Batman: Pennyworth R.I.P.

[Ansa]

One of the worst decisions DC made with Batman was making Damian his son. That relationship is only used to make Batman look bad. All the crap Damian does is laid at Bruce's feet, its his fault that the kid is an ass, he's a bad father because he doesn't devote all his time to Damian. How I wish that Slade or some other mook was Damian's father instead of saddling Bruce with that burden. And as far as the wider family, Bruce seriously needs to cut them loose and move on. Get back to his mission and move forward.

If DC wants to write Bruce as an awful person then they are going to write him as an awful person, the characters around him have nothing to do with that fact. Lets not forget that the bat-family is also upset because of things that happened when Alfred was still alive, a character that is usually named as one of the people bringing out Bruce's better sides.

And we don't think he's a bad father because he doesn't spend all his time with his son, we think he's a bad father because he doesn't raise Damian at all right now. Nuance man, nuance.

[Blue22]

And it wasn't until very recently that Bruce started getting some of the blame for Damian being the way that he is. Most of it has and always will fall on Talia and Bruce was on his way to undoing most of her programming on their child. But then Rebirth came along and they started pushing this ill defined falling out between the two when they had previously been doing VERY good. Not helped at all by the fact that Bruce all but ignores the kid now. Which is the biggest issue.

They may not have always gotten along but there was a time when Bruce was good father to him or, at the very least, tried to be one. The relationship Damian and Bruce had was NOT used to make Bruce look bad. In fact, Bruce was a damn good father given the circumstances. And only got better as time went on. It wasn't until recently that it's started to reflect poorly on him and that's only because he's been doing nothing while his son has been slowly falling apart for three years.

[Godlike13]

yall do realize the point of Bruce beating on Jason, and even Jason's existence as Red Hood, was to emphasize that Bruce's character flaws and how his refusal to see certain shades of grey is a bad thing, right? Jason didn't just up and try to murder Penguin on a whim, the guy took his father from him and in turn set his whole life down a dark path; I'd have blasted him too!

the whole point of this issue is to make you truly FEEL Alfred's absence. without Alfred as a crutch Bruce has to finally address how he's been failing those around him, and it's not like Alfred never understood how flawed or broken Bruce is or has been despite the great man he believed Bruce could be. wakes are messy, death makes people emotional, with the way Bruce has been acting and the fact that a superhuman luchador murdered Alfred, anything less than the bubbling over of emotions like what happened would ring false considering everything ALL of these characters have gone. "Alfred wouldn't want this" well Alfred also didn't want Bruce doing a lot of the things he's done (keep it a bean, he also wouldn't want to be murdered either) but what he would want is for the people who closest to Bruce to speak truth to him and for him to grow into someone better; if this is the first step then so be it. this needed to happened because Bruce built a family, took them for granted and got his father figure killed, the important thing is that he starts to live up to what Alfred wanted him to be going forward.

Point of Red Hood was to be Bruce’s worst nightmare, not that Bruce is wrong Jason is right. Jason has a history of murder and mutilation. He has shot and stabbed almost all of them at one time or another. The angle Jason is the victim, even when he is shooting bullets at others, is just silly and misrepresentative of his history.

And how has Bruce been acting though. This blanket blame of Alfred’s death ignores Alfreds own actions and the actions of Bane and Thomas. The family were there through the whole ordeal. They themselves do what Batman does, and has a history of “flaws” themselves. He didn’t even push them away, they were right there, nor is he really even currently pushing them away. They walked out, not him.

Bruce lost everyone who was there with him at the beginning, Alfred and Dick. So how about instead or telling him he needs to beg for there help, as if they can even do anything, or how he needs to fix things that can’t just be fixed, they show some compassion. They know who Bruce is at this point, if they don’t like it then they should have walked away a long time ago.

[Nite-Wing]

One of the worst decisions DC made with Batman was making Damian his son. That relationship is only used to make Batman look bad. All the crap Damian does is laid at Bruce's feet, its his fault that the kid is an ass, he's a bad father because he doesn't devote all his time to Damian. How I wish that Slade or some other mook was Damian's father instead of saddling Bruce with that burden. And as far as the wider family, Bruce seriously needs to cut them loose and move on. Get back to his mission and move forward.

Damian is the worst addition to Bruce's life
A son who was raised as an assassin and has no respect for anyone because his dad is Batman and he was raised wrong gives him every excuse in the world to be terrible and subsequently Bruce becomes an even worse person because now he can't just not raise his adoptive kids right
He now can't raise his own son right.

Ultimately it's best to just have Bruce leave all these characters to the wayside their relationships are far too damaged to ever take seriously as non messed up.

The only people Bruce should have around him are
Cass Duke Luke and Julia
Kate too since she is family
Everyone else can go there is just too much baggage to fix and writers like Tynion who grew up in the era of deep fractures and bat jerk hysteria only know how to write Bruce like this.

In some ways Bruce needs to be around less toxic family members. Babs Damian Jason Dick and Tim are just never gonna come back from the hate and resentment they have towards Bruce

[Rise]

Trying to defend Batman for what he did to Jason is quite the reach. "But oh no, he shoot at him!!". Yeah, so? He wears armor and the bullets are nothing but a child play to him which even a 10 years old child who knows very little about Batman would know this. So, this isn't good excuse to use here and Batman has shown more compassion to his villains who murdered innocent people than he did to Jason in that issue.

I don't blame Batman though because this is the writers' fault for writing him as a big hypocrite jerk for years now. The batfamily has every right to call him out (still, I'm really getting tired of all bashing and the fighting between Batman and his family) and maybe this isn't the right time to do it, but oh well. Alfred's death is cheap anyway so it doesn't matter much to me.

