#I'm reading Batman/Superman world's finest and idk anything about DC comics but I like what I'm reading and I fuck with the art so hard

[aghostshipontheblue]

The way I always knew I would fuck with Superman if I sat down to read even one of his comics and here I am. spiralling.

[roobylavender]

im fairly new to batcomics so forgive me for this dumb ask/being uninformed, but do you ever have like. doubt in your reading for bruce as a character, or feel bleak about it (?) im aware you dont really like the reading of him as an abuser, but from what ive seen he most often does emotional neglect/distance and parentification of a child, which /are still/ abuse, and this happens very consistently. from what i can tell there is more evidence of him being a bad parent than otherwise. people often say hes incapable of having a child without messing them up beyond repair, and from what ive seen that rings true😭 i also know you said u dont like alot of his modern portrays, but these types of abuse also occur in older comics as well from what i can tell. i myself often have doubt (perhaps this is because i havent read everything yet and im still informing myself on his character)-that maybe this /is/ just his character, bc of HOW consistent the pattern is. idk if im really asking a specific question. im more so wondering what your thoughts are, like on parentificafion of his kids and emotional neglect/distance, would this be different if DC portrayed him more empathetically/based on your reading, and/or is he just fundamentally unable to parent someone without abusing them like some ppl say. i understand i may have just opened a whole can of worms lol but im so curious

you are totally fine! canon is quite overwhelming in both volume and scope, and conversations about bruce being an abuser definitely dominate at present (not wrongfully btw), so i don't blame people for ascribing to them early on. i will say at least from what i have read (and i will admit here that my pre-bronze age reading is not nearly as consistent as my post-bronze age reading so i have kept less track of specific writers and runs there) that i think the aspects that largely define present interpretations of bruce as an abuser tend to take from canon post-crisis onward. so that's probably why in a sense it looks like bruce has "always" been an abuser, bc realistically speaking if you're a new dc reader it makes most sense to start with the aftermath of the crisis and go from there. most conversations about "canon" tend to be about post-crisis canon (ie what has taken place on new earth/prime earth) and usually when you're looking up batman reading lists they will start with year one rather than with anything in pre-crisis. the crisis was nearly forty years ago after all! it covers a lot of territory and unless you're a really dedicated comic reader with a lot of time on your hands i don't think most people have the time or energy to go further back (to no fault of their own obv)

all that being said. pre-crisis canon is obv not monolithic in nature and there are definitely blogs out there who have dedicated themselves to compiling individual issues or moments they would personally interpret as evocative of abusive behaviors on bruce's behalf. i don't think that's inherently wrong to do per se and to each their own reading but my primary divide with that practice is that it's often performed within a vacuum. to me the most important thing when it comes to being a comics reader (or any kind of reader really) is taking into account real life context and genre conventions. how do the politics or culture of the time shape the way a given narrative is written and with what tone it's written? all of that is crucial to incorporate into an analysis. i'm going to use a pretty famous example of why. world's finest comics #153 (1965) is the origin of a pretty famous panel you may be familiar with:

on its face this looks pretty bad (and it'll actually factor into when i discuss parentification later) but contextually this issue imagined an alternate reality wherein superman was responsible for the death of bruce's parents and subsequently became the face of bruce's relentless revenge and pursuit of criminal activity. obv that's not a bruce who actually exists in reality and this was merely written for the sake of exaggeration and entertainment but it can also give rise to some interesting questions about what the writer here was specifically trying to satirize and why. primarily it's obv trying to poke some fun at the idea of bruce's crusade to begin with (which i am sure most people would agree was quite cartoonish in the early decades of dc despite the more layered portrayal and analysis it was afforded in later decades). but what's also pertinent here is the sort of "natural" exaggeration of bruce's dynamic with dick. in even as far back as the original bob kane comics, bruce and dick had a dynamic where dick was comedically portrayed as the more morally responsible one of the two. it wasn't much reason for concern back then bc the stakes weren't nearly as high and dick's tendency to question some of bruce's decisions (eg his tendency to always let selina go or to allow some villains to die horrifically) was almost always played off with a laugh. but the foundation was still there and you can recognize it in these panels despite that foundation obv being taken to an extreme. all of which is to say: the portrayal of bruce as an abuser largely depends on what a writer is willing to exaggerate, and why, and how. this issue was obv a one-off with no relevance to actual canon but it was nonetheless a peek into what that dynamic between bruce and dick could look like given a writer willing to pursue a darker tone and to explore the potential extremes of what was on its face merely a gag

