Batman boldly addresses police brutality and systemic racism in law enforcement [View all]

[Bubzer]

We’ve tried to be pretty relentlessly on-point about him being a symbol of inspiration in the face of tremendous fear, as opposed to a symbol of punishment, or a symbol of revenge, taking the city away from criminals. Here is where he begins to learn [the limits of] the methods that he thought would work: finding a criminal, making an example of the criminal, throwing the criminal in jail … Instead, what he has to learn is that the problems that he’s facing in today’s city are much more humbling, are much more complicated.”

Most controversially, Snyder’s story shows 15-year-old Peter Duggio shot in the stomach by Gotham police veteran Ned Howler. Duggio is shown frightened, emerging from a fight in his father’s bodega with a local gang, and before he can respond to Howler’s demand to lie down, the officer mortally wounds him.

-snip-

Levin observed: “Mainstream comics have touched on economic justice a lot – in the past more than in the present. At times they’ve directly looked at racism, though never institutional racism without relying on a metaphor like [the X-Men’s] Mutants. By looking at these two pieces together Batman and the reader can get a sense of the complexity of the problems that Batman usually attempts to solve via detective work and Bruce Wayne attempts to solve via so-called ‘charity’. These problems will not be solved by each of those approaches alone – especially not one that treats the criminal justice system as a fair partner when it is not.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/15/batman-confronts-police-brutality-in-latest-comic-book