Bruce Wayne: Hero of the One Percent!

[lego_joker]

Batman: Tenses is not one of those comics that anyone - even the ones into all the really obscure Batman stories - likes to discuss. And for good reason.

This story is ugly in every sense of the word, with Cully Hamner's art being perhaps the only saving grace. One of my buddies over on tumblr flat-out called it "the worst Batman story I've ever read", and I'm tempted to agree. The entire thing is misanthropic, violent, and pessimistic in all the worst possible ways. Frank Miller wishes he could write a Batman like this - ironic, given that this is apparently supposed to be a follow-up to Year One. And tellingly, both Alfred and Jim Gordon are absent during the whole thing.

But don't take my word for it. Let's see what this story's take on Bruce Wayne does upon his return to Gotham!

This fellow here is Ted Krosby, a nebbish little stock manager at one of the department stores that WayneCorp owns. Ted hasn't exactly had a stellar childhood... or adulthood, for that matter. And it's about to get worse:



So, yeah. Behold the first and perhaps only time that Bruce-the-CEO acts like a real-life CEO (don't we get enough of that from watching the news?). This mass layoff actually kicks off the story's plot, so it gets mentioned quite a few more times:






Later, Bruce goes to lunch with one of his financial advisers (or something). More asshattery ensues:






The reporter fellow here is another central figure in his story, and by the end, he comes off as quite possibly the most likable guy in the whole mess. I have neither the time nor the patience to dissect his subplot in full, but suffice it to say that he understands Bruce's having to keep a secret... while misunderstanding what exactly that secret is.




(That guy at the very bottom of the page is Ted, by the way. Don't mind him - he's just gotten a massive psychotic attack due to psychic visions or something, and gone completely Hannibal Lecter, because apparently Joe Casey wanted to create an OC "supervillain" for Batman to fight before even the Joker shows up.)



And that, thankfully, is the last explicit mention of Bruce's mass layoffs in this hideous story. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of Bruce's other asshattery, up to and including a part where he lets the newly-homicidal Ted wander off into the snow and freeze to death.

Honestly, while I do find Bruce's usual "hand out jobs to anyone he meets who wants one" m.o. to be overly simplistic and childish, this sure as hell isn't the right solution. Here's to hoping that one day, a writer can find some appreciable balance between Bruce-the-philanthropist-with-endless-pockets and Bruce-the-hard-nosed-robber-baron-who'd-put-Rockefeller-to-shame.

Comments

[thosefew]

Is this story home to the biggest fireplace-and-parents-portrait combo in the Wayne Manor?

[glprime]

Well how else are you going to get rid of your old TV when you're done with it? Put it out on the curb like some peasant? Pssh.

[lorriek]

I'd never heard of this story. What an unfortunate idea for a Batman story.

[obsidianwolf]

Honestly the biggest problem is Wayne Enterprises really only exist to give an explanation for how Batman exist. That's why it is only rarely relevant to what's going on. Usually cause of someone trying to take it away from Bruce or as a magical source for jobs when the desperate crook is sympathetic enough that Batman beating him bloody would turn folks against him.

I mean the way the company has been handled over the years is a mess of contradictions that we aren't supposed to really think about. Wayne Enterprises is there to write the check for Batman without any deep thoughts about how it got or stays so big or why no one notices Bruce funnelling massive amounts of money and materials from it.

[jaybee3]

I agree. Writers don't seem to know or care about how corporations work (though technically the company they are writing for - Time Warner - is a good example on one) to make anything concerning Bruce and business work. They are always inconsistent with how much of WE he controls, how beholden he is really is to "stockholders" (since he controls the voting stock), how large it is, how many different areas it has interests in, etc. Then they have Bruce "owning" all the companies that used to be independent of him - Kord Industries, Holt Technologies, the Daily Planet, you name it.

