Batman Sucks

Of all superheroes, Batman sits comfortably at the bottom of my list. That’s an impressive accomplishment in a universe where characters like Dazzler exist and Marvel convinced itself that The Eternals were interesting.

Batman is a terrible character that people somehow idolize, merchandise endlessly, and reboot every five years like Hollywood is contractually obligated to keep that bat signal warm.

Let’s walk through the problem.

The Robin Situation Is Extremely Suspicious

Batman keeps an underage boy in tights in his basement. There’s really no way to soften that sentence.

Bruce Wayne is a billionaire adult who lives alone in a mansion and repeatedly recruits teenage boys to fight violent criminals in the middle of the night. If this happened literally anywhere outside a comic book, the FBI would kick down the doors of Wayne Manor.

And it’s not just one kid. Batman has gone through a revolving door of Robins:

• Dick Grayson
• Jason Todd (who was literally murdered)
• Tim Drake
• Damian Wayne
• Stephanie Brown
• Carrie Kelley (in alternate timelines)

Some made it out alive. Some didn’t. None of them came out normal. Jason Todd was beaten to death by the Joker with a crowbar. Batman’s response to this catastrophic failure of child supervision was: “Let’s recruit another kid!”

This isn’t mentorship. It’s a child soldier internship program run by a billionaire with a cave full of various tights.

Bruce Wayne’s Origin Story Is Not Special

Batman fans love to treat Bruce Wayne’s origin story like it’s the most tragic thing that’s ever happened. His parents were murdered. Yeah, that’s terrible. But in superhero terms that’s practically a Tuesday.

Spider-Man loses Uncle Ben and learns responsibility. Superman loses his entire planet. Iron Man is captured by terrorists and builds a suit to escape. Captain America volunteers for a dangerous experiment during a world war. The X-Men are born into a world that hates them for existing.

Bruce Wayne? His parents died and he decided the solution was to dress like a flying rodent.

Most heroes gain powers through science, mutation, cosmic accidents, or sacrifice. Their identities grow out of the event that created them. Bruce Wayne saw a bat once and said: “Yeah. That. That’s the theme.”

No transformation. No deeper logic. Just a grown man committing to bat cosplay for the rest of his life.

Batman Is Just a Worse Tony Stark

If you remove the cape, Batman is basically Tony Stark with far fewer accomplishments.

Tony Stark:

• invents mind-blowing technology
• runs a very successful company with a global reach
• publicly takes responsibility for his mistakes
• builds suits that fight aliens and gods
• repeatedly helps save the planet

Bruce Wayne:

• inherits a fortune
• punches criminals exclusively in one city
• silently broods on random rooftops
• pays Lucius Fox to build all his gadgets

Tony Stark is an inventor.

Bruce Wayne is a rich guy with access to his corporate R&D department.

Iron Man creates new technology.

Batman takes things Wayne Enterprises already invented and paints them black.

Tony saves the world.

Bruce Wayne beats up a guy stealing a television.

Batman’s Only Superpower Is Money

Batman fans love to say his real power is preparation. That’s just a polite way of saying his superpower is being extremely rich.

Batman has no powers. He’s not super strong. He can’t fly. He can’t shoot lasers. He can’t regenerate. He can’t move faster than sound. He’s just a guy with money and equipment.

If Bruce Wayne lost his wealth, Batman would just be a guy in hockey pads getting punched by the Penguin.

Every new movie pushes this further by giving him more ridiculous technology: armored suits, military vehicles, augmented-reality helmets, supercomputers in the Batcave.

At some point the character stops being a detective and becomes a billionaire piloting military hardware through downtown Gotham.

The Arkham Asylum Failure Loop

Batman refuses to kill villains. That may sound noble until you realize how the math works.

The Joker escapes Arkham. He murders dozens of people.

Batman catches him again.

The Joker escapes again. He murders dozens more.

Repeat this cycle for eighty years. At some point this stops being morality and starts being negligence. Arkham Asylum is possibly the least secure building ever constructed.

