Diversity in the Batman line

[Blight]

Cassandra Cain would solve part of this problem.

I'm just saying.

Or spicing up the backstories and histories of the Robins. For a while Dick was supposed to be Roma, while Jason was a red head, Tim was written (though later canonically debunked) as a kid of Jewish descent, and Damian is canonically of both European and Asian descent. Seriously, they should not be pallet swaps of each other.

Also, Azrael would be the perfect character to merge into a new character.

Of course she's the perfect character to fix this solution. Morrison even set Cassandra up add more diversity being located in Hong Kong. It just seems so darn strange that someone at DC has this bias against the character.

[ReverseReverseFlash]

It's crazy how a line of comic books based around the idea of a rich white man imposing his own ideals and beliefs upon basically the entire world through physical force and economic dominance would have a diversity problem.

/end discussion.

[Vil_Dee]

Gotham is loosely based on the worst parts of New York City. The core is business towers, the rest are middle or lower class. It's not the only depiction of New York that way either: Miller's version of Hell's Kitchen in Daredevil was similarly urban slum, which was typical of the urban plight America was finding itself in the late 70s/early 80s: the wealth had mostly left, middle class to the 'burbs, upper class to enclaves outside of them, leaving people who don't want or can't get out.


Blame Miller. "Batman: Year One" establishes that Falcone's departure ends the typical crime structure of the American city. What's left is for the police officers that aren't in need of Batman's help for the majority of their work. Batman is there to help the special crimes unit, which is essentially what Gordon and his team focus on. And, to be fair, that's what the audience tunes in for: for every reader that enjoys the small stories, there are two readers wanting The Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Poison Ivy, etc. To get that deeper focus into Gotham, you need to have a writer and title that focuses on the Gotham beneath Batman… and there isn't a demand for it in the eyes of DC, not when people are asking for a solo book for Spoiler, the return of Cassandra Cain, etc., all of whom will get solo books first.

Falcone's departure ends the Italian mafia's stronghold on Gotham, but there are still plenty of gangs around. I prefer the costumed villians, but it's not an either/or situation. If you're gonna have panels devoted to Batman fighting gangs, have it do something besides filler. Comics have shrunk down to 20 pages now, so each panel is prime real estate. Sticking another pointless Batman steamrolls through a bunch of generic thug scene is a total waste. If you're going have em in there, do something with them, try to develop some characters (it is possible to make interesting fun characters without sticking them in a costume), show some wheeling and dealing, integrate them in with the costumed villains, I want intrigue damn it!

NYC is not just a bunch of business towers surrounded my middle and lower class dwellings. It's got several different neighborhoods each with its own character influenced by the industry, race/ethnicity, class and ilk of persons who live there. So if Gotham is patterned after NYC, they are leaving a lot of stuff out.

That's one of the points both Snyder and the present writers of Detective Comics are trying to get across: whatever befalls Gotham, there is a stubborn hope there. But, I would add, moments of apocalypse aren't as common as you'd think. In New 52 continuity, we only know so far of "Zero Year," the Leviathan attack (which seems centred around Wayne Tower and not much more) and "Forever Evil."

Plus, if things really get bad, they can always ask the hero to leave to draw away the freaks. It worked for The Flash before.

Gothamites aren't leaving in mass, but if we're gonna make a parallel to the real world, that would have more to do with the fact that Gotham is probably a prosperous city with a relatively low unemployment rate. A high crime rate by itself doesn't make people leave if the economy is decent (a la Chicago), but if the crime rate is high and the economy is bad (a la Detroit), the people who can afford to leave, leave. However even Chicago isn't plagued by weekly attacks by mass murderers and quarterly apocalypses. Anyway, I don't want to be told via Bruce what gothamites think, I want to see it directly, I want to see some random couple threaten their bratty kid with sending him to Professor Pyg if he doesn't behave or something. I would really like to see some gothamite tell Bats to leave (and then getting smacked. Bats'll take the whole damn city with em first!)

We don't have a population size for Gotham, do we? Or how many networks there are in the DCU? As a Canadian, I see no problem with this as — outside of Toronto and Vancouver — we're only at two local news broadcasts, and one of them is 90% rented news from CNN and other American outlets.

We have news coming out of our butts. Three major cable news networks, at least one local cable network, about five network channels that have their own local news, three of which also cover national/world news, not to mention all the newspapers and mags. It's very competitive. Vicky Vale should have at least a dozen other reporters knocking her over to scoop all the wierdiness and armageddon that happens in Gotham.

Most adults understand the dangers to society of vigilantism. In Harper's case, she's a techy with no real appearances in school; chances are she tunes out of civics class when vigilantism is talked about. Stephanie is motivated to become one only because of her father being a crook. Which is why I think Didio hit that point on the head: it is not a sane person who throws on a Bat costume and fights crime.

You got eighteen year olds and up volunteering to go to Afghanistan in real life, so you're not gonna see any adults have the nerve to become a vigilante in a comic book about vigilantes? "Nah, I'm too scared, let Batman's stable of fifteen year olds handle it."

[Orpheus]

Really? Why not?

It seems to me that if a character appears in every episode of a series (or maybe all but one or two of them) over a year or more, he is a "regular" in that series during that run. It doesn't matter if the character is "heroic," "villainous," or "a neutral civilian"; it only matters that he shows up often enough to qualify as "a regular face in the cast."

