>>85196143I happen to have an old pasta for this I wrote some years back when I was drunk. And since I'm drunk now it something.
That they turn against Batman just shows that he is invasive, he just doesn't belong there. The city tries to drive him mad but he persists. That he dresses up as a bat is just a way to get the city to accept him as part of it. Not the city as in the buildings, but the city as in the people. That he has to dress up as a bat to fit in is a testament to how sick the city is. Yet it remains and Batman, having nowhere else to go, adopts the city as a new family. Which is why he can never kill the bad guys. His crusade is that of a child trying to make his parents conform to his expectations. The irony here is also that the doctors, the people who were to help him, are all insane, and can offer no help other than for him to join them in madness, as a parent puts expectations on a child. He struggles to not grow up (which also explains the ridiculous costume).
In a way the city and the villains he faces are dark reflections of his psyche. All the villains represent different sides of himself, the doctors especially. The doctors represent his will to cure Gotham from the sickness that has taken hold. Once again, irony in that he is trying to cure the doctors. What he doesn't realize however is that the city is inherently insane, and he is the infection, which is why the doctors fight him. He is what is wrong with the city. Which I guess makes the Joker into Patch Adams for the purposes of this metaphor.
