Clock King (at least BTAS clock king, the one in the picture) can't control time. He just plans things very precisely and likes clocks. He's actually pretty cool in the one episode he's in.
Clock King (at least BTAS clock king, the one in the picture) can't control time.
He did have access to a device in his second appearance that allowed him to control the flow of time, so he had the ability albeit in an indirect fashion.
Canonically? Yes! A giant bat demon named Barbatos that creates twisted versions of Batman (including batman) to torture Bruce Q Wayne
There's also Dr. Gotham, who was a evil sorcerer buried under Gotham for centuries whos evil also apparently poisoned a fair bit of the area.
There's also anywhere between 1 to 3 (Possibly more) Lazarus pits under Gotham, and arguably the chemicals from them have been leeching into the water supply. What do the Lazarus pit chemicals do? Make you resilient to damage and also crazy. What do a significant amount of Bat villains have in common? Injuries/mutations that would kill a normal person, and being off kilter.
Then we have the Asylum which is possibly haunted and has held a portal to Hell at least at one point.
Lots of stuff going on in Gotham.
Back in the 1800s the qualifications for saying you were a doctor were comically easy to acquire. I don't think any academic dishonesty happened here. Just a product of the time
Your excellent summary has me imagining the day to day work of the staff at the Association for Gotham Tourism.
That's gotta be weird.
If I was the tourism board I'd be like "can we build an ad campaign around doing crime? Come to Gotham, shoplift, and get beat up by the one and only original Batman! A story you'll remember forever!" It's probably safer than bungee jumping, since those guys can't guarantee you won't be killed, but Batman will.
Gotham's so-called 'villains' are actually just projections of Bruce's madness onto the city's activists, anarchists, and freedom fighters. They spend their days trying to fix the severe systemic issues caused by the excessive wealth and myopia of the self-righteous Wayne family, who have gobbled up nearly every other sizeable company in the city while funneling resources into personal skyscrapers, excavation, and bat-themed military equipment.
The Rogue's Gallery, meanwhile, goes to extreme lengths to redistribute wealth, disrupt Waynecorp galas, rescue and deprogram Robin and Batgirl, and keep Bruce busy with insane shenanigans so that he can't focus more of his attention on grinding Gotham's poor into the dirt. The costumes and gimmicks are just Bruce's mind refusing to see the truth of his own villainy and distorting the world to compensate.
The only ones who on occasion get through to him are his ex-girlfriend, a former Arkham therapist who spent enough time with the Rogues not to buy Bruce's propaganda, and a completely innocent local botanist that he's developed a strange obsession with literally just because she grows plants and he's not sure how that works (his own plants all die in the batcave due to lack of light).
If Warner Bros is looking for a consultant, writer, or hell, director.. Reach out! xD
Let me write for Harley Quinn for a season. If you like it, we make a goofy hallucination Batman movie. What could go wrong?
There was a story arc where Alfred tried to gaslight Bruce into believing this.... To protect him from the fact that Luthor caused the apocalypse...
Twist ending: a guy wakes up in his bed and realises it was all just a dream and superheroes/villains don't exist in the real world!
He's the biggest charitable donator in Gotham right? Directly runs all kinds of homeless shelters and shit?
Instead he should be paying higher taxes so the city/state can have more money to build a bigger and stronger social safety net instead of relying on the good will of the wealthy to take care of their problems. Maybe then they'd have less troubled people fucking shit up, if they can provide mental health care to people.
Instead he should be paying higher taxes so the city/state can have more money to build a bigger and stronger social safety net funnel more money to the organized crime syndicates well known to operate at all levels of Gotham's government.
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if they're corrupt Bruce should be able to buy them instead of using all his obscene wealth to build more bat themed contraptions and vehicles like an insane person.
Or he could be doing both.
Shockingly enough people can do multiple things, especially in a fictional world full of superhuman ability.
Gotham is super polluted right? So it would actually make sense if he was a bit insane from it like everyone else there.
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I've said this elsewhere but adult comics fans are very fragile about it. My main problem with Batman is he's so clearly insane, but DC for some reason makes Superman go insane while portraying Batman as this moral compass of the entire universe, where it should be the opposite. Superman is literally the super man, an immensely powerful visitor from outer world who nevertheless is kind and considerate (hear that, Snyder? fuck you and your gray ass world). a shining example of what humanity can be. Batman is someone who was fucked up by a terrible trauma and decided to dress up like a bat, make bat shaped toys and punch small time baddies saying shit like "I am the night" or whatever. it's literally psychotic.
They're corrupt because of the Mafia. Who killed Thomas Wayne for standing against them. Mob corruption has less to do with money and more to do with threats and blackmail. Bribes are just entrapment. Bruce Wayne can do fuck all against that.
Seriously, any "why didn't Bruce do ___ instead of be Batman?" Has been answered in the comics.
But unlike the billionaires we have he directly funds those security nets. Straight up runs all kinds of soup kitchens and homeless shelters and a bunch of different true charities not just tax write-off bullshit.
This is explicitly how things are explained in Harley Quinn. The irony of it is that it's Joker who points all this out.
Ah yes, that completely serious and not at all satirical show Harley Quinn.
The entire point of the show is to turn established Canon on its head and view it in another light.
I bet it's whatever chemical that's in those vats at Ace Chemicals that the upstanding citizens of Gotham kept falling into and come out as clowns.
Like, why would any company make a chemical which the only purpose seems to be to get psychiatrists to beat people up with baseball bats on roller skates?
Whatever is in the water probably seeped out of some Wayne Enterprises industrial plant. Batman is the biggest menace to Gotham City; not any of the victims that become villains. All because some rich playboy wants to play ninja instead of running the corporate empire that owns like 90% of the city.