Harvey Dent was a key character in the 13-part "The Long Halloween" and again in the 13-part "Dark Victory" -- so I call him a "regular" in those two miniseries. I agree that he's not usually treated as a "regular" in the core Batman titles, because he doesn't usually show up in every single issue of "Batman" or "Detective Comics" for a year or more at a stretch, but I wasn't talking about the "ongoing monthly titles"; I was only talking about two 13-part miniseries that were each written by Jeph Loeb.





The first time around, it was hard to follow exactly what you meant when you said:



Which might be why Orpheus, in your opinion, didn't get it right on the first try.

At first glance, your original comments on the subject could easily be taken to mean "Alfred and Jim Gordon are inherently more important to Batman's ongoing stories than are any other members of his supporting cast. This implies that they must play major roles in practically every issue in order to keep things properly 'centered.' Without them, it just wouldn't have that authentic 'Batman feel' in the storytelling if Batman wasn't almost constantly rubbing shoulders with one or the other of those 'central members' of his Bat-family."

That may not be exactly what you meant, but it was a very natural interpretation of the statement that the family was centered around those three men.

Now you appear to be saying it doesn't matter if they are in lots of issues or not -- they are still "central" even when they are offstage and the reader doesn't see them doing anything in particular for months at a time? That's an interesting definition of "central!"

Remember, Orpheus did point out that there was a time (the last few years before "Infinite Crisis" ended and "One Year Later" began) when Jim Gordon was not Commissioner; a black man named Michael Akins was filling that role instead; and Batman was able to keep moving forward, working closely with the GCPD on various cases, without missing a beat! Jim Gordon is an old and dear friend of his, but not "indispensable."

Heck, even in other eras when Gordon wasn't commissioner of the GCPD, and when the current commissioner wasn't solidly in Batman's corner, I've still seen Batman manage to do very well in several consecutive stories. (This is particularly easy when Babs is being Oracle and is giving him instant access to every relevant scrap of data stored in GCPD computers and other law enforcement databases.)

On a similar note, there have been times when Alfred was not living at Wayne Manor for months at a stretch -- not even as a "background presence who scarcely gets mentioned" -- and Bruce Wayne still managed to feed himself three square meals a day and keep his clothes laundered and so forth.

In fact, back in the Silver Age, I believe there was a span of a few years in which Alfred Pennyworth was supposed to be dead and buried -- but Bruce and Dick managed to keep going without his support at home. (Then it turned out he'd accidentally been turned into a scary supervillain called "The Outsider," but he made a full recovery in the end and went back to his old job.)

So I think the evidence says that while Batman is very fond of his friends Jim and Alfred, and while they often do things which make his life a little easier in one way or another, he doesn't need them to always be "central points" of his life; if they die or retire or go off on a long sabbatical or something, he will find ways to keep fighting the good fight without their active assistance!

Yeah I agree, I'd never doubt the relevance of Gordon and Alfred, but Bruce can continue his crusade whether they're there or not.

[wyze2099]

I think diversity of characters is important. A lot of classic characters were created at a time when the default expectation of a character -- and the default expectation of a contributing member of society -- was a straight white male, especially in a lead capacity. In this day and age, that's no longer the case, and it really hasn't been for quite a few years now. And that's a good thing. If Gotham is supposed to be based on New York, then the further from 1939 we get, the less uniformly-white Gotham should be, and more it should have characters of differing sexes, genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, and so on. Because that's the direction the real world is going in, and it makes for more varied characters. With that variety comes more potential for conflict, which is an essential part of any story.

[nepenthes]

What's different a year later?

In the plus column
- Gay male lead in Midnighter
- Cassandra Cain around the corner
- A black Robin
- An actual nun in Gotham By Midnight
- Alysia Yeoh carried over in Batgirl
- Real 20 year olds appearing Batgirl, and one who happens to wear a hijab
- Helena Bertinelli appears to be Italian/African now, though never actually addressed

In the minus column
- An actual African character, David Zavimbe now firmly in limbo
- Replaced with an African American who is also now without a book
- Kate Kane marriage fiasco, book written into the ground
- Cast of Batman incorporated nowhere to be seen


I'd say overall we're slightly up, but losing Incorporated, Zavimbe and Kate Kane is still a serious bummer, from a story/character perspective as much as anything else

[Batarang]

All we need is Turkish Robin...

[nepenthes]

All we need is Turkish Robin...

He wouldn't be the first ha



Turkish Batman

[Batarang]

lol... our ancestors walked all over on copyrights and made some terrible movies about american superheroes... lol well...this show that we are eager to see a turkish dynamic duo at least. I hope we get a better hangled turkish Robin in american comics someday.

[HereNThere]

Haven't been keeping up much with the Bat line, so what's Luke been up to since he lost his book? I saw his name in one of the Batgirl solicits, but I don't keep up with it.

[RedQueen]

Haven't been keeping up much with the Bat line, so what's Luke been up to since he lost his book? I saw his name in one of the Batgirl solicits, but I don't keep up with it.

he appeared in today's batgirl but it's hinter he's going to play a larger role in later issues.