Bruce is the least interesting character in his universe

Where did that myth begin? I see countless people saying that Bruce is the least intriguing character in the Bat-universe. What are your views on that and why?

I haven't seen anyone who says that

@doctorjimmy:

Because writers this days have lost the most important tool to write good and compelling characters. Imagination.

If Bruce is not interesting is because writers don't know how to balance his dual identity with Batman. Check Telltales Batman, Bruce is interesting there because they actually gave us a human being facing the perils that only someone with the spirit of Batman can handle.

Batman is the bat family

I've seen it on various forums tbh. Others claim that Dick is a better Batman. Am I really the only one who has seen such opinions?

You're right on the money about imagination, but I sadly won't ever be able to play Telltale Batman because my pc is a piece of shit and I don't have a console :(

Batman is so boring, I'm always routing for his villains

I strongly disagree, but why do you think he's boring?

@doctorjimmy:

:( sorry to hear that. I know how that feels. It took me some time to save money for an actual computer that dosen't run at the speed of a slug!

But, you can always have youtube to watch gameplays ;P

Anyone that says this has no idea what they're talking about. Totally asinine remark.

This is my first time seeing this

I guess so :P

From the top of my head, there's a video from a youtuber in my country that states that exact thing about him being the least interesting character in his stories, but it's not in English unfortunately :P

I think what led me to create this post was a thread called "Unpopular Batman Opinions" on comicbookresources which, if I recall correctly, had several members pushing that myth around

It began when people realized that what makes Batman interesting is his interactions with other characters and more specifically his villains.

Like if you isolate him and boil him down, you are basically left with a brooding infallible superman that can do or manage just about anything, so a grouchy Gary Stu. Whats interesting with him starts to happen when you add the other characters to the world around him and have him react to them. Like if you compare him to the Robins, he is usually considered the center and the Robins skills and personalities are derived from him:

• Nightwing: If Bruce was a good people-person, better acrobat, worse detective and inventor.
• Red Hood: If Bruce had fewer morals
• Damian: He was even worse with people
• Tim: If he was smarter, but a less capable fighter.

Anyway, I don't entirely agree with this notion because at the core of everything Batman is sort of the engine that makes all of this crap work. Like Frank Miller had the Joker fall completely apart when Batman vanished and then returned when Batman did... I think the same is true of most of the Bat-verse.

First time I heard it though was as part of a video review of Arkham Asylum, (warning against strong language), where I can see the notion of a videogame character is the players avatar, you are not really Batman in those games... you look like him, you dress like him and you can do all the cool stuff that he can do... but then you steer him over to stare at a wall or oogle at Quinn or Ivy (or fall off a cliff), and he's not Batman any more. And the fact that you can take Batman out of Batman like that and still make the best superhero games ever sort of says it all how little there is behind the cape and cowl.

I have also seen this. Tumblr users who don't read comics have become obsessed with the bat family but hate Bruce cause he isn't "comfy."

I dunno where it began but James Tynion and Tom King are doing their damned best to push this myth.

King by making Batman unlikable at best and dull at worst.

Tynion by making his pet 90's crew look better than Bruce.

@outside_85 said:

I think that applies to every single character...ever. A character, just like a human being, doesn't exist in a vacuum and his personality traits are largely defined by his interactions with other people. But even if you just judge him alone, "grouchy Gary Stu" is a very narrow-minded view and paints him as a one-dimensional character, which he is absolutely not. Is Spider-Man just a whiny loser nerd? Is Daredevil just a catholic guilt-ridden lawyer? Captain America, just a patriot? Wolverine, just some angry dude, right? The problem is, you ignore the nuances of his character in order to promote your belief that he's uninteresting on his own.

Amen to that. Bruce in King's hands is extremely boring. I was going to read Tynion's run but then everybody was saying it doesn't have Bruce at the center of it, so I'll pass :p

@doctorjimmy: Please try to imagine what Bruce is like when he's alone in the mansion and not doing anything bat or business related.

