What would Batman do if Gotham City was invaded by another country?

[Kai Lord]

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of creating a character who has a code against killing humans, elves, and dwarves, but would still slay all the standard evil baddies (goblins, ogres, demons, etc.) But I'm curious as to how I should go about dealing with evil armies of humans. It'll be a Dragonlance character, and evil armies tend to be on the move quite a bit.

So I thought, "What would Batman do?" Captain America might be a better comparison since he's dealt with warfare before and also doesn't kill (for the most part) but I'm more curious to see different opinions on how Bruce Wayne would handle the situation if troops from another country started marching through Gotham and gunning down its soldiers and civilians. What if even then Bats wouldn't take the kid gloves off? How would he still address the problem?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well, I know that Captain America will kill during war. Different times, different codes.

Then again, both he and Bats have killed outside of wartime, when circumstances truly left them with no other option. (I'm thinking, in particular, of one issue where an airplane-full of passengers was taken hostage by a terrorist group called ULTIMATUM. Cap snuck in disguised as one of them, including an uzi he'd taken off one of them. When a terrorist began shooting into the hostages, and Cap didn't have his shield available, he shot the guy without hesitation. He wasn't happy about it, but he did it.)

Dunno if any of this helped you with what you're looking for, though.

 

[WayneLigon]

Bats would probably go for the 'cut off the head and the body dies' approach; he'd go for the BBEG and take him out, along with the main henchmen. He'd probably infiltrate the opposite side and learn as much about them as he could, then use surgical strikes (of various sorts) to hurt their ability to make war as much as possible while causing the least damage to the city and populace.

Otherwise, I think he'd go for containment; set traps, create barriers, and use those to slow down the troops so he could make sure the civilians were out of the way.

 

[Klaus]

Easy. Read No Man's Land.

Short summary: Gotham is hit by an epidemic and shortly thereafter is hit by a major earthquake. The US decide that Gotham isn't worth the effort, blows up all access to the city and declares it No Man's Land (not a part of the US anymore). The city is carved into gandlands. Batman tries desperatedly to keep the city sane. He works to strengthen the "clan" formed by the former GCPD (led by Commissioner Gordon). If he can't avoid gangs killing each other, he works to prevent the innocent from being damaged.

 

[DonAdam]

Obviously Batman's attitude changes drastically depending on who is writing him, or even within one story. I'm thinking of the Dark Knight Returns, when he uses a gun against a member of the mutant gang holding a baby hostage (presumably he does not kill him, since the police don't charge him with murder), then when there are riots he takes a gun from a member of the bat gang and declares that it is the weapon of the enemy.

If I were writing Batman (which would overall be a bad thing) I would have to explain his aversion to guns as part of his neurosis about the death of his parents. He is fine picking up a sword whenever he has to fight Ra's.

As for killing, it depends on the rationale. I haven't read anything that states that Batman is against killing per se, but rather that he believes in a trial-based justice system. With the advent of war crime trials it is thus entirely possible that he would not kill in war if he believed that there would be some kind of war tribunal or the equivalent. So I guess it comes down to whether he considers acts of war to fall under the normal rubric of a justice system.

 

[Rhialto]

Isn't it obvious? He'd kick butt until things got better...

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Batman does not kill; I do not think he would kill during wartime, either, though he would probably inflict more grievous injuries on enemy soldiers than he does common criminals. (It takes more to get them to back off.) I think WayneLigon has the right of it-- Batman would go straight after the enemy leaders to force them to end the war. He'd also cut supply lines, disrupt communications, and do everything possible to make occupying Gotham City a living hell.

He still won't kill human beings, though-- and in a fantasy setting, I don't think he'd kill demihumans. I can see arguments going both ways about evil humanoids, but I lean towards Batman being unwilling to kill them, as well.

As an interesting sidenote, for the first couple years of Batman comics, Batman was not only willing to kill, but he carried a sidearm while in costume. I don't know when (or why) this changed, but I'm pretty sure it was before the Comics Code forced the superheroes to become semi-pacifists.

Captain America kills during wartime. He won't kill criminals or supervillains, because he believes in the court of law, and he does his level best to avoid killing in wartime, but he will kill the enemy. Along with Mouseferatu's example of the ULTIMATUM terrorists, he also killed a terrorist (bare-handed) to prevent him from using a remote detonator to blow up a small town in the Midwest. He killed Nazis during the war-- though he preferred to beat them up and take their surrender-- and in the Earth X alternate future, killed a twelve-year-old boy to break his telepathic control of most of humanity. (He apologized, and you could tell it didn't sit easily with him.) The first thing Captain America did after receiving the Super Soldier serum was to kill a Nazi spy, again with his bare hands.

Captain America will do whatever is necessary to protect his country, or his planet, or innocent people; he just will never become comfortable with killing. He always regrets it, always wishes he could have done it differently.

In my mind, Captain America is the archetypical Paladin.

 

[s/LaSH]

Well, it's both more logical and more moral to incapacitate rather than kill enemy soldiers. My grandfather in WWII never killed anyone, simply because he was such a good shot that he'd get the enemy in the kneecap or shoulder or something, thus disabling them, and requiring a couple of other soldiers to carry the guy off to a medic, and requiring huge quantities of medical care to support, and taking up another 2-3 staff in a hospital somewhere - as opposed to ten minutes with a shovel after the battle if you just killed the guy. If you're as good as Cap or Bats, you're probably not going to get hit if you choose your battles wisely (small numbers of enemies on the way to the headquarters), so you can afford to take a couple of people down and vanish into the shadows, thus disabling the whole lot.

Anyway, I think Batman wouldn't kill anyway - not the modern one. He's grim, dark, dangerous, and if he kills someone, he'll feel he's crossed The Line and go utterly bat-nuts - The Line is the one thing stopping him from becoming the thing he hates. Which is a useful character restriction, and great fun to play with, I'm sure.

 

[Torm]

Batman stopped carrying the gun because reliance on it eventually, in one story, left him at a point where he had no choice but to kill someone. He didn't like killing, but more to the point, he didn't like the lack of precise control he had over his situation with it.

Bruce doesn't like to kill, but he has never shown any qualms about doing so if he feels it is necessary - like if innocents or other things he cares about are in danger. For reference, see his willingness to use Kryptonite on Superman if Supes ever got out of control - the fact that he WOULD do it is the very reason Kal-El gave it to him.

In direct answer to your question, I think his code would probably recognise the difference between an individual soldier and an army. An army is like a monster, but an individual isolated soldier is just a person. Kind of like the real world "rules of war" - bombing an enemy encampment is fair play, but you don't just shoot POWs out of hand.

 

[Testament]

As Klaus said, read No Man's Land (BEST BATMAN STORY EVER!), that's as close to warfare as the Dark Knight's ever come. In a war situation, Batman would very much go for the tactical terrorism approach, he'd use surgical strikes against the enemy that destroy resources, causing maximum damage and injury, coupled with minimal loss of life. He'd try and utterly cripple their ability to wage war, but his main priority would be the protection of the civilian populace, just as it was in NWL.

Batman DOES NOT KILL, see his spine-chilling confrontation with The Joker and Gordon in the recent Hush storyline to understand exactly what The Line is for him. Heck, even in DKR he couldn't finish the job on Joker.

Note that while I say he does not kill, he has absolutely no qualms about leaving someone in intensive care, eating through a tube for the next decade or so. Like s/LaSH said, in warfare its far more effective to maim someone, and that's something Bats would take on. The BBEG though, would be someone he'd try and take down intact, to stand trial for war crimes.