Growing up my favorite hero boy was Batman, but its getting really hard to appreciate a character whos main premise is “I’m a billionaire that beats up poor people in a capitalist hellscape because I don’t have a healthy way to deal with my personal trauma”.
Is there any saving him or is there a version of batman that can exist inside of a left narrative? Maybe there’s an existing comic that has tackled this problem, but I’m not really deep into the…ahem…literature.
There was a great script made by Daren Aronofsky and Frank Miller. based on Batman: year one :
After Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot, Bruce loses his fortune and becomes homeless. Alfred’s character changed to a African-American man named "Little"Al who runs a Auto-Repair shop and acts as Bruce’s mentor. Bruce doesn’t travel the world, he instead reads books on various types of combat and practices them. Unlike the comic it would have focused more on Bruce. Bruce uses mostly chemical based weapons when fighting (like the original Bill Finger Batman). Bruce Wayne gets his persona from an intertwined T and W on a ring he wore while fighting crime that was mistaken for a bat. Many key scenes from the comic are omitted from the script. The Batmobile and Batcave are present. The Batmobile was a modified car in “Little-Al”'s garage. The Batcave is located in a abandoned subway station. Gordon has lived in Gotham for years, and is trying to leave for the sake of his pregnant wife. Gordon’s wife is renamed Ann. Carmine Falcone is omitted from the script and Gillain B.Loeb would have replaced him as the Master of the Organized crime. Selina Kyle would have been African-American and would have had a more prominent role. Gordon’s character would have been suicidal. The Batmobile would have been a Lincoln Continental. There would have been many new characters that were not in the comic.