Then they are inconsistent with how involved in the company he is. I think this is because unless it concerns old-fashion Batdickery they don't generally like to write him as the blue-blood old many WASP plutocrat he is. Bruce LIKES money, he's good at making it and keeping it, he is NOT Green Arrow. Stories that involve losing the company or potentially losing it have never rung true. Winick's idea that Jason and Talia could takeover Kord Industries (after Ted's death which left an imprint on Bruce no less) smelled of pure plot device because I'm sure Bruce keeps track of his money (if only for Bat-purposes). Dini's very lazily written story in Streets of Gotham of Hush getting plastic surgery to look like Bruce after Bruce "died" - apparently being able to convince almost everyone outside of the super-hero world, and giving away a billion dollars of Wayne money every month - also had zero repercussions. We never did see Bruce's reactions to Hush's spending spree or his reaction to Dick/Alfred and pretty much everyone in the super-hero community allowing Hush to impersonate him and give away (lesser amounts) money as long as they controlled things.

I don't see that as how Bruce works. Yes, Lucius is the public face of how WE makes money but I've always read Bruce as deeply involved in the company - certainly more than his father ever was - and he actually likes it and doing it. We've seen many times over the decades that he actually spends a lot of time at Wayne Enterprises when he's not "Baman". Writers never give us that.

[shadowpsykie]

this is so NOT the Bruce that gives scholarships to needy students or jobs to second chancers.....

[stubbleupdate]

[xammax]

Honestly I always thought Bruce was stealing company secrets from criminal organizations, and money from cartels to keep up his constant growth.

[drtechnobabel]

Now that would be an interesting story. A Batman that is more than willing to use criminal enterprises to fund his crusade may seem a bit out-of-character, but it'd make sense, especially if the right writer was involved.

[omgwtflolbbqbye]

With the number of evil business around the DC Universe, I always thought it would be creative thing for Bruce to take them down as Batman, but then use Wayne Enterprises to absorb the remains afterwards to bolster the company as well as mitigate the damages to the more innocent employees and restrict the release of any of the nefarious tech they may have developed.

[icon_uk]

Oracle regularly raided the offshore accounts of criminals to fund her projects....

[glprime]

That's what ArkhamAsylumGame!verse Riddler thinks too (well, with Batman).

[starwolf_oakley]

The synopsis of this story says Alfred and Gordon don't show up. You can expect Bruce at his worst if Alfred and Gordon aren't around.

[halloweenjack]

I'm just gonna treat this as an Elseworlds in which Bruce is an asshole.

[drtechnobabel]

For some reason, thinking of it as an Elseworlds like that tempts me to see them just go all the way and make him a completely evil businessman. Make him shut down the Gotham City Orphanage in order to fund some new tires for the Batmobile. Have it revealed that he outsources the creation of his Batsuits to third-world child labor. Show Wayne Enterprises dumping toxic sludge into the poor neighborhood's community pool and then bribing the health officials to not give a shit. And have it all culminate in a version of 'A Christmas Carol' where, instead of changing his ways, he uses his Justice League resources to imprison the Christmas ghosts in a machine to power the Batcave while simultaneously forcing all of his employees to work Christmas Day.

[drtechnobabel]

*sigh* Why am I not surprised that this was written by Joe Casey?

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Because Joe Casey wants to write a superhero in the form of a company, but has no idea how?

At least his Wildcats was a little better

[omgwtflolbbqbye]

I did like how in at the end of Batman Begins we find out that Bruce didn't oppose Earle's decision to take Wayne Enterprises public because he had been working behind the scenes to buy up all the Wayne Enterprises shares through proxies during the IPO.

He got back enough control over the company so he could steer it back towards a more moral direction, without forgoing all the monetary benefits of putting the company on the market.

Ironically enough

[chortles81]

A Batman Beyond 2.0 story had elderly Wayne not only agreeing to the high demands of striking workers (the Powers had a proxy counting on Wayne balking, in hopes of ruining Wayne Enterprises and then raiding its corpse as a foundation for a new Powers corporation) but also buying back up the company specifically to take it off of the market, arguably similar to how Dell went private but in this case entirely to Bruce Wayne. When said proxy pointed out that now Wayne's personal fortune was 'entirely' tied up in Wayne Enterprises, Wayne answered that that was how it should be.