Chances are good you are imagining him sitting in a chair staring into empty space because aside keeping up a front and being Batman, Bruce doesn't really have a life outside of that. He doesn't have hobbies, he doesn't have friends that are not work-related, pretty much all he does is be Batman or maintain the facade that he isn't.

@outside_85 Last time I checked, obsession and loneliness are two of his defining character traits. Sorry, but Bruce, casually and without effort, hanging out with friends for a drink or watching a football match is not the kind of storytelling I want to sit through. Part of his charm is his inability to connect to other people: remember that issue when he tries to find an excuse to call Aquaman to hang out with him? It's not that he doesn't want to socialize, it's that it's not easy to him, so he neglects it. And he has had various romances over the years, not all of them intriguing of course (but then again, even spider-man has had boring ones).

If you want Bruce to be a fully functioning adult, you're looking at the wrong character, I'm afraid.

If thats what you find interesting, thats all for you then... but it doesn't really help him to be more than a blank slate with cape and cowl.

@outside_85 see, this is what i don't get: why does the lack of a normal personal life equal a blank slate? Does Bruce need to be Peter Parker (an example of someone with an actual life) in order to be interesting? I don't think you understand what "blank slate" really means. Bruce's personality is too damn unusual and quirky to be that. From his three distinct "faces" and his difficulty to connect with people to his fear of bats and cold demeanor, Bruce is far from a blank slate.

He's a polystyrene block with a frowny face drawn on it.

@outside_85 ok now i've confirmed you haven't picked up a single comic book with Batman in it, and if you have, you really haven't been paying attention. i mean, seriously now, do you really believe what you're writing?

Here I posted this somewhere else but thought I could share it here too.

Batman is a character motivated by tragedy. And to stay true to his character he has and most remain that, a tragedy character.

You can't simply change a fundamental element of a character and make them the same afterwards. Characters can evolve, but you can't take away the heart of what created them in the first place; because unlike real life people, there are emotional elements of a character that can't be changed without making them unrecognizable as they would no longer hold the candle of what created them in the first place. Batman is that character, we all want him to move on from his trauma, we all want him to see him happy, we all want him to have his own Lois Lane, etc. But Batman never and ever will be happy because that's the fundamental element of the character, he is and will always be a tragedy, no matter how many fans wish otherwise. If you make Romeo and Juliet find happiness at the end of their story, it would no longer have that elemental concept of their tragedy and would not otherwise be remembered as one of the best stories of their time.

Emphasis on characterization.Shelock Holmes had it too, and he, just like Bruce Wayne has a zealot desire to solve crimes that have crowded out almost everything else from his life, including the possibility of warm and reciprocal relationships.

Bruce Wayne is just your modern Shelock Holmes. Take away Watson and what is Shelock? He still this obsessive man that ignores people and in the end, he still got his wits and his emotional problems.

So, what is Bruce Wayne without the other characters?. Well, he still that child that saw his family die in a dark alley. No one recovers from that so easily.

Agree 100%, @assassinb. I think a lot of readers have misconceptions about what personality means.

Well, I guess my question to those people would be: What is it about Bruce that makes him the least interesting character in his Universe??? Is it because he has no powers?? Or personality??? Etc.

He's boring but not that boring. John Stewart still takes that

He is boring for me, but not too boring

Nice bait

This is no bait, I assure you. I have seen this too many times and I want to know why some people feel that way, but all i got (apart from outside_85) was "well, he's boring, but not that boring".

That's a common complaint by man folks, and I believe it's true in a lot of comics. Batman has become a boring architecture. Stories like the Long Halloween are shown as examples of the greatest comics of all time where Batman barely has a personality if he even has one. When fans act like so many mediocre stories are the best depiction of the character, others shouldn't waste their time and money on the character if they don't find them interesting beyond them.

Batman is the most popular superhero, but a lot of that comes from his aesthetics compared to others and the idea that he doesn't have superpowers. The reason why Batman's villains are considered to be the best is because of Batman '66. If you ask most people to break down the characters, I guarantee they're just going with the trends.

