Curiously, the GCPD in much of the canon is owned by the Carmine Falcone which is a bit more typical of Chicago during Prohibition, and political power gained by law enforcement justified by organized crime (and the War on Drugs and the War on Gangs) that drove us to our present state in which precincts are run very much as crime syndicates, turning those powers to prey on common citizens. In the United States, the police industrial complex hunts for liquidatable assets that can be seized via asset forfeiture that are in the hands of civilians who could not afford a legal defense.

It's a huge racket. In 2015 it was estimated $5 billion had been seized across the states, which is more than all the burglaries. Some states are trying to limit or stop asset seizures. Police are often ignoring the law, figuring they'll get excused by IA or some back-the-blue judge.

I bet police in Batman aren't robbing the people this way, even in 2023. I'd be impressed if he was. I'd be impressed if Batman cared when SWAT raided houses in black neighborhoods or when police gunned down a kid without cause in the district park. I bet Batman is still punching thugs.™ I'd be delighted if I was wrong.

The United States (and the UK, and Canada, and parts of the EU) need to systemically change, and if superheroes aren't acknowledging this then they are champions of the establishment, not the people. We can't save the world by punching Thanos in the face; in fact, Thanos killed only half of all life. What is happening IRL is going to result in more than half of all life dying, and that's going to happen even if we achieved carbon-net-zero today. Thanos and Darkseid and all other fictional world eaters have been made irrelevant by real-world events.

And yes, Batman trying to save Gotham by punching thugs makes him irrelevant as well. Feel free to continue reading Detective and rooting for him, but we just don't exist in that world anymore.

Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having read your posts. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

If someone's depending on me to inform their opinion, then they can't get much dumber. I invite people to go online and do some websearches about the real shit going on in the world, what real-world corruption in the 2020s looks like (as opposed to the 1920s) and the real monsters that we are facing that will take way more than superheroes to oppose.

But also I get it if you are so miserable, so overworked, so distraught that seeing Batman fight Two-Face is the only light in your world. In that case, yeah, read. Smoke your doobs. Do what you need to do to survive, because this world is fucked up enough that everyone is justified coping however they do, and comics are not the worst habit in the world.