Woman in a fight has to have a very, very good explanation to be anywhere near believable. I love Batman, but he is just a man.
5) He’s Obsessed With Violence
It’s a fairly common take that Batman will refuse to kill, but has no issue crippling or permanently damaging someone so badly that either they wish they were dead or will never quite recover. The joke is that Batman will break every bone in your body if he catches you jaywalking, and while everyone can agree that’s extreme, way too many people think he routinely gives purse snatchers brain damage. The truth is that Batman is very discriminating on who he beats to a bloody pulp and why. Yes, when dealing with supervillains like the Joker or career killers Batman will be fighting with extreme prejudice. However, it has been shown repeatedly that Batman will go easy on low tier criminals, especially those who are just trying to get by or fell in with the wrong crowd. When possible he’ll offer henchmen or people down on their luck careers at the various Wayne Enterprises locations. Batman does use violence, but only to stop people from hurting others, not to hurt them himself. Yes, there are times when he’s been possessed by his own anger and taken it out on criminals, but those are few and far between, so I say we should focus more on the much more numerous occasions where Batman chose to stop fighting and help instead of hurt. Personally, I blame the Arkham video games and movies for putting this hyperviolent nature into the public perspective. Batman’s violence is turned up in those mediums because it’s entertaining to watch that, but that’s not who he is at his core. Using those as a metric is the same as saying Spider-Man kills people because you toss people off roofs in Marvel’s Spider-Man game.
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6) He Only Beats Up Poor People and the Mentally Ill
This misconception goes hand in hand with the previous one. It insists that Batman goes after low tier crime, like muggers, and the mentally unstable instead of dealing with the real criminals. As stated with the previous point, Batman will go out of his way to avoid harming low tier criminals if he can, only doing as much as he needs to take them down and will try to build them back up. As for the mentally ill part, it’s not like Batman goes to the Gotham General psych ward and starts throwing punches. A lot of his criminals are insane, yes, but Batman only fights them when they become active detriments to society. If anyone could talk the Ventriloquist down from shooting his enemies with his Scarface puppet, Batman would find a way. He stops them and tries to get them help. And even beyond that, at least half of his enemies are very sane, just evil people. There’s Ra’s al Ghul, Bane, Black Mask, and the endless string of mobsters and mafiosos Batman takes down on the regular. He doesn’t just go out of his way to beat up the mentally ill, Batman takes down threats to Gotham City, no matter who they are.
7) He’s Insane/Power Hungry/A Fascist
Let’s set the record straight, Batman is not insane. Oh, but he dresses up like a bat and beats people up at night because he never got over his parents’ death! He does dress like a bat and takes to the streets to fight crime because of what happened to his parents, but that’s comic books. The only reason people think Batman is insane for doing this in a world where people are chosen by green rings to be space cops because they’re really confident is because he is mistakenly judged as too realistic a character, but we’ve already covered his seriousness. Batman doesn’t fight crime because he is unstable or wants to control everything. Yes he’s a control freak, but he has no desire to rule over everything like a deity, he just wants to make the world a better place. Batman fights the criminally insane, but he is not doing that because he is also a walking trauma patient. He wants to prevent anyone else from suffering the same pain he has, so he takes to the streets to save people. Anyone who says only an insane person would do this needs to reassess their suspension of disbelief, as again, Batman is a comic book character, and comic books are allowed to be fun and weird. Also, if you want a deep dive into Batman’s ironclad, non-insane psyche, look to Batman’s battle against Hugo Strange in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight issues #11 to #15, the “Prey” storyline.