If anyone reads comics written by writers like Frank Miller and Gerry Conway, it's clear that Batman has an interesting personality. However, I think a lot of the reason why he's claimed to be the most complex character is because it's coming from kids who think teenage angst is so complex.

When Batman doesn't show personality, folks can claim it's because he's so in control compared to the other Bat-family members or whatever BS, but he's a fictional character. He's not a real person. He's supposed to enjoyable, and he hasn't been in a long time.

In my opinion, the best move would have been to keep him dead and let Dick continue as Batman because there's nothing else for writers to say about Bruce other than make him more and more immature.

He's the most interesting character in his universe. Batman can work without his old villains and supporting characters but his supporting characters and villains hardly work without him, they don't have that much weight to them without Batman.

This

@infantfinite128 I'll just ask one thing: define personality. If "personality" for you means cracking jokes and being enjoyable to be around/work with, I'm afraid we have very different perceptions of what the word means.

I mean, you know, OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING, personality is this in a nutshell (from wiki): Personality is usually defined as the set of habitual behaviors, cognitions and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors.^[1] While there is no generally agreed upon definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions with ones environment

And batman has all of that in spades.

@doctorjimmy: Well, then fear not because I don't believe that's what personality means, and I used a poor choice of words. You are right that he has had personality.

I just remember when Batman used to have moments of doubt, self-reflection, brooding, guilt, compassion in a single issue as well as the ability to form relationships rather easily. We'd see him beaten down and tired in both the art and inner dialogue whenever he accomplished a feat rather than get busted up and then get back up like it barely affected him psychologically or physically.

Perhaps, my problem is with modern cinematic and decompressed story-telling in comics, so I'm not remembering issues like I used to since older issue were packed with more words.

@infantfinite128 Yeah, seems like your issue might be with HOW writers approach him and not with the core of his character. I agree with your statement, though. Snyder is probably the last writer that really put the "man" in Batman (not that his stories were always great, though). I really don't like a Bruce that's infallible and always gets the job done without effort. Only Morrison wrote him as Bat-God and did it superbly, I think: he really showed the effort he put into the mission.

The only thing I disagree with is the ability to make easily friends. Bats was never the social type, but yeah, the bat-jerk trope has really exaggerated that. Unless you're talking about romantic relationships, though

@doctorjimmy: I did very much enjoy Grant Morrison's run. I just keep forgetting things because when I read something I'm not fond of it taints my memories of previous things I enjoyed. I really appreciate you and anyone on forums refreshing my memory.

Relationship-wise, I was thinking of Leslie, the Outsiders, general people he came across (like the skier in the Denny O'Neil Ra's al Ghul story), kids (he acted like a father figure for some unfortunate children and he could have conversations with them—he was very comforting and he wouldn't make their pain all about himself like I recall seeing in more modern Batman), and yes, women.

Remember when Batman would refer to almost everyone as "pal" and "friend"? I loved that in old comics.

@outside_85: That's an oversimplification of Bruce and his relationship with the robins. Dick is not Bruce but well adjusted, Dick started out as the light to Bruce's dark but became his own person. Same with Jason. He's not just Bruce without morals, Jason HAS morals, just different from Bruce. Damian is just a troubled kid, not really bruce in any way. Tim is about the future potential, the one that could potentially inherit it IF he becomes obsessed. He's not (at his age) smarter than Bruce (unless you read Tynion), but he could be. The special thing about Tim is he doesn't want to give up his humanity like Bruce had to.

If you're not into characters who are a bit broken inside or darker, that's totally valid, and for you, Bruce would be the least interesting. Cause unhappiness drives him.

@infantfinite128 Ah yes I totally agree with you. Seems that (with various exceptions, of course) Bats has lost a good deal of his humanity and compassion. Not completely, but it's not as evident as in earlier years.

@doctorjimmy: Hey, this was a great conversation. You reminded me why I liked Batman so much.

@infantfinite128 glad I could help! (it was indeed a great chat!)

I feel like that role belongs to Babs or any of his extra sidekicks following the reboot. They all feel extraneous.

Somebody bumped batman hate threads and then deleted his messages :(

Dick Grayson is even more terrible