Batman is DC Comics’ most prized possession. The Billionaire Bruce Wayne and his one man war on crime and evil resonated with every human being on Earth. Everybody at one point of their life imagined to be the Dark Knight, using the shadows and their own skills to strike fear at the heart of their enemies. Who in their right minds would not want to be a billionaire playboy by day and a masked vigilante of darkness by night?!?! Batman is the flagship hero of DC Comics for a reason. His adventures are dark, gritty, and extremely unnerving no mortal man would ever be able to go through. And yet he bears that burden every day. He is a legend, a God among Men. Or is he?
Over the years, many new revelations regarding the Batman have come to light. The Dark Knight’s story is not just black and white. It is a house of smoke and mirrors. There are so many things regarding the Caped Crusader we still do not know about. He fights crime on a daily basis. But recent issues have shown his fallacies and demerits as a hero. He may have his heart in the right place but that does not excuse the many times he failed his friends and allies. He has let us down many times, most of which we were not even aware of. It is only now that those secrets are being unraveled. Batman is not a messiah. He is a failure and DC Comics just confirmed it.
In #52 of the Justice League, we finally realize just how much Batman has failed the people he had sworn to protect. His existence was supposed to curb evil. Instead he only escalated the situation. Batman’s very existence, as confirmed by Black Mercy, is pointless and the very reason for everything bad that is happening in the DC Universe. In more ways than one, DC claims that the Dark Knight is responsible for all of DC’s woes.
SPOILER ALERT: Major Spoilers for Justice League #52. We suggest you look away if you have not read it till now.
The most formidable superhero of all time, Batman is a hero of epic proportions. His adventures are the stuff of legends. But is he truly a force that is doing good to the world? The answer might surprise you!!
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In Justice League #52 by Jess Loveness, Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, Tom Napolitano, and Romulo Fajardo Junior, Batman is trapped in an endless hallucination after the parasitic life-form Black Mercy infects him. Black Mercy shows the people it traps with their deepest, darkest desires as part of a hallucination like trap their mind can never get out of. Batman is given the same treatment. Batman, in this hallucination, is shown what he had always wanted – to never have become Batman in the first place. Instead of donning the cowl, he became a model citizen using the massive Wayne fortune to turn Gotham and the rest of the world into a utopia.
The Punchline is – in this imaginary world, he actually succeeded. It also revealed how Batman’s War on Crime has spectacularly failed. Instead, in the real world, it merely amplified the problems and gave rise to forms of evil that would have never ever occurred if Bruce Wayne decided to do the right thing and not become a self-obsessed superhero.
It is not the first time that DC has implied such a blasphemous fact of life. Fans have been arguing for decades how Batman has been only adding fuel to the vicious cycle of violence and hatred in Gotham City. His vigilantism delivers quick, punitive punishment to the wrong-doers but they always come back to settle the score. Batman was responsible for creating many of DC’s super villains like the Joker. Many other villains sprung up because they were inspired by Batman’s love for theatrics and tried to match him with acts of similar nature of their own.
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In Justice League #52, Black Mercy finally shows Batman the light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. The parasitic life-form states that the pattern of agony and violence ends only if Batman hangs up the cape and the cowl. If Batman decides to call it quits, many other villains would follow. The Joker and the rest of the Batman villains would stop cooking up schemes because they would have nobody as a rival to their crimes. In the end, it will be the Law that punishes the wrongdoers, not Batman. This would enforce the power of the rightful authorities and instill courage in the justice system. Black Mercy shows that if Batman stops, Arkham’s doors will shut down forever. In fact, many of the villains that once were bitter enemies of Bruce Wayne will end up becoming his greatest allies.
But it is not the only revelation that is brought to light in the issue. In this hallucination, Bruce Wayne finally finds peace and closure, something he had been searching for his entire life. Bruce makes peace with his enemies. Poison Ivy and Two Face are shown to be his friend and allies. They do not hate Bruce Wayne anymore. They are his closest confidantes. Bruce Wayne, in this world, has a better life because he decided to give it a host – of forging a path of love and kindness instead of bitterness and agonizing pain. He broke the cycle by offering a hand rather than a fist. The most defining moment came when Black Mercy revealed that by being Batman, Bruce’s greatest crime was not creating more villains and feeding that rage that engulfed Gotham, but it is his action of depriving the world of the vast money and resources of Bruce Wayne, who was much more efficient at destroying crime and evil than Batman ever was or will be.
Black Mercy tells Bruce his gravest error. He failed to see a different, more refined path to help stop evil. This new method involved cooperation with the villains he had been fighting all his life. Mr Freeze is shown in one snippet. Using his cryogenic inventions, Freeze was given access to Bruce Wayne’s huge resources to create advanced technology the likes of which the world has never seen. Combining his own intelligence along with the money he has, he could have partnered up with the super villains to make Gotham a paradise, changing the city’s infrastructure and improving the world in the long term. In reality, Batman only used his resources and money to feed his own hunger for control.
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The key was letting go, rather than keeping it in. Batman was not the stronger weapon to fight crime. It had been Bruce Wayne all this time. It is a shame Batman could not see the difference. And his pointless charade has endangered the entire DC Universe.
Batman is the reason the DC Universe is in such terrible shape. Justice League #52 proves this point without a shadow of doubt. The harsh truth might have made many Batman fans uncomfortable.