The escape record is incredible:

Joker escapes. Riddler escapes. Scarecrow escapes. Two-Face escapes. Bane escapes. Sometimes multiple villains escape in the same week.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest people on Earth. And yet he apparently never once thought: “Maybe Arkham needs better doors.”

Gotham’s real villain isn’t the Joker. It’s Arkham Asylum’s security budget.

Gotham Doesn’t Need a Vigilante. It Needs Public Policy.

Bruce Wayne has the money to actually fix Gotham. He could fund:

• housing
• education
• mental health treatment
• job programs
• infrastructure
• criminal rehabilitation

Instead he buys tanks. Imagine if a real billionaire lived in a crime-infested city and decided the best solution was dressing like a bat and beating up muggers at night. We wouldn’t call him a hero. We’d call him an unhinged psycho.

Batman fights the symptoms of Gotham’s crime. He doesn’t address the causes. The city becomes a permanent treadmill of villains because the environment producing them never changes.

The Joker Problem Is Actually Batman’s Fault

The Joker has killed an enormous number of people across decades of comics.

Hospitals. Police stations. Entire crowds. And every time the cycle goes like this: Batman catches Joker. Batman sends Joker to Arkham. Joker escapes. More people die.

Batman’s rule against killing keeps the cycle alive forever. Jason Todd, the Robin who was beaten to death by the Joker with a crowbar, literally calls Batman out on this in the comics. His argument is simple. “Maybe you should stop letting the clown murder people.”

Batman refuses, so the clown-faced maniac keeps coming back. Batman protects his moral purity while Gotham buries innocent civilians.

The “Batman Can Beat Anyone With Prep Time” Nonsense

“Batman can beat anyone with enough prep time.” is the same as “My dad could beat up your dad if he had six months and a warehouse.”

The idea comes from a comic storyline where Batman secretly builds contingency plans to defeat every member of the Justice League.

Flash gets hit with a seizure-inducing bullet. Aquaman gets dehydrated. Green Lantern gets blinded. Martian Manhunter gets attacked with fire.

This means the Justice League’s most trusted teammate secretly built assassination plans for all of them. Imagine discovering your coworker has a folder labeled:

“Ways to Neutralize Steve From Accounting.”

That’s Batman.

The Bat Family Is Getting Out of Hand

Batman started as a lone vigilante. Now he runs a small paramilitary organization.

The Bat Family includes:

• Nightwing
• Red Hood
• Red Robin (lol)
• Robin (Damian)
• Batgirl
• Batwoman
• Spoiler
• Signal
• Huntress
• Oracle

At this point Bruce Wayne accidentally created a franchise. The man who supposedly works alone now runs the largest group project in superhero comics. Half of Gotham’s vigilantes are basically former interns from Wayne Manor.

Gotham Never Actually Gets Better

Superman protects Metropolis. Spider-Man protects New York. The Avengers stop world-ending threats.

Batman has been fighting crime in Gotham for over eighty years of comics. The city somehow gets worse every decade.

At some point the reasonable conclusion is that Batman might actually be bad at his job.

The Only Two Good Batmen

There have only been two versions of Batman that actually worked. Adam West (1966) and Michael Keaton (1989).

The Adam West show understood something modern Batman stories forgot: The premise is ridiculous.

The 60’s show leaned into it. Shark repellent spray. Bat ladders. Ridiculous villains. It worked because it embraced the absurdity.

Michael Keaton’s Batman worked because Tim Burton made Gotham a gothic nightmare and Bruce Wayne a legitimately weird dude.

Modern Batman movies try to convince us this story about a billionaire dressed as a bat punching clowns is deadly serious.

And that’s where everything falls apart.

Final Thoughts

Bruce Wayne has the resources to fix Gotham City. He could rebuild neighborhoods, fund mental health programs, upgrade Arkham, and stabilize the entire city. Instead he buys tanks, recruits kids for his basement army, and stares at people from rooftops in a bat suit.

Batman isn’t the world’s greatest detective. He’s a billionaire coping with trauma in the weirdest possible way imaginable.

Meanwhile Superman just helps people and goes home for dinner.