the novelty of cape comics is that they are a place to explore anything and everything. extremes are possible bc no writer/artist and no editorial staff are ever on a book forever. what creatives want to explore with what they're given can hugely vary esp if a particular editorial staff is liberal enough to allow that exploration. and i think it's fair to say that a lot of writers are interested by the idea of that what if the above issue explored. not out of malice per se but certainly out of a growing curiosity as to how far disbelief with respect to the internal reality of cape comics can actually be suspended. the big question for batman in the 80s was whether having a kid sidekick constituted child abuse. this was primarily explored via the starlin run that ended in a death in the family. and obv following that we got the triple whammie of year three, a lonely place of dying, and knightfall. these arcs to me were what really cemented the foray into parentification in batman comics. the fledgling idea of it had always existed in a sense. dick was the more morally upright character of the two known for chiding some of bruce's decisions. he was the leader of the original teen titans, who historically demanded more respect and support of their mentors (i do not think it all inconsequential that dick and roy were developed so closely). and increasingly as we moved from the bronze age into the modern age we saw a dick who simultaneously desired to be independent of bruce and to be recognized by him. so the components to take that fledgling idea to its natural extreme were all there. editorial merely had to create the right circumstances to mesh those components together, and those circumstances were the buildup to and execution of the death of jason todd

i really do not think it can be underestimated in any sense what an enormous impact that event has had on the entire bat mythos at large. beyond utterly shattering the readers' suspension of disbelief wrt sidekicks' place in cape comics what a death in the family did was create an unavoidable void. this was not an event that could merely be skimmed over and moved on from. the aftermath and the consequences had to be dissected to their fullest extent otherwise batman editorial risked falling into the exact same problem the crisis was written to avoid: circular and aimless continuity. everything had to have concrete, forward moving direction and the consequences had to matter long term for there to be meaningful character development. so when you created the circumstances for a child dying bc batman had him gallivanting around as a masked vigilante, he had to retreat into his shell and utterly fall apart from the guilt of it all while everyone else fought like hell to keep him standing. it was pretty riveting and compelling. knightfall is probably one of my favorite arcs ever despite how utterly boring it is bc the introspection into bruce and his breakdown following jason's death was superb. but the circumstances it created for everyone else in bruce's vicinity to act like his emotional crutch while he took the next decade to recover obv had significant long-lasting consequences. dick had to be relegated to acting as the go-to family man rather than ever again pursuing his own dreams as he had in the 80s and early 90s. when jason came back he had to deal with all of bruce's grief and guilt being projected onto him while his own concerns went unheard. tim had to spend his teenage years deluding himself into believing he was the only one who could hold gotham together while bruce was falling apart. cass had to expend an enormous effort trying to prove herself to bruce bc all of the built up circumstances from the last decade drove him to insane paranoia about having sidekicks at all. and damian had to deal with whatever bruce had become by the time all of that was over

all of this to say: do i think bruce was always meant to become an abuser? not really. but did editorial avail themselves of and relentlessly pursue narrative circumstances that allowed that path to be realistically taken? absolutely. it's ultimately a debate of whether or not you agree they should have taken that direction long term. and i know it may look like i would probably be a hard no on that but personally i find myself more in the middle between these two imaginary camps. bc i'm not unsatisfied with what knightfall explored. i found it hugely interesting to explore the natural conclusion of bruce taking all burdens upon his shoulders and making himself highly vulnerable to collapse bc he refused to open up to anyone out of a fear of burdening them in turn. but knightfall was also followed by contagion and legacy and no man's land and murderer and fugitive. it was bruce taking one hit after another until he was utterly ripped to the core and had to start over from scratch and ig that's what i fundamentally disagree with. i don't think they needed to have gone any further than where knightfall took him and to me the end of knightfall should have signaled that bruce was ready to turn a new leaf where he could healthily balance his emotional commitments without letting them be guided by fear. publishing comics takes a long time so i think people often forget that despite there being a decade worth of comics between the events i immediately listed above what actually transpired in real time in the pages was two years or less. if we want to go all of the way back to a death in the family and account for that as well it becomes four years. four years isn't at all a long time nor is it unsalvageable. but by the time knightfall was over i truly think editorial was so obsessed with its own ideas on exploring bruce's collapse that it failed to see little else in the way of that. everything became about how people responded to him rather than about how bruce responded to the world. ironically by being the main character of his books he became the maker of his own demise. bc everything and everyone had to relate to him and his problems first before they could ever have any of their own. that is why keeping him in a perpetual state of emotional collapse has been so profitable. it is the easiest way to tell a story without ever having to make an effort on anyone else in it

note: one clarification i forgot to make earlier is that everything i wrote above is specifically with respect to bruce’s emotional abuse. i personally think there is zero justification for bruce’s physical abuse and that it can’t actually be extrapolated from anything about him as a character at the core, so whenever writers resort to it in the pages i dismiss it completely