You Have To Reduce the Batfamily to Only 8 Characters, Who Do You Keep?

General Discussion Comic Books
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Welcome back to the community @e_c_beach05 and @BostonBatman39! :fireworks:

Please don’t hesitate to let the moderator team know if you need anything! :batparrot:

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Okay, I’m going to go into this with the premise that we’re keeping Bruce as Batman, and we’re talking about the combat-focused characters with outfits and superhero names situated within Gotham City. So this will keep characters like Alfred, Gordon, Leslie, etc around. With that in mind:

  1. Dick Grayson / Nightwing
  2. Barbara Gordon / Batgirl / Oracle
  3. Damian Wayne / Robin
  4. Batwoman / Kate Kane
  5. Stephanie Brown / Spoiler
  6. Luke Fox (possibly Jace Fox) / Batwing
  7. Cassandra Cain / Orphan (preferably with a better hero name)
  8. Jason Todd / Red Hood

Tim I would have retire and actually fulfill what he wanted to do at the beginning of runs like Tynion’s Det and Bendis’ Young Justice and actually go to college. I could see him come back a couple years later to set up his own company in Gotham and he can maybe act as a tech guy for the group in big stories.

Characters like Huntress and Black Canary will be more focused on global adventures as the Birds of Prey, with Barbara helping out either in the field as Batgirl, or back in Gotham as Oracle.

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Thank you! Need to play a little catch up but excited to get into conversation

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I got a better idea lets not do that and have batman adopt more kids
and the heroes you like can go away

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I mean everybody in Gotham is Bruce’s kid as per City of Bruce

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sounds like a good story to me

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i have no explanation other than i like the batkids more than any other characters and i’m not always batmans biggest fan :laughing:

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I get that.

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I keep all the current members. I bring back anyone missing, like Michael Lane. I give them ALL solo series. And have a Batman Justice League title all to themselves. Oh, wait, already got that, Batman Inc vol 3. Then I DOUBLE it all!

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And then the bulk of the titles get cancelled due too extremely low sales

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Indeed! But how’s that different from today? :slight_smile:

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See, that was my impulse, but the title of the thread is that I HAVE to reduce the Batfamily to only 8 characters

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I reject the question and rebel against it.

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Why?

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I got into this a little bit in my response to you in the “What needs to change” thread, but I think the “problem” of “too many characters” is really a problem of “writers who don’t know how to write the characters well.” I don’t think the Bat editorial forces the writers to use every character. Each character comes with a perspective and motivation that makes them someone’s favorite character. And while I don’t think you can or should try to have a “comic for everyone,” doing what DC did in the mid 2000s and again in the n52 by killing off/deleting a bunch of characters for sales/to streamline things is really just a way to make people who loved those characters stop buying your comics. I’d rather writers just not use favorite characters than eliminate them. Because later, they can come back, and a new writer can become their champion and get a new fanbase for the character.

tldr: I think reducing the number of characters in any story almost always tends to reduce the appeal of the story to the audience. Not every character needs to be used, and definitely not every character needs to be used equally. But if I said, for example, that I dislike Jace Fox, and he should be eliminated, well, there goes Isaac Lawrence who really loves that character. Why should my tastes be more catered to than his?

Edit: Perhaps if the question was “what characters would you like to see put on the shelf for a little bit, and what characters would you like to see focused on?” I could get on board with it. Characters do sometimes benefit from being on the shelf for a bit while a new creator finds their passion for them and brings them back with a big story. But “reducing” and “eliminating” are things I will never, ever accept, and I don’t think they’re good for the stories or the fandom.

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No, they are good for the stories considering that all you really need for a great Batman story is himself, Gordan and Alfred. With maybe a Robin or Batgirl in play. Hell, killing off a bunch off lesser used charactors could actually help the brand because it would add a sense of stakes to the Batman line plus it helps establish how much off a threat the villain is.

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Stakes are ridiculous in a franchise that cannot kill off the main hero or villain. Does anyone REALLY think that redshirts in Star Trek really increase stakes?

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Of course its all fiction, but stakes give readers a reason to be emotinally invested in the plot. Lets say that DC wanted to build up the Fearsome Five as a threat to the Titans and have them emotionally hit Nightwing by killing or seriously crippling members of the Batfam. Like have Tim lose a hand, render Cass brain dead, make Barbara unable to form new memories. Now thats a build up to a story

Damn editing

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I love that idea

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me also

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