8) He Doesn’t Use His Money To Help Gotham
This is easily the most egregious of the misconceptions. Plenty of people unfairly lump Bruce Wayne in with real world billionaires, saying that he could prevent much more crime if he spent his endless fortune on building Gotham up instead of defending it as Batman. What those people aren’t aware of is that Bruce Wayne is responsible for probably a good ninety percent of all Gotham-based charities alone. He funnels billions of dollars back into the city in attempts to improve its citizen’s quality of life, and yet Gotham refuses to improve. There’s the logical reason, being that Gotham being crime-ridden is the status quo and the never-ending story of comics must always maintain that above all else, but there’s also the fact that Gotham is just that corrupt. No matter how much money Bruce funnels into it, the money either goes missing or just has no long lasting impact. The bureaucracy of Gotham is inherently a corrupt system that can’t be changed from the top down, and even then, Bruce put so much into improving Gotham that the Court of Owls, Gotham’s secret society of rich folks who have ruled it from the shadows since its inception, that they wanted to kill him as much as Batman because they did equal amounts of good in the city. Gotham literally cannot be saved with money, and so Batman takes to the streets, yet Bruce Wayne still does everything he can to improve it, however he can.
9) He’s Only Driven By Vengeance
Batman is vengeance, Batman is the night, but he’s also more than that. People who only know Batman from memes and some of his darker stories, or God forbid only the Snyder movies, have the impression that Batman is driven solely by his desire to punish criminals for the death of his parents. However, while a desire to punish the guilty is definitely a part of his character, that is not Bruce’s main motivation for being Batman. Batman doesn’t go out every night because he wants to make criminals suffer, but to prevent other people from being hurt like he was. He knows how painful losing someone you love and being a victim can be, so he dedicates everything he has to making sure nobody else feels that pain. Batman’s ultimate goal isn’t to put fear into the hearts of every criminal, but to create a more peaceful Gotham City. There’s a saying that if you can’t imagine your Batman comforting a child then you’re not writing Batman, you’re writing the Punisher in a funny hat. Batman cares deeply about everyone, and that hope and love is what drives him even more than his anger.
10) Why Batman Doesn’t Kill
People will say that Batman’s no kill rule causes more harm than good, or that the only reason he doesn’t kill is because once he starts he won’t be able to stop himself. That second one is perhaps the most over-quoted piece of Batman media of all time, which was when Bruce explained to Red Hood why he couldn’t kill the Joker in Batman #650, or more commonly its adaptation in the Batman: Under The Red Hood movie. People think that this means that the second Batman gets a taste for blood that he’ll turn into a raging psycho that goes around murdering every villain he comes across, but that doesn’t make any sense. No, the real reason Batman doesn’t kill is because he values human life, plain and simple. His parents, a doctor and a charity worker, instilled a value for life into Bruce that is forever unmatched. Bruce knows how precious every life is, regardless of circumstances, and that is why Batman chooses to save lives, why he refuses to kill. No matter what you do with your life, you deserve to make it better, to live better and be better. In my opinion, what Batman means when he says that he won’t be able to come back from crossing the line is that once he makes that exception, once he decides that he has the right to dictate who lives or dies, the option to kill the people he fights will always be in the back of his mind. Instead of saving them, he’ll consider ending things permanently, and that would stop him from being as effective as he can in saving lives. Bruce knows exactly how painful it is to lose someone you love, how much it hurts to see someone die, and he never wants to inflict that pain onto anyone else. The entire purpose of Batman is to prevent that pain from spreading, and it started with death. Batman is his parents’ compassion, and Batman doesn’t kill.
So there we have ten things that everyone always gets wrong about Batman. It’s definitely a long list, but even this can’t cover all of the bad faith arguments and misunderstandings about Gotham’s greatest hero. They’re just a part of Batman being as popular as he is, but it doesn’t stop those misunderstandings from being aggravating. We all love Batman, so we just want people to understand him and represent him the right way. Not like Batman is perfectly fine and completely valid, but at least dislike him for a real reason, not one that just isn’t true at all. What all of this comes down to, at the end of the day, is that Batman is a walking contradtiction. He looks like he’d be as brutal and dark as some people think he is, but at his core, he’s one of the kindest people ever imagined. He’s a superhero through and through.
What misunderstanding or outright incorrect view of Batman always sets you off? Let us know in the comments below!
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