What If The Joker Just Did Normal Clown Shit Like Spray People With Prank Flowers And Make Balloon Animals

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I have some thoughts on Batman (Arkham Batman, but Batman in general) vs Spider-Man (mostly from the new game because games), in terms of characterization and how you can level with them.

When you play the Arkham games, they say they make you FEEL like you’re Batman, and that’s true… to a point. But certain elements of the character simply are not there, at least not properly. Batman’s the World’s Greatest Detective. Batman is supposed to be able to do old school forensics, deductive reasoning, yet in the games, the Batcave’s computer does almost everything for him remotely. I know it was done in the name of focusing on action but it’s an aspect that’s missed.

In Spider-Man, though… you get it all. You get to feel that strength, that unnatural agility. You can pummel thugs into oblivion and stop two delivery trucks with one arm each, but you can also be stealthy. You can quietly take down an entire outpost of enemies one by one and slip in and out without raising so much as an alarm. You also experience his intellect, you help identify various chemical elements and hear him explain what they are, you help him rewire circuitry. It’s all done through some mini-games, sure, but it still makes you feel like you’re part of it, like you’re a genius recognizing these patterns. You also see him create and improvise new gadgets and weapons on the fly. And it feels so organic too!

Another aspect is the relationship they have with their villains. In the Arkham games, Batman often comes across as… stoic. There’s no real investment, no tension, no emotion. It’s just Batman kicking ass, taking names, shutting out emotion. He’s just dealing with criminals after all, and criminals who are where they belong. Why should he be invested right now? But then even the people he saves he’s curt and blunt with.

With Spider-Man, he seems to genuinely care; not just about the people he saves, whom he’ll tell where to go to get help, whom he’ll check to make sure they’re ok, but even his villains! He shows genuine concern for Black Cat when she appears to be slipping back into crime. He has a genuine interest in the Shocker and his intellect and ingenuity when it comes to his suit tech, and even makes a plan to visit him in jail to talk shop. In this game, he clearly sees these people as still being people. Misguided, sometimes awful people, but people/ It humanizes both him and the characters he interacts with, right down to the NPCs, and it shows that he really is your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

But what really struck me is the relatability aspect. A lot of folks like to sell Batman on the idea that he’s a “realistic” superhero, that because his powers are just being smart and an expert fighter, he could conceivably be real. But… I’d actually argue that makes him less realistic and in no way makes him relatable.

Batman has like, ten college degrees. He’s mastered every known style of martial arts known to man, and several known only to aliens. He mastered the art of ninjitsu and single-handedly struck a huge blow to crime rates in a city where he and those he’s trained are the sole heroes, with himself being primary. He’s accomplished all this… in about ten years, being active now for only about six or so. He’s also kinda inherited a multi-billion dollar fortune and company with bottomless funds, so there’s that. None of that is particularly realistic other than on a surface level, and certainly not relatable.

Spider-Man is… a kid who got bitten by a radioactive spider and attained super strength, speed, agility, and reflexes. He’s also a kid who, though perhaps not well-versed on official lab work, is not only a sponge for learning, but is also beyond a genius in terms of applied science; he can make high-tech gadgets after a dumpster dive, and run algorithms on his old laptop to find flaws in programs HE coded manually. He can spot a bad connector and fix it with parts from a hardware store and components taken from an old cell phone. Crime is still an issue, even in a city full of heroes, but he still does his part even when it sometimes seems pointless, hopeless. The guy makes do with what he has, faces overwhelming odds, and keeps pushing through it. Sure, on the surface it seems more fantastical, but in context, he’s really much more humanized.

And on top of that, he has the same problems you and I have. He’s behind on rent and even though he gets paid at the end of the week, his landlord wants it in three days… or else. He showed up late to work with a dirty, ripped shirt because he stops a mugging on the way in, or because he overslept due to being on patrol AND trying to get his studies done. He had to work for a boss he couldn’t stand so he could have enough cash to keep the lights on, food on the table, and his aunt cared for. He’s got relationship issues he has to work through, issues beyond his own hangups about letting people get close.

Hell, what really drives that home for me is a scene in the game where Peter actually gets evicted from his apartment and his landlord tosses his stuff in the trash. Peter has an actual panic attack as he realizes that include his Spider-Drive. A little USB Flash Drive that contains EVERYTHING, all his prototypes, research, dossiers on villains, every idea he’s had… all compressed and encrypted on one tiny flash drive accidentally tossed in the trash. While it’s not usually that extreme for us, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had something go missing of vital importance. And that, to me, hit home in a way Batman, with his remote access to his 200-exabyte storage supercomputer, just never can. That’s not even touching on how this man with superpowers manages to feel hunger fatigue, pain, etc. and has a story set over a period of weeks vs one man doing all this with little-to-no exhaustion setting in… all in one night. Peter is humanized, Bruce is idealized.

Spider-Man is one of the first superhero games to not only make you feel like a superhero but to show you that… the superhero there on the screen? He IS you. He is all of us in SO many ways.

And that’s why, to me, between this and the Arkham series… it doesn’t come close. Marvel’s Spider-Man IS the greatest superhero game, and one of THE greatest pieces of superhero media of ALL TIME.

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