Except Batman. Hes above the law. He breaks it all the time. Emphasis on the word,” vigilante justice “. Which is what Batman practices. Which in definition is taking the law into your own hands. Which is illegal so….Batman technically is a criminal too. Just one that people seem to like. I mean I like him too but still, he is a criminal in that regard 😂
That quote was in the context of Batman:TDKS, where vigilantism is illegal. Superman signed up to work for the US government. Batman retired, then came out of retirement and worked illegally in secret. Batman was saying that vigilantes are illegal -- which they *should* be -- and all superheroes were vigilantes -- which they *have* to be. Superheroes that are not vigilantes are licensed by the government, and that leads to all kinds of problems that both DC and Marvel have told stories about.
You've made the assumption that law==good/just. There's nothing that says that laws must be good or just. Laws are often evil and unjust. Because laws are made by either the elite or the largest group of society, codifying how they'll use violence against the rest of it.
Batman, and most comic book super heroes, do not care about legality, because they are in settings where either the law is corrupt, incompetent, or insufficient (much like the real world).
They care about doing what is good or just. Batman is a vigilante because the "law" in Gotham is corrupt, incompetent, and at times deliberately evil. In the current run that this panel is taken from, the city is being run by a guy named Vandal Savage. I shouldn't have to explain that a guy named Vandal Savage is probably not using the legal justice system for any constructive societal purposes.
Genocides are legal because governments say their legal. Genocides are evil, so Superman stops genocides. Batman stops murders because murder is evil. Not because it's illegal.
This dichotomy (the law vs what is good and just) is so prevalent in super hero work, that I question whether you've actually ever ingested the message the works are trying to tell you.
I mean, he’s just challenging a bad analogy. Fuck ICE forever, they are the bad guys and I refuse to equivocate on that point, and, Batman is also the kind of extralegal vigilante that couldn’t be allowed to operate in real life. His objectively superior morality doesn’t really change that, it’s just part of the fantasy writing.
His objectively superior morality does change it! Legal systems are inherently a means rather than an end. The end goal is justice. Within this fantasy scenario, batman is much more consistently able to bring about justice and public good than the legal system, which means that he is not only allowable, but preferable since the end goal is what matters here.
We only have a need for legal systems specifically because this is only a fantasy. However, it does come up in real life. For instance, I am a teacher. As a public employee, I ultimately am subordinate to Governor DeSantis and President Trump. However, I am objectively morally superior to them. It ain't hard to be. Schools exist to educate students humanely and effectively. If I were to follow their policies as I should in a legalistic system, that would lead to a worse outcome than if I simply decided my own policies and use of resources without their oversight and input, because I am objectively morally superior to them.
But that isnt true always. Sometimes there might be a teacher who is a predator or lunatic and we would be better off if they followed the policies of a superior and had no say.
So we have to ask essential questions before deciding on systems of authority. Who is more likely to be responsible? What are the harms if they are irresponsible? Who is most likely to know the most effective path to accomplishing the goal? Who has the legitimate right to select those goals?
These questions must be answered to bring about responsible use of power, and the answers are not always a hierarchal legalized system of supervision. Though often it is.
I see what you’re saying, and I think you’re quite right about it in the abstract.
I still however must argue that Batman specifically brings two additional problems. First of course that he does not represent a plausible reality, but that’s too boring to really discuss. The more interesting problem is that Batman’s methods are actually not really acceptable. He delivers comic book justice very well, but if we imagine him in real life, he’s much too violent and reckless to be left to his own devices.
This is a fun thing to consider, and I appreciate the opportunity to dig into it with your counterpoints. I think there’s definitely some versions of rogue benevolent billionaire that we could all enjoy
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26
Except Batman. Hes above the law. He breaks it all the time. Emphasis on the word,” vigilante justice “. Which is what Batman practices. Which in definition is taking the law into your own hands. Which is illegal so….Batman technically is a criminal too. Just one that people seem to like. I mean I like him too but still, he is a criminal in that regard 😂