Huh, maybe. Although my point was more batman is part of that class (albeit begrudgingly) so expecting batman in a position of great power and influence to actively take that from other people is just very hypocritical. Not that he shouldn't (or someone shouldn't). Just a very weird position.
That's what these (alleged) "super heroes" really are... idealized, ubermensch-esque metaphors for the actual power wielded by the rich and privileged.
In fact, I'd say that Batman is the ultimate Objectivist wet dream - he perfectly personifies the fascist (as Batman) and the capitalist (as Bruce Wayne) in one person. Even Ayn Rand's creepazoid ancap sugar-daddy "heroes" didn't manage that.
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
Captain America is an artificial warrior created by a Jewish scientist to fight the Nazis, and Superman is a baby sent away in a basket to be raised by not-dead parents who chose to use his privilege to help people.
Zack Snyder is an Objectivist and that's why his Superman movies stink. He doesn't understand the core themes of superheroes, he only understands the spectacle and surface theatrics.
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
I mean... c'mon. Captain America is low-hanging fruit - the correlation between Captain America and actual US behavior in the world essentially writes itself.
Superman is a far more sophisticated representation of US-style liberalism - but, just like liberalism itself, that doesn't make Super Cheese any less of a reactionary.
However... we can talk about the individual politics of these characters all day long - and we'd be missing the entire point of the metaphor in it's entirety.
The problem with the "super hero" genre is not the individual politics of the characters concerned - it's with how they normalize and justify the concentration of power in the hands of these exalted individuals.
In other words - the problem is fundamental.
He doesn’t understand the core themes of superheroes,
Okay do fucking Spider-Man and tell me how "with great power comes great responsibility" is Objectivist. Rand wanted all the talented people to fuck off and leave the stupid poors to die! Spider-Man's first arc is realising that his powers shouldn't be used for self enrichment.
If you actually read the early comics, it takes Peter a good long while to learn that lesson and he still forgot it pretty frequently. Still, his journey toward learning that lesson was a core part of his character until the writers decided to just make him a flawless Mary-Sue.
Inb4 the flood of people who get all their batman knowledge from the Nolan trilogy and the stupid one liners they added to Injustice to try and whataboutism him against superman literally murdering people and installing a fascist autocracy.
CEOs of companies existed in 1939, and did before. 1939 would have been the time of the great depression, World War 2, fascism, and Batman didn't go after them, he went after the people who needed work and took the last chance they had.
Bruce Wayne is just a form of Bill Gates. Donates millions to charity, good causes, hospitals, fighting diseases, but he still has lots of more money than when he did before all this "charity". The difference is that Gates doesn't put on a mask and go punch the poor of Seattle.
If Batman was real, he'd be a dickhead, worse than Musk or Bezos.
Yeah because when I think of the working class I think lunatics dressed like clowns arming chemical weapon dispersing explosives on the orders of a guy who caught a chemical burn induced skin condition and decided everyone was gonna die suffocating over it.
Batman is a detective,a detective! 99% of what he does has nothing to do with fighting, you just don't hate read the detective work because Batman going out of his way to find the murderer of some nobody with nobody to care enough to ask it be done doesn't feed this bizarre obsession some folks have with making Batman the worst thing ever because he has money as a plot convenience to explain where all his insane tech comes from.
Also, he does constantly do work addressing wealth inequality by backing community efforts to relieve the effects of poverty and by championing community leaders standing up to corruption. Why doesn't it work? Because there's a literal criminal conspiracy of the wealthiest of Gotham dating back centuries that most recent versions of Batman has been at war with since near the outset of his investigative career. Again, read any of the comic books published in the last like 20 years and this would all be entry level stuff.
Also, Gotham's gangs are not normal gangs, like I exampled above, but also consider the sheer level of advanced education or ability to outsmart most folks who have one Gotham's criminal leaders have. Even Joker is heavily implied to have retained advanced chemical engineering training from before he went psycho.
If the idea that even one rich person has genuinely good intentions and does genuine work addressing the causes of criminal activity at every level is that hard for people to grasp, maybe just put the comics down and find another topic because man are you all gonna struggle with basically everything else you're gonna find in the genre.
Why doesn't it work? Because there's a literal criminal conspiracy of the wealthiest of Gotham dating back centuries that most recent versions of Batman has been at war with since near the outset of his investigative career.
Batman is a detective, a detective! 99% of what he does has nothing to do with fighting
Wayne's a deranged lunatic. 99% of what he does has everything to do with failing to cope with childhood trauma (and a bad case of affluenza), and very little to do with any real events happening around him.
