#sorry idk if i actually answered ur question teeheee

[mysterycitrus]

I really love your takes and thoughts about DC characters! Do you have any thoughts or opinions on Jim Gordon?

i think to talk about jim gordon properly u have to look at the role police take in superhero fiction, which is a complicated topic but i will endeavour to summarise

firstly, we live in an age where the copification of media, whether it be comics, crime tv, true crime junk, etc, is very popular. think about how cops are depicted in the neo-noir detective thrillers batman ostensibly borrows from — bumbling, stupid, and malicious — vs how they’re portrayed in the modern context as an crucial force for good. think about spiderman cooperating with the police in the insomniac games, and how out of character that is for him. since when has he ever given a shit about what the police tell him to do? let vigilantes actually be vigilantes! they’re vigilantes because they’re acting against the oppressive societal structure upheld by the police!

it should not be a controversial statement to say that the police, that armed forces as an institution, will never be a societal good because they do not exist to be good for society — they exist to protect the wealth and property of the already powerful. the idea of the “one good cop” is funny because in reality the one good cop never lasts long — either they’re relieved of service for exposing corruption, killed on the job, or succumb to the same corruption that is foundational to the system. even cop fiction that tries to deconstruct this (b99 as an example) fails, because the system itself cannot be deconstructed and rebuilt, it must be changed entirely and replaced with something better.

so where does that leave jim gordon? ideally, an endpoint for bruce’s crusade would be the abolishment of the gcpd and the introduction of a community oriented emergency service designed to actually help gotham citizens. no man’s land has many flaws, but one of its most egregious is leaning too far into the thin blue line nonsense of gordon’s storyline, rather than emphasising the strength in community for those left behind by the earthquake.

i like gotham central as much as the next person, but i think making the bats more affiliated with cops is a mistake. for every amy rohrbach and jim gordon u have the truly horrendous dick grayson cop storyline, u have that time gordon was batman, etc. gordon’s dynamic with bruce is really interesting (thinking about how working with bruce has essentially tanked his career) but as a whole id have an easier time giving a shit if they could actually take the time to imagine a future worth having.