“Here’s what’s really interesting about White Knight:
For the first 2/3 or so, we’re presented with a “realer” version of Batman, by which I mean a version of Batman that’s kind of crazy and does a lot of things people complain about him doing, like driving recklessly and beating the shit out of mentally ill “supercriminals.”
As a quick aside to everyone who doesn’t read a ton of comics: You can stop with the whole “What if Batman is doing more harm than good?” thing. This has been addressed. In fact, the idea of him beating up homeless people for information was done directly in Sergio Aragones Destroys DC in 1996. That’s a parody comic, by the way, which also addresses why Batman can’t kill the Joker: I’m your greatest villain! What will become of the merchandise?
Anyway, I just wanted to be clear that this idea is not clever.
So the first 2/3 of White Knight has us looking at Batman…not differently, but perhaps with a 2020 lens, considering that maybe his cooperation with the cops isn’t good, what about the Black neighborhood, and maybe the Joker is a mentally ill victim as opposed to being a supercriminal.
But then it turns out: SPOILERS!
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Batman is 100% correct, he’s the only one who has been correct the whole time, and the Joker is an evil bastard that really needs to be stopped.
The book spends a lot of time setting up all these things, only to take them back down.
As an example, a huge plot point is the $3 billion dollar Batman Damage fund, which turns out to be funded entirely by Bruce Wayne, therefore the Gotham taxpayers don’t really need to be worried about it, therefore it’s really not something Joker can manipulate.
Another example: Batman brutalizing Joker on camera turns out to be a situation orchestrated entirely by Harley Quinn. Is Batman really responsible for this? I don’t know…he was set up, and he fell into the trap. I always feel that someone isn’t stupid for falling into a trap. It’s like a cat who goes into a TNR trap: it’s designed very specifically for the purpose of trapping the cat, meanwhile the cat has no idea that it was being trapped. So OF COURSE it works. And the plan was apparently to force Batman to force Joker to take pills that make him not crazy, which is a pretty weird plan. How could you possibly know Batman would grab a nearby pill bottle and cram the contents into the Joker’s mouth?
Finally: the book teases you with Mr. Freeze being a secret Nazi and Bruce Wayne using his Nazi science to save Alfred. Well, it turns out Mr. Freeze’s DAD was a Nazi scientist, who Victor HATES, and Victor is using the technology for good, for medical purposes, and really has no involvement with Nazi shit whatsoever. This Nazi connection is a thing that the reader is assuming as true most of the book, but clearly has never been true, and both Wayne and Fries KNOW that it’s not true the entire time. It’s a writing trick I don’t care for: creating drama by setting up a situation where the reader does not know basic information that everyone else in the story is well aware of.
One more? GCPD is mad because they’re like, “We’d be so much more effective if Batman shared his technology with us! Imagine what we could do with utility belts!” Now, I’m not here to go all ACAB or Thin Blue Line on anyone, but I think it’s pretty fair to say that gas pellets and shit are NOT going to address the policing problem in this realistic version of Gotham. I don’t think the problem most police departments have is a lack of tactical gear. Having a Batmobile would probably not make police better at their jobs.
Maybe the least logical part of this whole story, which is sort of glossed over, is that apparently in this version of the DCU, the police don’t actually have any evidence of any wrongdoing by the Joker. Which is just bonkers. And it weirdly both makes sense and makes no sense.
On one hand, I think the world at large currently has more sympathy for people who’ve been labeled criminals and the ways the justice system does people dirty. AND, we seem to have short memories.
On the other hand, people are likely to go back through a creative’s Twitter timeline to 2014 and point out that the person said something, one time, in a clearly joking context, and that the person should never again be allowed to host a show on deep cable at 2 am.
So I find it hard to buy that the Joker, who has killed countless people, ruined lives, basically terrorized the city for decades, everyone is just like, “Nare dert I tink aboutit…mebbe dat Jokah nev done anyboddy wron!”
[I’m inventing a Gotham accent. it’s not very good or creative, but you KNOW Gothamites would have an accent of some kind]
Forget that he tried to gas the entire UN, he’d never get away with having worn this getup while doing so:
So here’s what’s weird about White Knight: I think it has a (forgive me for using this term, it’s the only applicable one I know) woke sensibility for the first 2/3, however the last 3rd would make it seem that said sensibility is probably, for the most part, incorrect. Batman, representing the “traditional” way of doing things, is the only person who sees the situation clearly.
And with the plot holes, it feels like one of those stories where it seems like it makes sense, you’re suspending disbelief, but when you look back over the events, it doesn’t hold together all that well.
A couple other things, a potpourri of stuff:
+Limitless: part of the plot here is that Joker takes uncrazy pills, and he becomes super smart. Because he IS super smart, it’s just his craziness getting in the way. This whole thing is a lot like one of those Limitless thing, where it’s like, “Humans only use 5% of their brains!” Which is pretty silly. It’s a weird concept: if your mental energy isn’t going into craziness, it must be going SOMEWHERE. And I don’t really buy it.
+The Law Library: Joker, once he’s not crazy, is SO SMART he finds all kinds of legal loopholes and walks away from all of his crimes totally free. I’m not a gigantic fan of the idea that someone can be so smart at law that they can just get out of anything. That seems pretty untrue, and in a way, it implies that the only people who are in jail are there because they are stupid, which is certainly untrue.
+Batmobilepocalypse: Okay, the idea that cops would be better at fighting crime if they all had Batmobiles is very dumb, but seeing all the different iterations of the Batmobile from Batman history was great. THIS is the kind of dumb I can get into. “