All of the preview materials for ‘Batman V Superman’ have shown us that, while Batman doesn’t use guns, he’s a bit more lenient on the question of massive armored cannon-toting death-tanks. The new issue of Batman takes that one further, with the replacement Batman going all-out and donning an armored suit that allows him superhuman abilities, super-strength and what look like shoulder-mounted missile launchers. The story makes a good case for why our new Bat (*coughJimGordoncough*) would need a technological edge, but the effortless way in which the suit is introduced and utilized really begs the question of why Batman insists on staying a hand-to-hand fighter in a world full of metahumans. If a 45-year-old smoker can be a super-duper with judicious application of technology, one has to assume that a fully-armored Riddler with question-mark machine-guns is right around the corner, which leads to today’s superstitious and cowardly query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) finds that the idea of a new character stepping right into Batman’s shoes thanks to technology begs the question of why Bruce Wayne hasn’t long since taken a page from Tony Stark’s playbook, asking: Does an armored Batman ruin the whole point of Batman?
6 Comments
It kinda does for me. But fortunately we dont see him in armor that often. They always use it as a gimmick to fight super powered characters way out of his league or in some alternate story or replacement character, like Gordon now, so I wont be bothered with it too much. I just kinda hope they’d, for once came up with something new instead of 12345th Bat-armor suit.
I don’t think it does. Batman’s always been about using his ingenuity to tackle a problem as best he can.. so he’ll use an armour if that’s what he needs, but he operates without any of them as a preference. Whenever Bruce has used an armour, it’s always been a one shot, just-for-this-one-particular-circumstance kinda thing.
As far as Bat-Bunny goes.. I think it’s too early to tell what kind of Batman Jim Gordon’s going to be?
I think it accentuates a lot of the parallels between Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. But Batman isn’t supposed to be Iron Man.
He becomes Iron Man when he’s put against foes where he can’t use his brains. A good Batman story for me is one where he can’t use only his fortune or ninja training but has to be smart and need the help of his allies.
This is awful. He looks stupid.
He is supposed to be a detective not a mech.
I will admit, when I first saw this suit, this was before it became known Jim Gordon would become Batman. As such, I thought “Yup. Ol’ Batsy’s finally given in to that Stark envy of his.”
I think so. And I don’t think the police would fight crime in his image either. It might be an amazing book but to me it’s not Batman.