Batman #111

[cyberghostface]

Comments

[tinygaylaura]

"Headline is "Batman has sided with the villains of Gotham City"

See that would just make me love Batman more tho?

Especially in the case of the Unsanity Collective who I've been rooting for since they first showed up. And who are the kind of characters who are heroes to me

Miracle Molly is my kind of woman. Only way I could love her more is if we find out she's canon gay

And say what you will about Scarecrow, but he's not a liar

Everything he said about Police Academy here was bang on the money

And he's right that it's hilarious that Slightly Less Evil Elon Musk here thought that he'd ever be able to control the Scarecrow of all people

Elon Musk

[blue_bolt]

I don't really follow billionaires (I find them boring, stupid, or a combination thereof) but I'm curious what I've missed that makes Simon slightly less evil Musk instead of slight more evil Musk? Did he force his employees to work shoulder to shoulder during the Covid pandemic or something?

Re: Elon Musk

[super_fly]

Oh, absolutely https://nypost.com/2021/03/14/teslas-california-plant-saw-more-than-400-covid-19-cases/

To say nothing of his workplace injury record already being spotty due to lack of proper safety markings (He hates the colour yellow you see. And too many warning signs. And the noise vehicles make when they're in reverse)

Basically what makes this guy here less evil is that he's not real.

Re: Elon Musk

[tinygaylaura]

Pretty much

[janegray]

I really dig the art in this. VERY nice.

[shakalooloo]

Wow, evil organisations 'using' one of Gotham's villains as their tool are still getting surprised when they 'go rogue'?

[tinygaylaura]

I'm rooting for Scarecrow here. At least I'm rooting for him to utterly destroy the other villains in this arc once and for all

Because I can respect the idea of just wanting to do evil for the fun of it. Of all the villains in the current arc he's the one I find the most fun to watch

Simon Saint and Nakano both have this whole pathetic "Oh we're making the world better blah blah blah" deluded nonsense that I find laughably stupid

Scarecrow on the other hand, just wants to do evil purely because it amuses him and he wants to see what happens to the chess board when he knocks all the pieces over

THAT I actually respect and enjoy watching

In the words of one of my favorite characters: "A little chaos is a wonderful thing"

[shakalooloo]

I'm sure there's a lesson in here about the downside of trying to cultivate fear to manipulate people. A lesson that no-one needing to learn it will heed.

[tinygaylaura]

Simon Saint: Now after we've made people afraid

Scarecrow: We make them more afraid

Simon Saint: Yes but we use their fear...

Scarecrow: To make them more afraid

Simon Saint: Alright but our goal isn't just to create a city of insane people going completely out of their minds with fear

Scarecrow: ...

Maybe YOUR goal isn't

[scorntx]

"I don't WANT to cure cancer! I want to make people afraid!"

... actually, come to think of it, what is Crane's end goal?
He's always on about how his experiments are to see what fear does to the mind, but has he ever taken down notes? Is he collecting results? Does he plan to write a book about it some day?
Is he even trying to find some practical benefit to repeatedly gassing people?
(I know he's crazy, but c'mon, man! Science without results is meaningless!)

[tinygaylaura]

I would love if it turned out every crazy ass thing he's done is because he's writing a book and this is all just research for his thesis

In some stories it's suggested he's addicted to the sensation of frightening people and other times it's that he's just curious to see how people react to being forced to confront their phobias or exposed to certain kinds of fear gas

But honestly I like the idea of him doing all this because the "Publish or Perish" atmosphere of modern academia drove him too far even better

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Makes me curious to see his endgame.

Despite constant thwarting, his research is complete. He writes his paper, gets recognition (with lots of asterisks), maybe does the talk show circuit (or whatever the current equivalent is, with lots of security), and then... what?

I mean, a stint at Arkham seems likely, sure, but just... when the dust settles, what happens next for Jonathan Crane?

Personally?

I'd want to see him get into the superhero business, like an antihero rival to Batman. Sort of like Riddler's stint as a detective, only his hook is "Batman uses fear to reign in the criminal element of Gotham, but I am the MASTER of Fear, so just imagine what *I* can do!"

[shakalooloo]

He'd have finished years ago if the Batman didn't keep destroying all his research notes, and those ivory tower science journals didn't continue refusing to publish his findings, the small-minded, fearful FOOLS!!!

[scorntx]

So Batman has actually been setting the cause of SCIENCE back every time he's thwarted Scarecrow's latest attempt to make everyone lose their minds?

The arrogant, entitled bastard!

(Has he never considered that Scarecrow wouldn't need to keep doing this if he didn't have to start from square one every time he fights Batman? No, of course not.)

[lego_joker]

Mean Answer: He doesn't have one. That's why he's essentially a Joker with different flavor text in 95% of comics.

(Even in the olden days, his goals never really expanded beyond petty extortion and robbery. I guess writers realized there was no real difference between that and the typical thug with a gun, so they threw in a bunch of "Oh he's insanely obsessed with fear oooo~" stuff and hoped that would be enough to bump him up to Arkham's A-list. Even more insultingly, it worked.)

The big exception I can think of right now is Denny O'Neil's Batman Begins novelization of all things, where he follows after Ra's without even realizing it and wants to create a utopia through Fear Science.

[shakalooloo]

Hmm, now I want to see some form of 'is it better to be feared or to be loved' debate enacted in a conflict over the citizens of Gotham between Scarecrow and Poison Ivy.

[arilou_skiff]

I mean, given the immediate reaction my impression was that he was counting on that, he just missed out on the timing.

[dan_ingram]

This is totally the first time it ever happened, honest!

[icon_uk]

Not loving Scarecrows overcomplicated looking design, though I have to ask, what it growing out of his back?

[tinygaylaura]

EVIL

No in all seriousness I have no idea

I do like how every time the Scarecrow shows up he finds some new way to get even weirder in his design

I hope at some point he puts his soul in an evil creature made of straw to reach peak crazy nonsense

[super_fly]

Yeah that seems like an appropriate reaction to seeing all your plans go tits up in an instant

You made a deal with a Batman supervillain, what the hell were you expecting to happen?

[scorntx]

"I didn't think leopards would eat my face!"

[tinygaylaura]

There should be a story where someone teams up with Catman and actually says that after Catman tells actual leopards to eat their face

[scorntx]

While off to the side, Green Arrow can only stare in traumatised horror.

[tinygaylaura]

"What the fuck Blake"

[lonewolf23k]

Simon, you decided to work with the SCARECROW.

And you're shocked he decided to go beyond your original plans to just keep spreading fear?

YOU ARE MADE OF STUPID!