I'm gonna keep this scan around cluttering my hard drive, just so I can make a long list of all the supernatural things wrong with Gotham. Because it is ridonkulous.
Retconning a superhero into having done things better sends the message that the better things are worth doing, even if it does come across as a rear-guard action against criticism, sometimes.
Saying a hero's city is cursed by evil influences that are never dispelled removes the possibility of anyone making anything better. At least Dr. Gotham here met his end after a couple of years; some of the other "cursed Gotham" influences are supposedly still hanging around. On some level, we readers know that Gotham's never going to get better permanently until the last Batman story is told, but that's part of the disbelief we have to suspend, or else the whole thing becomes pointless. If you say "Gotham is damned thanks to the demon Barbatos...BarBATos, get it?" and the next story isn't Bruce calling in all the supernatural people who owe him favors for a citywide exorcism, then I don't know what we're even doing here, in terms of genre fiction or social commentary.
So, yeah. I didn't want to be the guy who took the OP joke too seriously, but "cursed Gotham" does kiiiinda get on my nerves.
I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a Tumblr post going around proposing that Gotham isn't a place for normal people to live, at least not permanently, and that Bruce/the Batfam are (should be?) working to make sure everyone survives long enough to migrate to somewhere better.
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Retconning a superhero into having done things better sends the message that the better things are worth doing, even if it does come across as a rear-guard action against criticism, sometimes.
Saying a hero's city is cursed by evil influences that are never dispelled removes the possibility of anyone making anything better. At least Dr. Gotham here met his end after a couple of years; some of the other "cursed Gotham" influences are supposedly still hanging around. On some level, we readers know that Gotham's never going to get better permanently until the last Batman story is told, but that's part of the disbelief we have to suspend, or else the whole thing becomes pointless. If you say "Gotham is damned thanks to the demon Barbatos...BarBATos, get it?" and the next story isn't Bruce calling in all the supernatural people who owe him favors for a citywide exorcism, then I don't know what we're even doing here, in terms of genre fiction or social commentary.
So, yeah. I didn't want to be the guy who took the OP joke too seriously, but "cursed Gotham" does kiiiinda get on my nerves.
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Gotham can just be slightly fantastical New York, it doesn't need to be a Hellmouth for Batman to work.
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