Comic books can house incredibly intelligent stories. While superhero stories have a reputation for being campy and without consequence, they’re just as capable of weaving deeply layered, thought-provoking stories that will leave the readers staring into space in awe of what they read. The stories we’re talking about today are not that smart. In fact, they feature plots so idiotic that it’s impressive that adult humans could have conceived them while not under the influence of something. These are plots that fall apart the second that a single character acts like their normal self, because no one in their right mind would allow any of these events to proceed to anywhere near this degree.
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Batman has starred in more comics than any other character, and with that privilege, it’s only natural that some of them would be downright abysmal. The five stories that we’re examining today are not just bad. Their plots are downright laughable and skew everything about every character present to tell a story that barely makes sense in the first place. There are plenty of Batman stories that don’t make sense, but these take themselves way too seriously and way too far. Without further ado, let’s broach some half-baked Batman stories.
5) “The Gift”
While Tom King’s run on Batman (2016) is remembered in infamy now, when it was released, public opinion didn’t turn against it until the failed wedding. This storyline, however, primed everyone to be mad. The premise is that Booster Gold wanted to give Batman the perfect wedding present by traveling back in time to save his parents’ lives. This, predictably, led to an apocalyptic timeline where Bruce never became Batman, and Gotham City was overrun with untold amounts of death, destruction, and villainy. His plan was for Batman to have a “For The Man Who Has Everything” moment and realize his life was worth living, but given that this new Bruce didn’t remember ever losing his parents, that plan literally never could have worked.
What’s really abhorrent about this story is how it presents Booster’s character. By this point in his career, Booster has been a staunch defender of the timeline for years. Here, he’s acting like he started the job last week. What makes this even worse is that it was released immediately after the Action Comics (2016) storyline “Booster Shot,” where Booster acted like himself in stopping Superman from altering the timeline. This comic was the ultimate slap in the face to all Booster fans, and frankly, it didn’t make much sense.
4) “H2SH”
This is the most recent storyline on this list, and also one of the worst, despite not being finished, if it ever will be. The basic premise is that Hush has returned to enact revenge on Batman by turning his allies against him. He does this by dropping a dying Joker in front of Batman, forcing the Dark Knight to save him. This makes the entire Bat-Family mad, for some reason, even though literally all of them but Jason would have done the same thing. Speaking of Jason, Red Hood was back to being a villain, because apparently, his resurrection from twenty years ago now gave him brain damage.
Everyone in this comic acts like an idiot, and it feels like it was written twenty years ago. Batman proceeds to fight Hush’s attempt to make him fight his family by fighting his family on his own terms instead of just explaining the situation. Literally, if Batman had a single conversation with anyone, this comic would not happen. Its foundation is swish cheese and pudding, and the rest of it only gets worse.
3) Widening Gyre
Widening Gyre has the same dialogue as a high school locker room. The plot is that Batman and Robin are joined in defending Gotham City by a new vigilante, Baphomet. At the same time, Bruce’s old flame, Silver St. Cloud, reappears and rekindles their whirlwind romance. Of course, the problem is the horrific execution. For one, Batman and Silver’s romance feels like an uncomfortable romcom that borders on straight-up porn. They literally had sex on Bruce’s private island so loud and so often that the dolphins called Aquaman because they thought this woman was being abused. Batman’s nickname for Silver was Dee-Dee, which was because the number of times they had sex in their first encounter reached the double digits. Why did I have to type that?
Then there’s Baphomet, who is really the villain Onomatopia, whose plan is to gain Batman’s trust so he can attack him in the Batcave. He never would have done this if Batman had bothered to check into this man’s backstory at all, which he never did. The World’s Greatest Detective was fooled by the most disprovable sob story in the world, but he never bothered to check this man’s history. Batman is literally a detective, but this plot could never work if he actually acted like one.
2) Fortunate Son
This is not a Batman story, this is one man’s insane rant against his least favorite music genre. In this comic, Batman hates rock and roll, literally calling punk nothing more than “death… crime… and the rage of the beast.” His disdain for this music comes from Thomas Wayne telling Bruce to never listen to it the night he died, and apparently, the “reasoning” that real-life Sex Pistol bassist Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend. Batman proceeds to fight Izaak Crowe, a strung-out musician who hallucinates a blonde Elvis, whom he thinks is God, who tells Izaak to do terrorism in the name of rock and roll. Izaak proved to be the literal embodiment of evil.
I don’t think I need to continue, but needless to say, this comic reads more like an unhinged rant from a despondent uncle you only see at Thanksgiving and Christmas than a superhero story. It’s downright mean-spirited at an entire genre, with Batman considering rock and roll as much one of his foes as Two-Face or the Joker. Batman was used as a mouthpiece for an objectively wrong and outdated opinion about music that the writer did not like, and that’s just plain stupid.
1) “Gotham War”
Superheroes fight crime and save lives. That’s always been their prerogative. That makes the premise of this comic all the more inane. After waking from a weeks-long coma, Batman finds Gotham City strangely quiet. Catwoman had gathered all the henchpeople under her banner and taught them how to steal as well as her under the promise that they would give some to charity and not work for anyone else. Batman, naturally, opposed Catwoman running a criminal empire with thousands of workers, but the entire Bat-Family supported Selina’s idea, saying it brought down violent crime. Batman was painted as the bad guy for opposing this, and it culminated in one of the stupidest fight scenes of all time and one of the least satisfying rug pulls ever printed.
I don’t know where to begin criticizing this story. For one, the entire idea of teaching every henchperson to steal as well as Catwoman is ludicrous. The story assumes that everyone would stop committing murder if they had a steady income, which, not only is this not that, but also makes no sense, as career thieves and murderers are not the same thing. It creates an army of super-henchpeople that makes every other criminal ten times more dangerous the second they go back to work for them. Selina says that would never happen, but they literally all work for Vandal Savage with next to no prompting, which makes the entire story pointless, as it never even addresses the central question of whether this is better for Gotham.
Then there’s the characterization, which is some of the worst of all time. There’s no discernible reason anyone in the Bat-Family would be okay with this, and Damian only opposes it because of the superiority complex he’s grown out of six times by this point. At least Batman has the excuse of literally going insane thanks to the army of Zur-En-Arrhs in his head, but even that doesn’t excuse him from actually lobotomizing Jason Todd to keep him from fighting. Every aspect of this story makes me viscerally angry, and it would have never happened if anyone in it acted like themselves.
Which Batman storyline do you think has a plot that falls apart when it remembers it’s a Batman comic? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts on the ComicBook Forum!
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