Why People Hate Batman: Caped Crusader

Many people had high hopes for Batman: Caped Crusader. While it delivers in certain aspects, the series has been the subject of some controversy. This comes after the series creator stated that they did gender swaps because Batman lacks good villains. He went on to say that the series needed more women characters. Now, the truth is that there are many ways to add more women to your story without needing to be a freak about it. Secondly, before I further expand on that point, saying that Batman lacks good villains is crazy. In my personal opinion, that has always been the one department that made Batman the strongest.

To go back to the statement, the series needs more women, so we have to do genre swaps for the Penguin statement. I understand that you might not want to build your series around Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, as they already have a series. However, you can always build around Talia Al Ghoul, Lady Frost, or Lady Arkham. It could also be your opportunity to introduce lesser-known characters that fans might not be familiar with on a mainstream level and give those female villains a chance to shine.

If you do a good job building up a lesser-known villain, she might even become mainstream and get a spot on TV or in a movie. That should be your goal, after all, right? Writing strong characters that can become more mainstream should be front and center on your to-do list if you want to highlight women. You, however, chose not to do that because highlighting and featuring women in your series is not the goal. Your goal is to click through rage bait.

Can Oswalda Cobblepot Work

That said, I do want to make an effort and not only be negative about this. While I will circle back to why I always distrust a series that makes it a vocal point to highlight how brave they are for including gay or black people or women, I want to first discuss Oswalda Cobblepot on her own. The truth is that Oswalda Cobblepot is not a terrible character. Looking beyond the fact that she should be called Oswald, you will find a well-written villain.

She is intelligent and cunning. I do find her intimidating, and she towers over her enemies, including Batman. Now, granted, they could have written the male version of the character the same way, but the point still stands. By no stretch of the imagination is Oswalda Cobblepot a weak point in the Batman story. Personally, I would not immediately dismiss Batman, Caped Crusader, as Woke garbage simply because Oswalda is in the show instead of Oswald.

There is a way to do this correctly. Unfortunately, many will find fault with the motives behind the idea and the implementation itself. I do not have an issue with a woman penguin. I have a problem with the creator of the show and the self-jerking he is doing because of the change. His motives are also laughable.

Why I Distrust Batman: Caped Crusader

Last week, I touched on the self-serving nature series and movie creators have when it comes to including Women, People of color, and LGBTQ people in their stories. White writers often include these groups in their stories, not to push the plot forward but rather to praise themselves in interviews. They will race-swap or sex-swap a character and then have 50 interviews about how stunning and brave they are for doing it.

Then, they will hold press conferences not to discuss the story but to make sure that everyone knows that they are not like the other white people or other men. They are champions of DEI and save you by doing a race or sex swap. The people doing this are very often creepy and weird about it. They will use Diversity and Inclusion as a shield to hide behind due to a lack of writing abilities. Thus, I understand why people are always skeptical about this. The big question is, is this happening with Batman: Caped Crusader, or is there more to this?

If we can agree that race and sex swaps are not always bad, what would a good example look like, and does this series fit into that description? Even if we question the writers’ motives, can we look past that if the implementation is good? To answer that question, let’s first circle back to the comments from the show’s creator.

Bruce Timm Vs. Batman

Bruce Timm is responsible for this series. You might recognize that name because he is also responsible for Batman, the animated series that is still considered the gold standard of Superhero animated series. Thus, I can safely say that these characters are in good hands. At the beginning of this piece, there is a question of whether inclusion or rage bait is the motive for Timm. Does he do race swaps to make up for poor writing?

I think we can at least agree that the Emmy-winning Batman writer who paved the way for other animated series did not do this to compensate for the lack of talent. With that said, let’s hear from the man himself about the motives. In an interview, he said, “James and I were talking about the overview of the show, and we said, ‘One of the problems with Batman, as he is, is there’s a lack of good villains.“

“You’ve got Catwoman, you’ve got Poison Ivy, you’ve got Harley Quinn. But it would be really good to have more female villains. And off the top of my head, I said… ‘What if we gender-flip The Penguin? That, in turn, sparked Tucker – who spearheaded Caped Crusader’s 1940s-style character designs – into action. When he said ‘Maybe we can gender-flip Penguin’ I just got this flood of ideas,” Tucker said, who went on to outline some of his inspiration for the bold reworking.” 

The Gender Swap Theory

The question now becomes, do you agree with Timm and his statement that Batman needed more female villains? Then, if you do agree, what would you say is the best approach to deal with this issue. Do you gender swap, or do you tap into your book of lesser-known villains and instead build them up? Or do you write a new villain altogether like Gotham did with Fish Mooney? I honestly do not know the correct answer. I would lean towards building up new villains or highlighting lesser-known ones and creating great stories for them.

For Batman: Caped Crusader, I can simply say that despite the sex swap, Oswalde is a well-written character. However, I am simply not a fan of the motives for doing it. Then again, Bruce Timm created the original, and in the end, he has the right to make any changes he wants to his classic series. We, as fans, in return, get to decide if we want to watch it or not.