Would the world be ready for a black Batman/Bruce Wayne in the future?
 

We know Robert Pattinson has been cast as the next live-action Batman so we're going to have a white Batman for the next few movies.

But eventually in the future, do you think the world will be ready for a black actor cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman? As we know, Batman is Batman, no matter his skin color. Just like The Little Mermaid is now black, how will you feel about a black Bruce Wayne? Will the world be ready for it or will there be backlash? I'm gonna guess yes.

Cubed, don't try to start flame wars, it's not a good idea. Leave these kinds of discussions to 4Chan and Reddit.

I'm honestly curious. Just like there's been rumors of the next James Bond possibly being black it's quite possible.

Would the world be ready? Probably not.

But we've already had a Black Batman once With Stan Lee's reimagine series, and I think you can do some interesting bits with a Black Batman.

The world is woke enough to accept anything these days. I don't see the point though.

Sure, why not? When he had a chance to write versions of the DC heroes, even Stan Lee's idea for Batman was to make him black.

I just don't see how changing the race of the character adds to the story. It just seems to bring confusion and dissonance for no reason.

Given the way the comicsgate community react to Signal they are not even ready for Batman to have a black crime fighting partner.

I would argue given the nature of Bruce Wayne coming from old money it would be a bit of stretch (though not impossible) to have an African American version. Thomas and Martha Wayne would potentially be more interesting characters.

I say this of course knowing that we already have a black Batman created by Stan Lee no less and Tim Burton was going to cast a black Robin and one movie pitch had a black Alfred. In many ways we've actually gone backwards but such is the way of white nationalists realised that pretending they cared about nerd culture could help their cause.

And we already had a black Harvey Dent in Batman 1989, and we could have theoretically had a black Two Face had Burton directed Batman Forever and Billy Dee Williams stayed on.

Make everyone black, and never go back.

I love conspiracy theories.
Left or right - doesn't mater they always sound like a bunch of crazy bollox.

It is because we've gone backwards we have first big blockbuster with black superhero and TV series with a Lesbian hero. But, of course, those pesky white nationalists have enough pull to influence everyone to stop introducing non-white heroes...:lol:

As for black Batman, it is possible, but why? For what purpose? Just to recolor him and pander to eternally oppressed snowflake crazies on Internet, who don't even read comic books, much they don't care or play video games?

It feels a bit stunty to colorize everything. I'm all for farcical interpretations like lady ghost busters, but shuffling color into the mythos of established characters is blatant pandering.

Look at the comment section of those comicsgate youtubers and half of them are from people who don't even read or care about comics but support "the cause".

And yeah it did have an affect. The most prominent comic book publisher who was making more money than they had in a decade with a greater push for diversity who for a long time (rightfully) responded to these campaigns with with a figurative "sorry we can't hear over this pile of money" eventually got spooked enough to somewhat alter their approach.

It should also be pointed out it didn't work. Books were cancelled and replaced with books they thought would appeal to these idiots and it turned out to be less profitable. Newly launched books that Marvel would have otherwise given time to catch on were cancelled to appease the anti-diversity crowd only to sell a lot in trade leaving them to unceremoniously bring them back and hope the audience hadn't moved on. They held off on launching books that would end up selling well because they thought it would upset the alt-right types when they could have raked in those profits all along.

Yeah Marvel was dumb for listening to them but when even their owners - Disney - the biggest media corporation in history to fire the director of one of the biggest and hardest to handle properties after a campaign led by actual white nationalists to not only manufacture controversy over old tweets but try an insinuate he was a child abuser then I think they are more effective than you think.

Sure, progress has been made but there is definite steps back too. As people have pointed out here there is already a black version of Batman that few people had issue with but if he was created today there would an orchestrated hate campaigns against this version of the character. Heck there's campaigns against Batman even having a black ally.

As for why they should do it? I dunno. Why not? I'm not advocating for it but in a medium were multiple versions of the same character are a norm drawing the line at a none white one suggests to me there's a problem.

There's Batwing. How's that?

This thread sure is some bait. I'll just say, we have a ******** of black characters and the roaster is growing all the time. More are being introduced than at any other time in comics. Just adapt those to screen instead.

I think it would work.

Well, Batwing already exists, and is pretty interesting in his own right.

Batwing
 

How does his vehicle affect this?

Unless you’re joking, read comics.

I think you mean night wing?

No, I mean Batwing. Seriously, google or read comics. He’s Africa’s Batman and had a pretty good New 52 series years back.

Batman's plane is also called the Batwing. Thus confusion.

It was a terrible name choice for the African Batman of Batman Inc.

Also a little insulting. Everyone gets a cool name, but the black Batman gets named after Batman's sweet airplane?

The Signal isn’t any better name either

I'd argue he's also not a good character. :tlol:

I liked him when he was running the Robins (the gang, not the actual sons of the Batman) and helping with Bloom. But once Rebirth started, the character kinda fell apart. No me gusta.

I often forget Batman has more sidekicks after Tim Drake.

At least it doesn't start with "Black" like every other African superhero name does. Blackwing.

That is true.

BLACK Lightning
BLACK Manta
BLACK Panther

Make room for the ladies:

Black Widow
Black Mamba
Black Cat

2 outta 3 of those are white ladies. Completely inadmissible.

Exactly, missed the point entirely.

Black Batman wouldn't work without reworking the whole story to explain how his family got rich. One possible route is making him adopted by the Waynes but that just adds too many unnecessary changes just to make this change work.

Leave Bruce Wayne the **** alone and just create an all new black hero character.

Arnold from Different Strokes is....BATMAN.

Why would they need to rework his backstory? Black people can’t be rich? Wut. A black Thomas and Martha Wayne would have the same backstory as billionaires.

It's just the Banks family but Wayne... African-American Batman is a competent Carlton Banks :lol:

Bruce is only rich due to his parents. Wasn't the general problem that there weren't many or any rich non-white folks during the era of Thomas and Martha Wayne?

A black batman? No problem. A Black Bruce Wayne? Only in an elseworld story.

I've always hated that black heroes had black on their name but I have to admit blackwing is a better name than batwing.

He's had plenty great ones since, but they also went overboard with Batman Inc where everywhere in the world had a Batman, that's where some of the lame batfamily members started appearing like batwing.

maybe back in 1939

...the 1980s? It’s not the f*cking 40s anymore. Sliding timeline.

There STILL isn't old-money wealth in the black-community, no matter how far you slide the timeline.

It doesn’t have to be old money. If you’re writing a new interpretation of a character you can change whatever you want. The Wayne’s run a burgeoning entrepreneurial empire that led to various business and industrial innovations. It’s not exactly hard to come up with plausible explanations.