Why is Gotham in such a constant state of disrepair? I thought the Wayne family was financing schools, hospitals and new business to make it into a modern utopia to rival Metropolis, didn't Bruce keep up any of their work after their death or did all the decay happen between their death and his return to take control of the Wayne empire?
Or does he just not care that half the city is falling apart? Gotham alone has more abandoned amusement parks than Detroit has burned-down crack houses.
This has been discussed in hypercrisis threads but Gotham itself is cursed.
Bruce was a kid at the time so presumably all those decision were made by greedy corrupt Gotham business men who ignored the needs of city for money. By the time Bruce came back as Batman and regained control of the city it had already gone down the shitter.
>>81526313
What
>>81526362
Surely his first order of business would be to get the city back on its feet and have some of the closed-down deteriorated buildings demolished to make room for new ones?
That would be so much better for the city than stopping a few muggings at night.
>>81526395
this may help or it may confuse you even more
>>81526362
>Or does he just not care that half the city is falling apart? Gotham alone has more abandoned amusement parks than Detroit has burned-down crack houses.
First of all, this
>>81526362
Secondly, Bruce actually does go out of his way to rebuild and restore shit in Gotham City all the time, but you'd know that if you read Batman comics.
>>81526664
He might talk the talk but does he walk the walk?
>>81526616
PFFFFT, that's the most ridiculous routine of plot gymnastic to justify status quo I've ever seen.
>>81526572
He can only make those kind of decisions for the property that Wayne Enterprises owns. The rest of the city is owned by fatcat slum lords and mob bosses, or even worse, the city of Gotham itself, which is criminally negligent toward its own citizens. Bruce does what he can - 3/5 times he appears, it's to commemorate the opening of a new hospital or orphanage or school that he at least partially bankrolled.
>>81526127
Because if Gotham ever recovers Batman's reason for existence as a character stops happening because his focus city is Gotham and as soon as Gotham turns not to shit he's got nothing left to do.
>>81526746
>mad at hypercrisis
if it makes you feel better, long term endgame is Gotham ending up absorbed into the mega-city that is Metropolis due to urban sprawl by the 30th century
>>81526701
What the fuck does that even mean, man? Do they show stories about construction crews tearing down old tenements and Bruce fighting for city contracts? No, not usually, because that would be FUCKING BORING.
I really wish people who bitched about Batman would remember he's a fictional fucking character, and not responsible for the state of the fictional world he inhabits. Gotham will always be at least a little shitty, because it represents the worst parts of every city.
>>81526701
We've actually seen him doing it in nu52 comics, founding hospitals, donating hundreds of thousands to charities, etc.
It's just utterly meaningless because Gotham cannot narratively recover for >>81526862 reasons.
Just like how the Joker can die over and over and over but he will ALWAYS come back to life.
You're acting like the character follows laws of actual causality rather then narrative causality, but he's not even a real person so that's impossible.
>>81526943
>Do they show stories about construction crews tearing down old tenements and Bruce fighting for city contracts? No, not usually, because that would be FUCKING BORING.
Now the "not usually" caveat, they DID do a story about that around No Man's Land, where Bruce Wayne went to Washington to get the contract to rebuild Gotham but lost it to Lex Luthor. So, there's that. But generally, nobody wants to read about land grabbing or urban renewal.
>>81526701
Literally the first arc of the post-Flashpoint reboot dealt with him renewing slums of Gotham, and it's not the first time they've dealt with that, either.
>>81526822
Yeah, a big part of it is that as a private person, he can only do so much. Who cares how much a single rich guy gives to charity if the municipal government isn't keeping its obligations to the city.
>>81526313
Gotham isn't a shithole in Morrison's Gotham, tho. He doesn't like the idea, because it makes Batman/Wayne seem pointless if his actions haven't helped Gotham at all. Also, why would anybody live there if it was totally shit. His Gotham isn't awful, it's just weird.
>>81527057
>Gotham isn't a shithole in Morrison's Gotham, tho. He doesn't like the idea, because it makes Batman/Wayne seem pointless if his actions haven't helped Gotham at all. Also, why would anybody live there if it was totally shit. His Gotham isn't awful, it's just weird.
He's got a good point, and really, it doesn't mean you can't still have crime in Gotham - if you take away the shadows where criminals hide, you're left with criminals who DNGAF about hiding.
>>81526943
>I really wish people who bitched about Batman would remember he's a fictional fucking character, and not responsible for the state of the fictional world he inhabits. Gotham will always be at least a little shitty, because it represents the worst parts of every city
I like the other interpretation given; Hub City is the worst city in the DCU and Bludhaven is worse then Gotham too, but what Gotham represents is more disturbing.
It's not that it's an endless shithole, but SOMETHING about it calls to the twisted and darker parts of human nature, changing normal human tragedy into operatic madness that creates supervillains, making perfectly normal crime levels for a city of it's size suddenly far more dramatic in scope the should logically be possible in modern day ("the Mob" hasn't really been an effective force in the US since the early 90's; turns out the FBI is REALLY good at fucking up organized crime).
Gotham itself probably looks like an okay place to live for most people (maybe with a dangerous edge like NYC had for every year of it's existence until the 90's) but it's cursed nature twists what is evil in us to make us worse people and creates madness out of grief and misery.
This befits it's name; "Gotham" is an English proverbial village known for it's mad and foolish inhabitants.
>>81527057
>Gotham isn't a shithole in Morrison's Gotham, tho. He doesn't like the idea, because it makes Batman/Wayne seem pointless if his actions haven't helped Gotham at all. Also, why would anybody live there if it was totally shit. His Gotham isn't awful, it's just weird.
This is actually a good idea, because in real life places so ruined by crime and urban blight AREN'T huge metropoli like Gotham is always portrayed to be; they end up like Detroit where it's basically a halfway empty city.
Rather then blight-ridden and "sick", Gotham tends to...exaggerate certain aspects of the human psyche, so that certain individuals that go there end up getting worse and worse as time goes on until finally they put on a costume and Batman has to put them in jail.
