Was Batman right to make plans against the Justice League?

[ekrolo2]

It's absurd not to have any given the fact how brainwash and all sorts of other stuff turns heroes into bad guys. I'd also like to point out that Batman had a rough few years leading up to Tower of Babel and Infinite Crisis with getting Joker screwing over two of his partners in rapid succession, Bane breaking his spine, Gotham becoming a war zone for a year, Zatanna mind wiping him and Hal going off the deep end and trying to destroy all life ever.

I can't imagine Bruce was in the best of places when the plans were conceived, hell, Infinite Crisis all but says everything I just did out loud.

[oasis1313]

League better watch out--Bruce is richer than Gates and Bezos combined. Which makes me wonder--exactly WHAT kind of doctor was Thomas Wayne?

[Agent Z]

League better watch out--Bruce is richer than Gates and Bezos combined. Which makes me wonder--exactly WHAT kind of doctor was Thomas Wayne?

Thomas wasn't just a doctor

[Alan2099]

It seems to me like there's an awful lot of variables affecting whether the Leaguers would survive these plans or not. Either Bruce didn't put that much thought into it or he was planning on killing them if they turned bad. Given his attitude towards lethal force against non humans either is believable.

Even if his plans weren't lethal, several of them were straight up torture. Didn't Flash say something about how he prayed to die for years from his point of view when it was only really just seconds?

Plus his plans were really really stupid.

So, Superman or Martian Manhunter goes bad. His plans were to make them mad with pain and potentially even more powerful. Yeah, good way to stop him from wrecking the city, make him unable to stop himself from wrecking the city.

And his plan to stop Green Lantern was "Sneak up on him when he's asleep, and then do something that WON'T stop him from using his ring. he can still imagine anything he wants, he just can't physically see it." Do I really need to get into how many ways that plan doesn't work?

Batman went at the whole thing from the wrong angle though. He went in thinking "When the Justice League goes evil..." when "what if we're attacked by an evil Justice League from another reality" is every bit as lileky and by far paints him as less of a paranoid jerk. Heck, he'd probably get the team to help him come up with plans if he put it like that.

Still, let's just say Batman makes his plans. He is the LAST person that should actually have them. He tend to view himself as right all the time, doesn't trust anyone else, and the fact that he's even trying to think of ways to kill the JLA is highly suspect. Let him make his plans. Give those plans to somebody he could trust who NOBODY else would expect to have those plans. Plastic Man, Green Arrow, heck, even Lois Lane.

[KoriandrJean]

The League should absolutely plan to take down Batman. They know for a fact that he controls an arsenal that allows him to render them worthless with trivial ease and HE'S the one member of the team with a history of mental instability. If I'm any one of the League, I'm coming up with my own Batman countermeasures, and I'm keeping my finger on the trigger every second that guy is in the same room with me.

Is Batman right to have anti-League countermeasures? Yes. The problem is that he is often the ONLY person on the face of the Earth who can access them. That presents two problems.

1.) If Batman is the only one who can access his countermeasures, then any Leaguer who DOES go bad is going to know "Take out Batman first. No Batman? No countermeasures to my nefarious plans."

2.) If DC ever had the guts to do a story where BATMAN is the one who goes bad (and given his mental instability, this should be a very real possibility,) then Batman goes bad and instantaneously has access to everything he'll ever need to crush the League in seconds, leaving him free to run unchecked.

One of the best examples I ever saw of a Batman countermeasure story was Injustice 1. Batman had a Kryptonite laser to handle Superman if he ever went bad. The catch? He couldn't access the laser by himself. He needed the cooperation of several other League members just to gain access to the weapon. Now, yeah, I think it was a bit excessive to require the cooperation of.....what? Five other very specific heroes? Something like that? If Superman ever went bad, there's no guarantee there will BE five specific League members left alive to help Batman gain access to the laser. But the mere idea that he decided that stopping Superman is not and should not be a decision he can make all on his own speaks of a much higher level of respect for his teammates and some actual forethought into preventing the possibility of the responsibility being abused.

I tend to have a problem with Batman having countermeasures for the League exclusively because those stories almost always paint Batman as the sole arbiter of whether or not the League needs to be stopped. He gets to sit in judgement of all the other heroes, and no one else's opinion or feelings matters. Add the very real prospect that Batman may succumb to his own paranoia and megalomania one day and turn those weapons against the League himself, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

The typical Batman countermeasure story shows a Batman who seems to have NOTHING but contempt for the rest of the League and he seems like he's just waiting for them to give him an excuse to beat them down because he's BATMAN!!! Giving the other members some say in how and when his countermeasures are deployed reduces the risk of them being deployed incorrectly and shows that Batman actually DOES respect his teammates. A fact that often seems to get lost in a lot of his stories.

