Comic Talk and General Discussion *

My opinion on the Batman Caped Crusader reimaginings.
mks_monsters at 4:28PM, Aug. 12, 2024
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I'm not going to lie, while I'm not into race/gender/etc.-bending myself or pushing the message too hard, it makes me sad that fans are complaining that the world of Batman Caped Crusader is so egalitarian even in the 1940s because…

The DC comics have been for a while and even Batman the Animated Series was. People could be anything and do anything regardless of what they were, where they came from or who they loved. DC's world is so egalitarian that even aliens and fantastical races are welcomed. If the fact that the DC world is almost completely free of prejudice bothers you, please look inward and seek why because the problem isn't DC's refusal to mirror our world and it's problems or timelines.

Overcome that demon within you. DC is trying to tell you something.
Ozoneocean at 5:21PM, Aug. 12, 2024
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I have no idea what this specifically refers to and you're probably exactly right in your summation because you know your subject better than me.


As a fan of historical stuff though I will say that when we make historical settings reflect our dream version of our current world too much (our politics and social norms etc), it makes the depiction a lot more artificial and less engaging because that stuff wasn't part of it. It's like people wearing modern clothes and driving modern cars and things.
So if people have issues with that, it happens. :(

-I say that as someone who does exactly that with my own silly version of the 1920s hahaha!
mks_monsters at 5:47PM, Aug. 12, 2024
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Ozoneocean wrote:
I have no idea what this specifically refers to and you're probably exactly right in your summation because you know your subject better than me.


As a fan of historical stuff though I will say that when we make historical settings reflect our dream version of our current world too much (our politics and social norms etc), it makes the depiction a lot more artificial and less engaging because that stuff wasn't part of it. It's like people wearing modern clothes and driving modern cars and things.
So if people have issues with that, it happens. :(

-I say that as someone who does exactly that with my own silly version of the 1920s hahaha!

I think a fictional world is just that; a fictional world and it's up to the writer to establish. If they don't want their fictional world to align with ours or have just as much bigotry, I say that's ok and I can even understand people not wanting to create a world they wouldn't want to live it. Unless the creator states racial, gender and etc. roles like Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings, I think bending things a little is harmless.

I know that there is one comic on Webtoons called Lavender Jack that technically takes place in a Victorian Age setting, but it is not our world at all and it is socially much more progressive than ours was. The MC is a pansexual man, women can take up any job they want (in fact, one of my favourite characters is a constable AND a woman), women can dress how they want and even shave their heads with no one batting and eyelash, and there's same-gender marriage. All of this in normalized in the world of Lavender Jack and that's fine. It doesn't feel artificial or anything. If anything, it feels right and normal because it IS for that world.

At the end of the day, it's fiction not a period piece or a documentary.

PS: I'm a fan of history myself and I respect it, but I also respect fiction deeply (duh), so as long as the writer makes it all make sense, it's ok of that world isn't like ours and was socially progressive a lot sooner.
last edited on Aug. 12, 2024 5:48PM
Ozoneocean at 6:37PM, Aug. 12, 2024
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Fiction isn't an either-or proposition though. There are a lot of different factors.

A significant part of writing is using clichés and tropes in order to short-cut the audience into identifying with a thing, accepting and understanding it. Like setting something in a particular time: there are key things you need to do to show that it happened in a certain period. If you divert too much from that then you lose audience engagement and have to work harder to retain it.

It Sounds like that might have been what happened here?
They wanted to be modern in their attitudes but they didn't work hard enough to make that fit, explain it or make that less of a striking factor by compensating with other things in the setting.

I do EXACTLY this with my comic Pinky TA: it's set in the 20s but diverts massively in a lot of ways! I have female officers, people in modern uniforms, mecha, crazy hair. If Pinky TA wasn't just my own little webcomic but a major established 80+ year old IP like Batman I'd face a lot of the same criticism.

The movie Poor Things (of which I wasn't a fan) is a great example of changing a historical setting to their own whims and making it above question. They completely make the late 1800's setting their own, even though it has surreal biotechnological vivisection and other crazy thing as a normal part of it.

If a lot of the audience is reacting to something in the same way then it's a good indication the creators made an error in some way- Though yes they could indeed all be just angry racists or sexist people or whatever. That happens more and more these days it seems.
mks_monsters at 6:59PM, Aug. 12, 2024
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Ozoneocean wrote:
Fiction isn't an either-or proposition though. There are a lot of different factors.