[Rise]

Damian is the worst addition to Bruce's life
A son who was raised as an assassin and has no respect for anyone because his dad is Batman and he was raised wrong gives him every excuse in the world to be terrible and subsequently Bruce becomes an even worse person because now he can't just not raise his adoptive kids right
He now can't raise his own son right.

Ultimately it's best to just have Bruce leave all these characters to the wayside their relationships are far too damaged to ever take seriously as non messed up.

The only people Bruce should have around him are
Cass Duke Luke and Julia
Kate too since she is family
Everyone else can go there is just too much baggage to fix and writers like Tynion who grew up in the era of deep fractures and bat jerk hysteria only know how to write Bruce like this.

In some ways Bruce needs to be around less toxic family members. Babs Damian Jason Dick and Tim are just never gonna come back from the hate and resentment they have towards Bruce

Batman needs to stop being "toxic" first. He isn't blameless and I say it as someone who likes him better than the batfamily.

I do agree though that Damian's existence has been hurting Batman far more than benfiting him. Damian as concept would have worked better in AU for one story than the main continuity.

[Godlike13]

Trying to defend Batman for what he did to Jason is quite the reach. "But oh no, he shoot at him!!". Yeah, so? He wears armor and the bullets are nothing but a child play to him which even a 10 years old child who knows very little about Batman would know this. So, this isn't good excuse to use here and Batman has shown more compassion to his villains who murdered innocent people than he did to Jason in that issue.

I don't blame Batman though because this is the writers' fault for writing him as a big hypocrite jerk for years now. The batfamily has every right to call him out and maybe this isn't the right time to do it, but oh well. Alfred's death is cheap anyway so it doesn't matter much to me.

And Jason wears a helmet. Let’s not pretend shooting at someone isn’t an act of aggression. This attempt to try and play Jason as some innocent is the only reach here.

[Rise]

Which broke easily under Batman's brutal beating.

One guy walled out of the "fight" without a scratch, the other couldn't even walk. There's no argument here.

[Nite-Wing]

Bruce has actually been less messed up for awhile now or at least he was
He risked everything to bring Damian back to life(this was a huge mistake by Tomasi imo) then rebirth happened and all of a sudden he doesn't care about Damian anymore. All artificial drama used to give Damian a story and crap all over Bruce's character.
This has happened so often that its become par for the course and now you have a writer like Tynion who grew up reading comics with nothing but this type of dumb drama

Its not a bad thing that Bruce wants to have a relationship with Selina
or go on vacation when someone he trusts(Alfred told him it was okay) tells him it is okay

What is extremely crappy is for all the people he trusts most to throw that in his face and essentially say he is the reason all this bad stuff happened. A lot of that resentment is coming from problems in their own lives that they can't solve themselves
Its bad form
Bruce just lost his dad all over again and his "family" are essentially calling him a useless failure who caused all of this. None of these people should even be wearing a bat symbol at this point they all hate Batman

[Godlike13]

Which broke easily under Batman's brutal beating.

One guy walled out of the "fight" without a scratch, the other couldn't even walk. There's no argument here.

Jason lost. There never was an augment here, shooting people isn’t nothing. Jason unloads two guns at him yet Batman was in the wrong. That’s ridiculous.

[Rise]

Jason didn't fight back and it was Batman who attacked first. Aimlessly shooting at someone like Batman isn't excuse for the brutal beating nor for shooting someone like Penguin who ironically end up in better health than Jason.

I can understand Batman being disappointed, but he himself has no ground to stand on considering what he did to certain someone in King's run (or how he almost caused the end of the world in metal).

[Godlike13]

He threw rope at him as Jason shot at him like 20 times. This is absurd. Call Batman a hypocrite all you want, but enough with this Jason didn’t do anything bull.

[Jackalope89]

Jason didn't fight back and it was Batman who attacked first. Aimlessly shooting at someone like Batman isn't excuse for the brutal beating nor for shooting someone like Penguin who ironically end up in better health than Jason.

I can understand Batman being disappointed, but he himself has no ground to stand on considering what he did to certain someone in King's run (or how he almost caused the end of the world in metal).

Of which, Jason shot him with a blank, not a real bullet.

[Zaresh]

Of which, Jason shot him with a blank, not a real bullet.

That's not even a matter here. The thing is, Bruce could have achieved the same if he just stopped to talk with Jason before trying to... what, beat him? Because he didn't look like he was going to arrest him either. More like he was to punish him physically and throw him out of Gotham. Asking why he did it would have been a start. It's not a random stranger you find (presumably) attempting murder. It's a guy you know and can reason with, regardless of if Lobdell was writing Jason as honestly trying to murder Oswald, or if he retconned it later on as all being part of a plan (which, to be honest, I'm thinking is kind of unlikely* now, given that he did played that card in the very first issue of the run with the mayor; so it all would be one of those narrative tricks in wich you see the same story happening twice with different outcomes each time). In my opinion, or in my head, at least (this is bordering the headcanon territory because it depends on how we understand the characters).

[SiegePerilous02]

It sounds like, at best, Bruce and Jason should be considered equally horrible.

But I find the notion that "shooting bullets isn't a big deal, Bruce is a big boy and Jason knows where to aim" completely laughable and why it's getting increasingly difficult to take this character seriously. Like even if you know your friend or loved one was an expert marksman who would be able to miss you on purpose, I don't think you'd be calm, cool or collected if they still fired a fucking gun at you. Armor or no. Plus, y'know, I imagine having bullets go off near him in general is triggering for Bruce considering Crime Alley.

Anyway, I hate all of these people (either as they are now or always did) and just want Bat-continuity to get nuked and started over at this point. If 5G results in a reboot down the road, I can't say I'd miss prior canon all that much.