Batman is the guardian of Gotham City and a shining light of moral rectitude in the DC Universe. Or is he? The Dark Knight is guilty of doing some pretty underhanded things in the course of his crime-fighting career; things you wouldn’t associate with a superhero and card-carrying member of the Justice League. Moreover, it seems that nobody was spared his underhanded ploys, be it Robin, other members of the Bat-Family, or the superhero community at large. What is the Caped Crusader guilty of?
10 LET CLAYFACE BURN INTO THE EARTH’S CRUST
Batman’s got a single-minded purpose when it comes to stopping crime, but even his actions at the end of The Mudpack storyline were a little circumspect. The original Clayface, Basil Karlo, had stolen the powers of Clayfaces II-IV and began to revel in them, proving more than a match for Batman and his partner, the one-time Outsider, Looker.
Bats instructed Looker to overload Karlo’s abilities, allowing him to burn through the Earth’s crust and seemingly towards its core. That’s a pretty underhanded move for someone who’s vowed never to kill anyone.
9 BEATS UP SUPERMAN...ROUTINELY
Superhero conflicts are par for the course in comic books, but the frequency with which Batman beats up Superman is not really indicative of friends that consider themselves the “World’s Finest” team. Moreover, considering Superman’s nature as a “boy scout” of sorts and Batman’s reputation as a self-professed “not nice person,” the battles consist of Batman using every dirty trick in the book to best his overpowered adversary. It even went as far as having Batman attempting to murder the Man of Steel in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice for simply existing!
8 ABANDONED THE KGBEAST TO DIE...TWICE
Returning to Batman leaving enemies to die, the KGBeast has been bestowed that honor by the Dark Knight twice. In one of their earliest encounters, Batman had lured the Beast into a secret subterranean room which he then locked, leaving the Beast to die in isolation. Later, in the Rebirth era, Batman hunted the Beast after an assassination attempt on Nightwing.
Believing Grayson to be dead, Batman confronted the Beast at his childhood home in the frigid forests of Russia and broke his neck. Rather than take him to get help, Batman left him to die of exposure in the snow.
7 HAD SEX WITH BATGIRL...WHILE SHE WAS DATING NIGHTWING
Breaking his code of not killing to avenge Nightwing may seem like an extraordinary act of loyalty to his protégé, but Batman didn’t seem to have a problem breaking another code to potentially break Nightwing’s heart. In Batman Beyond’s possible futuristic continuity, Bruce Wayne engaged in a tryst with Barbara Gordon while she was dating Dick Grayson.
To thicken the plot, Barbara got pregnant with Bruce’s child. Aside from breaking codes of social behavior, Batman didn’t even have the decency to use protection!
6 ANYTHING ALL-STAR BATMAN & ROBIN
Speaking of Bat-sex, Batman’s decision to have public carnal relations with Black Canary following a spirited bout of crime-fighting in All-Star Batman & Robin probably ranks pretty high on the list of reprehensible things to do. Actually, the entire series was an exposition of Batman’s horrible decision-making processes, particularly regarding Dick Grayson.
By kidnapping him immediately after the death of his parents and locking him in the Batcave without food or water to “toughen him up” for his role as a costumed avenger, it’s no wonder Grayson turned on his mentor in the later installments of Miller’s Bat-verse.
5 THE CONCEPT OF ROBIN
Preparing any 13-year-old in any way to risk their lives as a vigilante is morally reprehensible no matter how you look at it. Granted, Batman is a uniquely trained individual who can impart special knowledge in stealth and combat, but bestowing that knowledge on a child, much less a succession of them, is a horrible idea - as Stephanie Brown and Jason Todd can attest to.
If Batman really cared about these kids and their mental state, he’d have paid for their therapy and schooling rather than put them in harm’s way.
4 GOT STEPHANIE BROWN KILLED
On the subject of Robins, reeling from a break in her relationship with Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown (aka The Spoiler) entered the Batcave and strong-armed Batman into training her to be the new Robin.
He did, but her work was less than stellar, so he gave her the old Bat-boot. To get back in his good graces, she tried to bring down Gotham’s gangs with one of his famous secret plans, but her efforts backfired, plunging Gotham into a gang war and getting herself killed. Aside from adding another Robin to the deceased roster, this caused significant tension between Bruce and Tim.
3 KEPT SECRET PLANS ON HOW TO TAKE DOWN THE JUSTICE LEAGUE
Speaking of secret plans, Batman has clandestine files on every member of the Justice League, in the event they go rogue and he has to take them down. On the one hand, it seems smart considering the world they live in has telepaths capable of mind control. On the other, keeping files on how to incapacitate your buddies doesn’t seem too friendly. This is especially the case when it involves subjecting someone to hyper-seizures, as he did to the Flash, or changing their skin translucent so every ray of sun burns like a thousand needles, as he did to Superman.
2 SPIED ON ALL META-HUMANS
Batman’s paranoia can reach tin-foil hat levels from time to time, and that was the case when he initiated the Brother Eye Project. A system of satellites designed to gather information on the meta-human population he had grown distrustful of, Batman didn’t count on the system becoming sentient at the hands of Alexander Luthor, Jr. Now able to coat ordinary human beings with an exo-skeleton of meta-human proportions, the Brother Eye-controlled O.M.A.C.s (Observational Meta-human Activity Constructs) waged war on all meta-humans on the planet.
1 WASTED HIS LIFE
Batman may be a great hero, but he’s effectively killed Bruce Wayne. The worst thing Batman has done is to himself, robbing himself of any potential joy in his life by choosing to delve into his grief rather than overcome it.
The death of any parent, especially in such a traumatic way, will be devastating to the development of a child, but through therapy and hard work, a modicum of normalcy can be attained without dressing up like a giant bat. Bruce could have lived a normal and healthy life, possibly with a family, and by using his resources to better the lives of the citizens of Gotham as the primary goal of his life, rather than as an afterthought. Such drive and altruistic ambition could have been better served as mayor of Gotham or as head of philanthropic organizations, rather than as a costumed vigilante.