A significant part of writing is using clichés and tropes in order to short-cut the audience into identifying with a thing, accepting and understanding it. Like setting something in a particular time: there are key things you need to do to show that it happened in a certain period. If you divert too much from that then you lose audience engagement and have to work harder to retain it.

It Sounds like that might have been what happened here?
They wanted to be modern in their attitudes but they didn't work hard enough to make that fit, explain it or make that less of a striking factor by compensating with other things in the setting.

I do EXACTLY this with my comic Pinky TA: it's set in the 20s but diverts massively in a lot of ways! I have female officers, people in modern uniforms, mecha, crazy hair. If Pinky TA wasn't just my own little webcomic but a major established 80+ year old IP like Batman I'd face a lot of the same criticism.

The movie Poor Things (of which I wasn't a fan) is a great example of changing a historical setting to their own whims and making it above question. They completely make the late 1800's setting their own, even though it has surreal biotechnological vivisection and other crazy thing as a normal part of it.

If a lot of the audience is reacting to something in the same way then it's a good indication the creators made an error in some way- Though yes they could indeed all be just angry racists or sexist people or whatever. That happens more and more these days it seems.

I think when it comes to fiction in general… there's no end all be all answer because art is subjective. Some people like it when it mirrors real life. Some people wish to escape. Some people like a bit of both. And some people have issues that come to light when faced with the art.

Fiction is not one way or the other, but neither is the reaction your audience gets from it. I find that the best way I made peace with it all is just keeping all this in mind; art is subjective.

However, the way you react to it or the difference of opinion is objective. I try to aim for the best possible and most constructive reaction kind of like this thread. People are allowed to not like it when people take liberties in their fictional world, but you can't fault the artist for doing that. And like I said, DC is famous for doing that. I mean it's world that…

- ACTUAL Amazons.
- Immigrants who are aliens who get adopted by humans and/or go on to marry them.
- Fantastical races like werewolves, wizards and more.

The way I see the DC universe is that I can't fault it for being progressive a lot earlier than the real world was. To me, it makes sense that it would be because the social setup is different from ours. And that's ok. It's what makes it fun to me.
bravo1102 at 6:02AM, Aug. 13, 2024
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To get back to the original title of the post, I love the reimaginings. I also see nothing wrong with a more ethnically and sexually diverse 1940s. Just like the original Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s it's still many of the same characters except now they aren't white. And they don't throw in any preaching about racism or sexism. They're just not white.

The tributes to previous incarnations of Batman are great. Lots of Easter eggs from the 1960s series. Now I wish I'd watched more of it when it was on Amazon Prime.

Fortunately the 1990s animated series is now on Prime so I can see it all. I'd only watched bits and pieces before. You know that series was an alternate world because of the opening with Police blimps and zeppelin.

As far as ACTUAL Amazons: we have yet to see real Amazons as they are described in ancient writings only a kind of generic Greek Bulfinch's mythology version. I want to see the Proto-Scythian steppe nomads from indicated by the tombs in the Caucasus. And of course I have a script loosely based on current scholarship on the culture.

last edited on Aug. 13, 2024 6:17AM
Emma_Xross at 12:29PM, Aug. 13, 2024
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I think it's the best batman anything I've experienced since Batman TAS, I grew up with TAS it was a massive part of my childhood, from TAS to Beyond and the whole of the Bruce Timm JLA connected universe was my introduction to DC characters as a whole.

The character reimagining worked really really well, I could feel the earnest attempt at looking at these characters from new angles while retaining a lot of the spirit of TAS. It was familiar yet new. Harley was a massive high point for me, I've been complaining about Warner Bros not understanding the character and just throwing her into everything as the most vapid possible read of her character for a while and to see one of her original creators come in and show them how its done was fantastic. I love the original Harley but this version being a legitimately terrifying threat was so cool. In general there was a feeling like trying to bring as much unexplored territory to the table as possible, bringing in obscure version of characters like the original Clayface, and bringing a more recent favorite from the comics Onomatopoeia to life was so cool.

