onlytalia: mightykombat: Check how they pronounce Ra’s Al Ghul’s first name. It’s actually not Raysh. The true sound is more like ‘Ross’. You know how I know? Because actual people who are Arab and actually speak Arabic have said so. It’s not just a name. It’s also a title with a literal translation. It’s meant to… Continue reading How to check if someone’s a true Batman fan
goodluckdetective: I just had an amazing thought. So we all know Bruce gets gossiped about in Gotham tabloids. This is just a fact. And we can assume Batman gets gossiped about too. And we know that Bruce has made it look like they are two close but different people to lose suspicion. So here’s the… Continue reading
BRUCE: I’ve created jobs by keeping Wayne Enterprises in Gotham. I’ve provided scholarships to every employee of my company and I offer them to others as well. I’ve built orphanages and hospitals, including mental health facilities. I’ve provided jobs to ex-felons right out of prison so they can rebuild their lives. I’ve supported pro-reform political candidates and the few honest cops in Gotham City.
BRUCE: It’s going to take time to reform the system and lift this city out of poverty and corruption, so I think I’ll spend my evenings protecting the people who live here. Tonight, I’m going after the criminals preying on the sex workers struggling to make a living in Crime Alley.
BRUCE: And once I’ve kicked some ass, I’ll offer their victims jobs at Wayne Enterprises so they can get off the streets and have stable, safe, legal employment. I’ll pay for any education or training they might need.
ALFRED: Don’t forget your cape, sir.
Oh snap! And if anyone is curious, I can show scans of these exact situations they’re talking about.
Yes, because Bruce definitely does not have his own anti-gun agenda. CLEARLY.
For anyone who watched “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” the Batmite finale had a whole thing on this – Batman NEVER EVER uses a gun. Nobody tell his right-wing fans about that…
The whole thing about him and guns stems from his parents’ murder. like jesus fuckin christ people.
BATMAN HATES GUNS
BATMAN HATES GUNS
BATMAN HATES GUNS BECAUSE GUNS ARE WHAT CAUSED HIM TO BECOME THE BATMAN IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE
Wait, guys. This whole thing actually gets even stupider, because we’ve gone through this before. Arguably worse, in fact, since it wasn’t just idle twitter threats. LEMME DROP SOME OBSCURE COMICS HISTORY ON YA.
In the early 90′s, DC Comics published this:
This is Batman: Seduction of the Gun. It was published because the son of a Warner Bros. executive, who had ties to DC, was murdered through gun violence. The proceeds of the book went to education. (Specifically through this charity, which is named for–and founded because of–that murder victim.)
Let me say that again: it was published because somebody actually died and the proceeds went to an educational charity founded in his name. Not anti-gun legislation, or to anti-gun politicians, but education. At its heart, this was a book written to raise awareness of a particular senseless death and others like it, and filled with hope that such tragedies could be avoided in the future.
To further drive home how this is important in the context of the Batman universe, Bruce goes into graphic detail about what happened to his parents–probably the most graphic depiction of the Waynes’ murder that you’ll ever read. (I think it’s online somewhere if anybody isn’t as lazy as I am and wants to look it up.)
ANYWAY, for at least a month after its publication, the letters columns of various Batman titles were full of angry fans writing to DC to complain about this book. (If you have any Batman comics kicking around from this time period you might even be able to find some—that’s how I stumbled on this history myself.)
Do you know what the bulk of these complaints were about?
“HOW DARE YOU GIVE MY MONEY FOR A BATMAN COMIC TO GUN EDUCATION. HOW DARE YOU PUSH AN ANTI-GUN AGENDA IN A BATMAN COMIC. HOW DARE.“
Because, apparently, spending money on reading the adventures of an explicitly anti-gun crime fighter is fine, so long as not one penny ever ends up doing anything to curb gun deaths.
A couple of the letters that I recall were tied up in how DC supposedly didn’t disclose that this comic’s profits went to charity. Now, you may notice that it doesn’t say “proceeds to charity,” anywhere on the
cover, and that sounds a little sketchy (and if you feel it’s sketchy that’s valid even if I don’t necessarily agree), but the book does mention this inside–and since this was
published in the days of comics being sold in grocery stores and at news
stands, not bagged-and-boarded, anyone who bothered to flip through it
before purchasing it would see pretty clearly that it’s for charity.
There’s also that handy title, “Seduction of the Gun” and Batman–an anti-gun violence hero!–reaching out to stop someone from reaching for a gun. So…it’s not exactly like this thing was in a solid black polybag and it was some big secret that DC was getting one over on everybody, tricking people into buying an anti-gun comic. It’s not a stretch, if you’ve ever picked up a Batman comic before, that maybe this book is not going to be about how cuddly guns are.
AND YET, with no sense of self awareness about how hypocritical it was to complain that an anti-gun hero was in a story that didn’t glorify guns and that benefit a charity with a similar stance, when they’d been passively supporting that stance by consuming Batman books all along, entire swaths of fanboys decided to drop DC titles from their pull lists during the height of the comics boom.
Moral of the Story: no matter how stupid something in modern comics fandom may sound, I can pretty much guarantee something even stupider has already happened and we’re just repeating history. THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
Monsters' Queen 