@sunman said:
@drgnx said:
@sunman said:
After having 2 Robins die on him and almost having 2 others die on him it just reflects poorly on Batman.
I don't think that's entirely fair, in both cases, both Robins didn't follow orders and acted brashly.
As for "almost dying" ... well the way I see it;
- It is a comicbook, heroes are always almost dying (The 50s had "almost dying" at the end of every show (unless the arc was complete)). In part this is to do with the fact Robin is a Hero and heroes need to be put in danger to keep things interesting.
- Batman does not really have a life outside of crime-fighting so the Robins are part of his main family relationships and are people who the authors will be put in danger to push BM. His Robins double as both his partners and his Lois Lane/Aunt May/Mary Jane/Etc...
well yeah if we are just looking at him under the lens of a fictional comic book characters dancing to the strings of the writers that al makes sense. Still I think as you analyze how he's been portrayed he's putting young kids in teenagers in mortal danger constantly. It's a comic so you take it with a grain of salt, but for argument sake I don't think that excuses him as we look at his character.
He is their mentor, legal guardian, father what have you. Sure Dick turned out well, but when you look at the rest I can't really say Batman a good father or mentor. I don't see the Robins doubling as his romantic interests or father figures. There are other supporting characters that fulfill those roles
To be clear, I named a few examples that I know well that occur a lot, the generic concept is they double as "someone close to you that you care about". The thing about Batman is there are very few he is willing to really connect with in any depth that the author can exploit regulatory (to me his girlfriends have always been a dime a dozen ... except Catwomen, I never remember them).
This does not always have to be his Robins in trouble, but how many people in his life are closer to him than his Robins? Alfred suffers from time to time, but he is not in the field as much so less likely to be in the line of fire or find himself kidnapped, though the new public link to Batman Inc gives reason now. Jim gets hurt too and I would assume Catwomen is not very popular either amongst enemies of Batman. But any time you have a partnership there is a higher chance of authors playing on that vs other external relationships. But again that is from plot perspective as you put it. Could the authors take a different route? Sure!
In terms of "in comic", His portrayal on including kids is a long time issue from what I can tell (I've never actually really looked that deep into it). I think the issue with Robins (and now many of the expanded family) is that Batman sees people who are enough like him that they will do what they want even without his help. So does he lock them up or brainwash them, let them go die on their own, or try to guide them and teach them, the best he can, how to survive and hope they are different enough from him, that they will one day move on? How "I" look at Batman in that regard is dependent on how would these kids turn out if Batman didn't take them in, or tried to force them to take a different path.
I think Jason has mentioned he would have turned out worse, and Damon, well he was never going to live a peaceful life, he would kill things like animals just to stop himself from killing people; of all the characters, I just can't blame Batman for Damian. The others seemed like they would be putting themselves in danger regardless (though not sure about Steph).
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