Anyone complaining about characters being different races or genders I really have to side eye them, because frankly even looking from a comic book perspective this is clearly an elseworld, the DC multiverse is a thing for a reason. To take different takes of existing DC characters in new directions and experiment to tell new stories. It's also always been the case that characters have been changed and reimagined since the beginning. Golden age to silver age, silver age to bronze age, on to the modern era which has gone through numerous reboots and reimagining. It's totally fine not to like a new take, but if the only reason you don't like something is because of something like a black Commissioner Gordon… Idk, that's pretty weird to me.
Amelius at 2:10PM, Aug. 13, 2024
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Ozoneocean wrote:

It Sounds like that might have been what happened here?
They wanted to be modern in their attitudes but they didn't work hard enough to make that fit, explain it or make that less of a striking factor by compensating with other things in the setting.

Nah, that's way off base. It's not them not working hard enough, it's the usual Incel CHUDS seething about how they “changed it, now it sucks” and the “they changed it” for example is one of the villains is female (and still a feared/respected mastermind) and the Gordons are black (like the recent Batman movie with Robert Patterson). The people whining about anachronism are fake fans, they don't give a crap about that absolutely any other time something is anachronistic/historically inaccurate as long as it adheres to their fascist “values”. (See: The 300). I don't see these losers whining when Alexander the Great is depicted as a heterosexual.

Bruce Timm is on the project (the OG creator of the classic Batman: The Animated Series) and it's a spiritual successor to that series. I think the point people miss entirely is that it's not literally 1940s, neither this or B:TAS– it's a world based on the STYLE of the era, on noir, but exists in an “elastic time bubble”. The values are “modern” because it's supposed to be modern– not the 40's-50s. There's a reason they don't address any major events or popular real-life figures of that time frame.

Like… The Jetsons reflected the rather chauvinist attitudes of the 60s, Jane has to borrow her husband's credit card to spend his entire paycheck even in the Utopian Future because women couldn't own them until the 70s. They did not conceive of a future were women had their own agency. But it was also optimistic, where George worked 4 hours a week. It represented the aspirations of the era– women still stayed in the home but with robot maids though.

Also, when people say “modern values” they only mean “white Western values”. It's just another one of the many dogwhistles from media illiterate weirdos who seek to complain about anything that wasn't grandfathered into “untouchable classics” by virtue of being around when they were in diapers.
Emma_Xross at 6:07PM, Aug. 13, 2024
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Amelius wrote:
Ozoneocean wrote:

It Sounds like that might have been what happened here?
They wanted to be modern in their attitudes but they didn't work hard enough to make that fit, explain it or make that less of a striking factor by compensating with other things in the setting.

Nah, that's way off base. It's not them not working hard enough, it's the usual Incel CHUDS seething about how they “changed it, now it sucks” and the “they changed it” for example is one of the villains is female (and still a feared/respected mastermind) and the Gordons are black (like the recent Batman movie with Robert Patterson). The people whining about anachronism are fake fans, they don't give a crap about that absolutely any other time something is anachronistic/historically inaccurate as long as it adheres to their fascist “values”. (See: The 300). I don't see these losers whining when Alexander the Great is depicted as a heterosexual.

Bruce Timm is on the project (the OG creator of the classic Batman: The Animated Series) and it's a spiritual successor to that series. I think the point people miss entirely is that it's not literally 1940s, neither this or B:TAS– it's a world based on the STYLE of the era, on noir, but exists in an “elastic time bubble”. The values are “modern” because it's supposed to be modern– not the 40's-50s. There's a reason they don't address any major events or popular real-life figures of that time frame.

Like… The Jetsons reflected the rather chauvinist attitudes of the 60s, Jane has to borrow her husband's credit card to spend his entire paycheck even in the Utopian Future because women couldn't own them until the 70s. They did not conceive of a future were women had their own agency. But it was also optimistic, where George worked 4 hours a week. It represented the aspirations of the era– women still stayed in the home but with robot maids though.

Also, when people say “modern values” they only mean “white Western values”. It's just another one of the many dogwhistles from media illiterate weirdos who seek to complain about anything that wasn't grandfathered into “untouchable classics” by virtue of being around when they were in diapers.


This, all of this. I mean I was trying to go soft gloves on it but nothing you've said here is incorrect. It's an annoying constant thing where weird chuds want to scream about how a show is bad because they injected some diversity into the cast but they try to couch it in other “more reasonable” sounding critique like they're just complaining it's not “historically accurate” or some other BS.

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