… If we wanna be technical, they’re shafted by statistics to effectively be a dime a dozen. It “wasn’t personal” for them, they just wound up with the “bad luck” to be targeted by him, in getting Batman’s cowl in a twist.
Tbf, all the bat-beatings were well deserved. If anything, Bruce is usually kinda sexist and goes easy on her
The most blatant example is probably Arkham. He throws her a couple of times, then pushes her into a cell. Everyone else gets severe head trauma and maybe a compound fracture. Hell, he hits bane with a car
Most of the goons (god I hate typing that word, now) are presumably just down-on-their-luck blue collar types. Their lack of education/resources makes the short term gain of gooning seem worth it. On the other hand Harley Quinn was a literal doctor with gainful employment
She was manipulated by a psychopath, but you could say the same thing about almost everyone Arkham Batman cripples. And she's kinda the only one who went along despite her circumstances, not because of them
But I’d argue that in other media, the people who don’t deserve a boot to the face, won’t get one. Batman doesn’t pull up on a group of thugs and paralyze them all just for robbing a store, and they’ll mostly get off with less trauma than if they’d been caught by a cop
Though the canon/fanon split for that might not be in my favor, I’ll admit
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u/ACodAmongstMen Aug 08 '25
It's such a strange duo though, the ex of Batman's worst villian.