[umbrall]

This really brings home how much more sheer power Bruce Wayne has to affect Gotham crime than Batman has.

Which in turn reminds me

[chortles81]

Of how many stories deal with the Bruce side of things -- and that one post here about the "attempts to be Batman full-time, no Bruce" storyline, as well as the story where the emphasis was on how much he does as Bruce, right down to buying up body armor and having it delivered to the Blüdhaven PD while Dick Grayson was on the force.

[icon_uk]

IIRC during a panel at a UK comic convention just after DKR and around the time of Batman Year One, Frank Miller suggested that Wayne Enterprises gets all it's money from published Mormon tracts...

Though also IIRC, the Wayne Enterprises around the time of the Jason Todd 2.0 introduction has Vicki Vale alluding to the guilt that Bruce must feel knowing how much of his fortune was made from weapons development and sales.

[thanekos]

It's amusing to contrast this with Bruce's " I spent more money on power armor capable of combating the Flash than some countries do on their military capabilities " bit in this week's Batman.

[night4345]

" I spent more money on power armor capable of combating the Flash than some countries do on their military capabilities "
and never use it to fight crime with the Justice League or on my own or fund ways to combat various forms of mind control (can you imagine the profits to be made from leaders and businessmen who don't want to get made into a slave by a villain?) instead of being a paranoid idiot.

[junipepper]

Jesus, what an asshole.

[steverequin]

Heh! That last image. Prior to being Batman, it looks like Bruce Wayne was The Atom.

[junipepper]

Think it's trying to say something about the overwhelming weight on Bruce of his family's history and expectations?

Alternatively we could caption it, "My god, I forced a man into a life of crime so I could make more billions. I feel... small."

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Ya know, if all it took was a firing to push Ted over the edge, I think it's safe to say that he was a loaded weapon no matter what. Blaming Bruce for whatever Ted did seems really out there.

[mrstatham]

Not really. Losing your job can be the first step in a sequence that leads to people losing their family, home and posessions, and thus losing it entirely. A more comical example would be Scrooged. Ironically, Bruce's piece of shit characterisaton here matches up fairly well with Bill Murray's character there.

[bradygirl_12]

Ah, Bruce Wayne, ruthless and heartless CEO! This is the most true-to-life comics story I've ever read. Happens to people all the time, sadly. Business as usual in corporate America. Numbers count; people don't.

P.S. Looks like Carl the Broker tried to get Bruce to realize the error of his ways. He even looks like Jim Gordon! "Exactly how much money do you need?" Good question!

[espanolbot]

Eh, prefer Socially Responsible Bruce Wayne, that one has more precedent than this Mr Burns-ish version.

[pwiggins]

"Release the Bat-Hounds!"

[richardak]

I can't agree with everyone else here. Businesses, especially large ones, lay off workers from time to time. It's in the nature of doing business. It certainly does not force anyone into a life of crime. Businesses are not charities, and they are not jobs programs. All businesses try to become more efficient over time, whether by adopting new technologies or other means. Greater efficiency means, by definition, that the business can do more with less, in particular less labor. Businesses that do not become more efficient over time find themselves losing market share to their competitors. Look at General Motors if you don't believe me. I actually like this more realistic portrayal of Bruce as a businessman than the one we usually see, where he runs his company as a private charity.

[lego_joker]

Ah, at last! The dissenting opinion! And it only took 46 posts.

More seriously, I think the reason everyone's going after Bruce here is because he seems to think of Wayne Enterprises solely as Batman's wallet. While the concept of layoffs is probably necessary to any business, Bruce doing it so hard and so quickly here disturbs even other businessmen, and Carl the broker actually mentions what long-term harm it will do in return for short-term profit increase.