Batman is a beloved character that is close to the hearts of millions but that doesn’t mean that he or his stories are without criticism. Many, especially non-Batman fans, love to poke holes at the very concept of the Dark Knight, saying things like it doesn’t make sense how Batman is a super-smart detective billionaire who punches crime in the face to clean up his city. Now, in the words of the great Grant Morrison, a lot of adults struggle with the idea of comic books because they can’t accept that it’s not real. In that vein, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy comics, particularly Batman comics. After all, no real person could do what Batman does. To be a comic book fan means to accept that it’s fictional and just have fun with it.
However, there are some times when what the comic is asking us to imagine is just too much. With others it’s just plain stupid. Any comic book character that has existed for as long as Batman has is bound to have some pretty weird moments making people go “huh?”, and oh boy are there some big moments that simply defy sense. Here are three such times, Batman moments that full stop make no sense.
3) Riddler Being the Mastermind in Batman: Hush
Batman: Hush is regarded as not just a classic Batman storyline but a classic comic, which takes Batman on a world-spanning mystery to find out who is behind all of his villains acting strangely. It has some jaw-dropping moments and absolutely gorgeous art, but its ending makes zero sense. The entire plot revolves around a bunch of seemingly random events where his villains act a little out of character, with Batman eventually figuring out they were all being manipulated by a man named Hush. Hush was actually Thomas Elliot, one of Bruce’s oldest friends who wants revenge on Bruce because his father saved the lives of Thomas’s parents after Thomas cut their brakes in an attempt to get his inheritance early. The whole point of his plot seems to be to give Batman extreme paranoia by destroying the trust he has in the people around him and how he expects those people to act.
However, that all falls apart when in the end it is revealed that the Riddler is the one behind everything. He previously deduced Batman’s identity and partnered with Hush because… and that’s where it loses us. While Hush had a reason in wanting to make Batman suffer on a personal level, the same can’t be said for The Riddler. The Riddler’s never wanted that before. In fact, it really seems like all of this was just to set up some big dramatic moment where the Riddler could reveal to Batman that he knows who he is. Sure, that’s in character for the Riddler, but why tie it to some convoluted string of villains acting weird? And that’s not even mentioning that this entire plan falls apart if Batman, while in a coma with debris embedded in his brain, doesn’t ask specifically for Thomas Elliot to perform his surgery. Frankly, while the individual moments and art were great, the overarching plot of this story really falls apart upon inspection. The Riddler of it all still makes no sense, even with a sequel to Hush in comics now.
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2) Batman Lost All His Money and Nothing Changed
During the citywide battle that was the “Joker War” storyline, Bruce Wayne’s fortune was stolen by the Clown Prince of Crime. In the end, Batman decided to leave his billions in the hands of Lucius Fox, choosing to continue protecting Gotham without it. However, in the next several years of stories that occurred before Batman regained his infinite wealth, absolutely nothing changed about how Batman operated. Sure, Bruce Wayne was still a millionaire after he lost most of his money so he wasn’t entirely without resources, but Batman is a character that demands a bottomless well of funds to do what he does. It’s mentioned constantly by other characters such as Ghost-Maker, but we never actually see Batman have to beat bat guys on a budget.
We never see Batman not be able to afford a new Batplane, or need to go back after a fight to pick up batarangs to reuse them. Now I’m not saying we should have seen those scenes specifically, but it would have been nice to see how Batman fought crime without access to infinite technology or gadgets. The biggest change we see is that Bruce moves out of Wayne Manor, but beyond being unable to afford that property tax we get nothing. This was a great opportunity to show Batman operate in a low to the ground way, focused on being as effective as he can with limited resources. Instead, his financial situation is just not adequately addressed.
1) Only Being Batman for 10 Years
When DC rebooted their universe for the New 52, they changed a lot about how their heroes operated, including how long they’d been heroes. The new standard was that every major hero had only been around for ten years, and so most heroes were deaged by a good bit to fit that timeline. However, while most heroes had their histories adjusted to incorporate this new length of action, Batman didn’t. Most heroes had the majority of their stories written out of canon to show how they were much younger and had experienced less. Batman, however, kept nearly his entire history intact. Considering how popular Batman and so many of his stories are, DC wanted to have their cake and eat it too, so they said that around ninety percent of Batman’s history was basically the same, but it all happened in ten years.
This is literally impossible. Fans were expected to believe that Batman went through four different Robins in ten years. Dick Grayson’s origin was changed so he was adopted by Batman at age sixteen, which would make him less than ten years younger than Batman, who started his career at twenty five. That feels wrong on so many levels. DC consolidated literal decades of storytelling into ten actual years, which meant that Batman was basically living out his most classic stories, which are often his most traumatic and bombastic, at a rate of about one a week if he was lucky. The relationships and enemies Batman built over his decades-long career were cut to a fraction of that, and frankly, the idea of it all just makes absolutely zero sense.
So there we have three of the most downright confusing times for Batman comics. Think I missed any that belong up here, or think any other moments were way more confusing? Let us know in the comments below!
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