Quoted for truth!

[WonderScott]

He couldn't help himself. Distrust is his great weakness.

[Joker Venom]

As someone else in the thread pointed out: Good idea, bad execution.

Was Batman right in having contingency plans? Yes. We've seen what happens when Justice Leaguers get out of control. Hal Jordan as Parallax, Superman in the "King Of The World" storyline, J'onn turning into Fernus the Burning Martian. You get the idea. When you're dealing with some of the most powerful beings on the planet, it would be foolish not to have an ace up your sleeve, should they go bad.

But, as Wonder Woman pointed out in "Tower Of Babel", he could have let them know those plans existed without going into detail of what they were. Most likely, they would have understood. Superman definitely would have, since he gave Batman the kryptonite ring for the express purpose of stopping him if he ever went rogue. I think the whole issue the rest of the League had, and why Batman was voted off the team was that it was a matter of trust, more than anything, which is why the vote was so sharply divided.

[Lorendiac]

As someone else in the thread pointed out: Good idea, bad execution.

Was Batman right in having contingency plans? Yes. We've seen what happens when Justice Leaguers get out of control. Hal Jordan as Parallax, Superman in the "King Of The World" storyline, J'onn turning into Fernus the Burning Martian. You get the idea. When you're dealing with some of the most powerful beings on the planet, it would be foolish not to have an ace up your sleeve, should they go bad.

But, as Wonder Woman pointed out in "Tower Of Babel", he could have let them know those plans existed without going into detail of what they were. Most likely, they would have understood. Superman definitely would have, since he gave Batman the kryptonite ring for the express purpose of stopping him if he ever went rogue. I think the whole issue the rest of the League had, and why Batman was voted off the team was that it was a matter of trust, more than anything, which is why the vote was so sharply divided.

To me, it seemed obvious that anybody who has known Batman for more than a day or two should take it for granted that he has contingency plans for all sorts of worst-case scenarios. (Such as a Green Lantern or a Flash going rogue and needing to be stopped as fast as possible.)

I got the nasty feeling that they weren't really punishing Batman for just thinking about such plans; they were punishing him for the fact that Ra's al Ghul had managed to hack into his Bat-computer and swipe those plans and put them into effect! Which struck me as cowardly and hypocritical on their parts . . . since Batman hadn't done anything to hurt them, so it was Ra's they should have been punishing!

[Joker Venom]

I can see where it can be argued that they should have maybe figured that Batman might have some contingency plans, but I think that just goes back to the trust issue. It's also why I think that story was a victim of some lazy writing to a point. It never really made sense to me that it ended up being Superman who cast the deciding vote to kick Batman off the team.

More than any of the others, he would have understood the need for having the means available to stop him if he ever went bad. He essentially said as much when he gave Batman the kryptonite ring, in the first place, so it never made sense to me that he ended up being the one who voted Batman out.

[TheRay]

Tried this in the DC thread, but it went nowhere:
Because the original thread ran its course, let's co-opt it and then maybe circle back to the original point later.
What sort of contingency plans would Batman make for people that there isn't a canon answer for already and for people there is a canon answer for, is it substantial enough?

[Vakanai]

Yes he was in the right to make plans. What he was wrong about was not telling the others that he was making plans, why he was making such plans, and suggesting that they each make their own plans just in case.

[TheRay]

Furthermore, what information do we think Batman learned from Brother Eye and how does Ra's Al Ghul keep taking advantage of his measures?

[Agent Z]

Furthermore, what information do we think Batman learned from Brother Eye and how does Ra's Al Ghul keep taking advantage of his measures?

I think its safe to say Bruce learned nothing from either Brother Eye nor Tower of Babel.

[TheRay]

Well, I would say yes and no. Yes in that, to our knowledge, he hasn’t done anything like that since, and no in that he was actually justified in those measures in my opinion. It was, after all, Ra’s, both times, who used his plans for nefarious purposes, not Batman himself.

[Agent Z]

Well, I would say yes and no. Yes in that, to our knowledge, he hasn’t done anything like that since, and no in that he was actually justified in those measures in my opinion. It was, after all, Ra’s, both times, who used his plans for nefarious purposes, not Batman himself.

Ra's had nothing to do with Brother Eye.