@vroomation Those comics were more based on the Batman Beyond and and DCAU, rather than the main DC canon proper.
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@Mr_Morbach
I’ve done my share of stupid stuff in my life. It seemed like the right thing at the time, in retrospect, it wasn’t. Hindsight is 20/20, to coin a clique. In the context of crime fighting, both are very disciplined. However, in other aspects of life, everybody does some “not that good an idea” in retrospect. I think it shows that they are as human as anybody else. And that is one of the attractions of the Bat characters. They are just human, not metas or “strange visitors from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond mortal men.” They occasionally make not the wisest choices, and it seems logical, to me anyway, that “affairs of the heart” is probably one of the areas they are likely to make these choices. Driven as they are in one aspect likely means they are emotionally/psychologically stunted in another.
DeSade-acolyte
I love it. Quality not quantity but I’ve been there.
There’s nothing in TKJ to suggest Batman is romantically stunted, let alone attracted to Barbara. Yeah, she’s hot, but it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t see her that way for a variety of reasons. But we can’t get too relatable, because then Barbara wouldn’t have taken her shirt off. Batman in particular has been losing the “just a human” element to his character for years.
Let’s be honest, that was never about showing their human side, or relatability. It was the T ‘n’ A. A giddy little thrill to push that R rating, and indulging in a sexual fantasy, even if it’d be out of character.
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- Keep in mind that, in the original comics, at least, Babs was in her mid-twenties when she debuted as Batgirl, so she wasn’t “barely legal.” This was a man in his mid-thirties hooking up with a woman in her mid-twenties. For perspective, that’s about the same as a the age difference that’s traditionally existed between Green Arrow and Black Canary, although not every adaptation has kept this aspect.
- Batgirl has generally been presented as her own character and not one of Bruce’s proteges. In the original comics, Batman and Robin didn’t know her secret identity for a long time, and she didn’t know theirs. She sometimes worked with the Dynamic Duo, but never for them, and she worked her own cases solo. She was also presented as being about halfway between Bruce and Dick in age (she was elected to Congress while Dick was still in High School, after all), so you’d know that she was her own character and not a romantic interest (she had her own romantic interest, Jason Bard). So there wasn’t really a mentor/mentee relationship between them.
Mind you, I’m not really a fan of it either. Like I said, she wasn’t intended to be a romantic interest for Bruce or Dick, and I don’t really want to see her reduced to being one. I can kind of see what they were going for here; sometimes, in moments of weakness, people do crazy things that they know they shouldn’t. It’s not an excuse, but we’ve all done things that we knew were bad ideas, even as we did them. This is, I think, how Timm and company see the Bruce x Babs hook-up. I don’t really think it was a good idea, or very interesting, but they clearly do. It just doesn’t work for me. It happens sometimes.
I can also see the logic of focusing on Babs in the additional material that they were going to have to add in order to pad out the film’s runtime. While considered a classic, it’s also been criticized on “Women in Refrigerators” grounds. The original story doesn’t spend a lot of time on Babs, largely because she’d quit being Batgirl and had largely been written off at that point (one of the reasons why DC editorial were so notoriously flippant about Alan Moore’s asking if it was okay to permanently injure her). That’s context that I think a lot of modern fans don’t get about this story; Babs has since been anointed as the One True Batgirl (and thou shalt have no other Batgirls before her), so many don’t realize that, had John Ostrander not re-tooled her character as information broker Oracle, and had Oracle not been picked up on Birds of Prey, she might well have slipped into obscurity. I just think that there were better avenues for them to explore than this.
Like I said, Timm and company thought it was an interesting development, and creative types can only do what they think is, in their judgement, best for the story. It didn’t really work for me, though not for the same reasons it didn’t really work for many others, but if I were writing stories with these characters, I’d probably get similar complaints about my choices (I’m pretty sure we all would).
I kinda consider Bruce in his 40s.
its not so much the age difference, becasue she is an adult, it is the fact she is engaged to his son
Hey, at least it ain’t as creepy as Dick and Harley.
Nightwing & Harley hooking up for a romp was hilarious. Very HQ and it’s not like Nightwing isn’t known for “putting it about a bit”. If Bruce and Selina can romp, Dick and Harley can.
Sheeeeesh, comics are supposed to be puritanical and written for Victorian sensibilities? Violence in comics is perfectly fine, but throw in a little implied sex and it really creates controversy.
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For those of you who didn’t respond well to this hook-up because you favor Dick and Babs, remember that, at the time when this story was written, that pairing didn’t really exist, and the many retcons crammed in years later to facilitate it hadn’t happened yet. Dick and Kory had been THE big romance in DC’s top-selling book for years, and there was no indication that Dick and Babs had even spoken to each other in years. Of course, Bruce and Babs didn’t hook-up in the original story, either, but my point is that, at the time in comics when this story was set, Dick and Babs weren’t a thing, so judging it by later retcons is unfair. The writers were writing with that history and time period in mind. Again, I’m not a fan of Bruce and Babs hooking up, either, but the objection that she should be with Dick is, from my perspective, unconvincing.
Can never forget this pairing was heavily hinted at in both BTAS and Batman beyond in comics though it’s never happened they’re super close but didn’t get romantic on any roof tops
Can never forget this pairing was heavily hinted at in both BTAS and Batman beyond in comics though it’s never happened they’re super close but didn’t get romantic on any roof tops