99% of what he's doing is using his own past traumas as a tool to prevent similar traumas from happening to other children.
If you can't see your batman comforting a dying child in her last moments, you don't have batman, you have the punisher in a funny hat.
Stop commenting on the punisher in a funny hat and telling us you're talking about the guy with the best track record in comics for rehabilitating rogue's gallery members if not completely then to the point of finding a place in society where they can live their peace, save maybe for the flash, depends on how much of his rogue's gallery by mass is currently evil speedsters.
Rorschach is a fascist, he only works in absolutes and while the Batman tries not to kill, Rorschach has no such regard for human life. He detests the junky as much as the murderer, for him there is only pureness and evil, every little bit of amoral behavior will be punished and at the same time he considers his own vigilantism as above the law.
He's a misogynist who thinks that the Comedian raping Silk Spectre was just a "moral lapse". He holds even for his time outdated socially conservative views and strongly opposes what we would call (gender and sexual) minority rights.
Rorschach is unbending and uncompromising, he is beholden only to his conservative rigid views of black and white morality with no room for shades of grey. That might not sound so bad at first, but if you think about it, that is definitely not someone who you want as a judge of people.
On top of that he's a far-right believer, he's not a government man in the same way the alt-right are not. His thinking is deeply conspiratorial and paranoid with a huge dollop of delusion. He's better described as an Ayn Rand paleolibertarian.
Thinking about it he definitely would fit right in with today's alt-right with the only difference that (if - and only if - he would not buy into their conspiracy theories - and he's very much likely to do so) he would detest Trump for his lying.
But Rorschach is definitely the kinda guy who'd shoot up a pizza place looking for tortured kids in the basement.
I love him as a character, he's one of the best written vigilante "heros" out there but what's so fascinating - to me at least - is that his principled moral conviction is contrasted by how immensely unlikeable this man is and how his moral uprightness relies on the moral compass of a deranged 11 year old with a gun.
When I was a kid watching Watchmen, I thought Rorschach was badass with his fight scenes and detective work, like breaking into Dr. Manhattan's compound. His fight scenes with the swat guys was badass.
Then they make a point to show you multiple times throughout the movie, this gross, shabby looking dude carrying around a "the end is near" sign, following people and giving them the creeps. They definitely didn't go into the comic enough though.
Rorschach is Batman but worse in every single way. All the childhood trauma and mental illness without any of the money, good manners, or training, and with several extra doses of far right conspiranoia and misogyny.
If you read Rorschach as the good guy in Watchmen, you completely misinterpreted what Moore was trying to say. If there's any good guys in Watchmen (or at least not bad guys), and that's a big if, it's the folks around the newsstand, obviously not counting Kovacs.
No. Unequivocally no. This might make sense on its face but it misunderstands Batman at a fundamental level- Batman is a hero who cannot make sense. He is severely mentally ill and craves change physically and instantly wrought by his own two hands.
If a CEO were doing something outlandishly and visibly evil then they might find themselves on Batman’s radar, but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about. Would it make sense for Batman to do something about it? Yes. Absolutely. Would the crazy 100 kg gymnast dressed like a giant bat, who has made a nightly ritual of shattering the spines of impoverished criminal dockworkers do that? No.
Now daredevil, daredevil might find himself beating the ass off a shady Manhattan CEO. But daredevil is sane, reasonable, and goal oriented and Batman is just not.
In most modern versions, yes. He’s just survivor’s guilt held together by a ceaseless run of violent distractions and related obsessions. Not the one to call on your union busting boss.
but exacerbating wealth inequality is just not something Batman usually cares about
In fact, being a mega-rich himself, he's probably best buddies with those CEOs so long as they don't do something so outlandishly evil that he has to go after them for publicity reasons.
He also beats up rich people, like the Penguin. The Joker and Riddler and all those guys get their crazy gadgets and hordes of minions somehow. They must be rich af
Upper middle class. They've got the kind of money Al Capone had, not the kind of money Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.
Batman generally leaves Lex Luthor, who does have that kind of money, alone. (And I don't usually read DC, so I may be wrong, but I don't think he tends to get physical with the court of owls much either...),
He just goes after the ones he can beat without much backlash from the public/system.
Imagine if he takes down a CEO. He'd not be able to play batman. Gordon and batman sympathisers would be affected, so Batman's human connection in the police would be lost. He can hack stuff, but might not always be enough.
He can do other stuff, but he can only do it gradually and much more tactfully.
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