Your Headcanons?

[Yukaphile]

Fuck, after what he did to his own daughter, Gordon begged Batman to bring him in "by the book." Just to show him that their ways can work too. He really won't appreciate that. It won't change him, other than a token feel-good gesture. Thus, yeah. Hell, straight from TV Tropes:

In one of the Batman: The Animated Series based comics (during the The New Adventures period), a multi-millionaire philanthropist places a million dollar bounty for the Joker's head (dead or alive, but preferably dead), in order to have justice for the Joker killing his son. He does so via live broadcast, including the Times-Square-esque television screens in Gotham Uptown. The whole city goes berserk as everybody tries to capture and or kill the Joker. Finally, Batman kidnaps the millionaire, brings him to a dark corner of Gotham where the Joker is tied to a chair in a cone of light. Batman says that he will not allow the man to buy himself a murder; if he wants Joker dead, he is going to have to kill him himself. Before disappearing into the dark though, Batman asks the businessman if this is really what he wants, and if it is really worth it. The man, alone with Joker, begins to lunge at the clown to strangle him, but stops himself, unable to go against his humanitarian nature. The next day, he withdraws the bounty, instead using it to start a support organization for the families of victims of violent crime. Just like Batman expected he would.

Now, that did nothing actually practical in the "cost of human lives" sense. It just ensured the Joker would keep killing and torturing people like he did Barbara. Donations to families of violent crimes? Now that's all well and good, but shit, why not try an ounce of prevention there too? I gotta admit, if it was me, with his proven track record, and despite my pacifist ideals, and given my own views on the importance of life and the preservation of the innocent, he probably wouldn't live to see another day. I say probably because I've never been in that situation. Don't get me wrong. Even if I did, I would still probably feel bad for the rest of my life. But as we saw "In the Pale Moonlight," a pained conscience is worth it if it saves so many.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Also, in the DC comics universe, death itself is about as efficient a prison as Arkham, so killing somebody isn't necessarily a permanent solution.

[Yukaphile]

That too. Hell, Superman punched Joker through the fricking chest in the Injustice: Gods Among Us comic, and even that failed to kill him. And then Superman just went postal and became a supervillain that ended up killing Mogo and Ganthet. Nice job breaking it, hero.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, we're talking Batman. Time for the big one:

Batman is his own worst enemy. He is a billionaire, with a B. If he had focused more on the whole board, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. For what he spends on a Batboat, he could fund entire wings of Leslie Thompkins free clinics and homeless shelter programs. Sure, there will always be lone nuts like the Joker, but they'll have a hard time getting henchmen if they have better healthplans working at Wayne Industries or the Big Belly Burger(now a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises) down the street.

But, Batman doesn't work like that. He uses his non-profits as fronts for his war on crime. This leads to projects started to revitalize the city, but never finished, because Batman finished the case he was leading on. That means he stop focusing on the plight of the homeless, the poor, the abused, etc.

And this is why Gotham can't stop being a hellhole. Because it's greatest angel isn't making a path for it to improve.

[CharlesPhipps]

Okay, we're talking Batman. Time for the big one:

Batman is his own worst enemy. He is a billionaire, with a B. If he had focused more on the whole board, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. For what he spends on a Batboat, he could fund entire wings of Leslie Thompkins free clinics and homeless shelter programs. Sure, there will always be lone nuts like the Joker, but they'll have a hard time getting henchmen if they have better healthplans working at Wayne Industries or the Big Belly Burger(now a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises) down the street.

But, Batman doesn't work like that. He uses his non-profits as fronts for his war on crime. This leads to projects started to revitalize the city, but never finished, because Batman finished the case he was leading on. That means he stop focusing on the plight of the homeless, the poor, the abused, etc.

And this is why Gotham can't stop being a hellhole. Because it's greatest angel isn't making a path for it to improve.

I thought he DOES do this and that's the sole reason Gotham hasn't fallen into hell itself.

[PapaPalpatine]

You can ask the same question about anyone though; why doesn't commissioner Gorden kill him? Or any other cop? Or any of the guards or doctors at the asylum? Or literally anyone else who ever has an opportunity?

Why do we put this all on Batman's shoulders?

Pretty much this. The only explanation I'd accept for why it's Batman's responsibility and not the judiciary is if the fact that he's apprehended by a vigilante is itself the reason he's not tried and executed. I'm not sure if that's applicable in the DC universe, especially when things like Suicide Squad get sanctioned by the government.

Provided there's enough evidence to convict him of his crimes in a court of law, it really shouldn't matter who apprehended the Joker; whether it was the cops, Batman, or someone brave (or crazy) enough to subdue him and place him under citizen's arrest, it should be all the same to the DA.

[CharlesPhipps]

They could also just put Joker in space.

There's other options if Gotham State doesn't have the death penalty.

[abki]

A headcanon for the the recent show Maniac (spoilers in case you haven't seen it and are planning to)

After being connected to GRTA, Dr. Greta Mantleray is McMurphied. The reason I believe this is because Greta only believes to be awake as she dreamed that she was thrown out a window by GRTA, and then woke up. This happens immediately after we see GRTA's avatar ranting about a desire to McMurphy the subjects. After she awakens:

• She warns that GRTA is unstable, is laughed at (including by Dr. Fujita who had been extremely supportive up to this point), and is later vindicated.
• GRTA injures staff by shocking one through a control, and releases a toxic gas into the air.
• She convinces her son to shut down GRTA as he is violating his hippocratic oath by endangering the subjects
• When GRTA is shutdown, all records of the previous trials are destroyed.
• Her son is barred from ever working in the field again.
• Everyone involved agrees that the work in general was a terrible idea.

Now, we know that in the procedure patients are McMurphied when they refuse to confront their trauma/flaws. Dr. Greta's flaw would seem to be a refusal to admit personal fallibility, and after awakening she was proven correct on every ground. What's more, the odd technical details from GRTA (why can it shock people through a control? Why are there no backups? Who connected a toxic gas release to GRTA and why?) can be explained as being needed as part of the dream to ensure that GRTA and the related work stop once and for all. All this comes to vindicate Dr. Greta in almost every possible way, from her decision to abandon her early work that was the basis for GRTA, to her personal beliefs about her son.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, we're talking Batman. Time for the big one:

Batman is his own worst enemy. He is a billionaire, with a B. If he had focused more on the whole board, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. For what he spends on a Batboat, he could fund entire wings of Leslie Thompkins free clinics and homeless shelter programs. Sure, there will always be lone nuts like the Joker, but they'll have a hard time getting henchmen if they have better healthplans working at Wayne Industries or the Big Belly Burger(now a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises) down the street.

But, Batman doesn't work like that. He uses his non-profits as fronts for his war on crime. This leads to projects started to revitalize the city, but never finished, because Batman finished the case he was leading on. That means he stop focusing on the plight of the homeless, the poor, the abused, etc.

And this is why Gotham can't stop being a hellhole. Because it's greatest angel isn't making a path for it to improve.

I thought he DOES do this and that's the sole reason Gotham hasn't fallen into hell itself.

Nope, he'll stop the criminals, the terrorists, etc. But he'll stop getting interested in actually building Gotham up for whatever reason. A key example would be during the Catyclysm, in which after Gotham is destroyed by an earthquake, Bruce Wayne randomly walks into Wayne Enterprises HQ, stops all the effort Mr. Fox is to help survivors so that he can find a seismologist, who has been kidnapped, address. Once the Batman thing has been done, he doesn't pursue any follow through. He never follows up on rebuilding Gotham. He doesn't do anything to really improve the city.

It took Lex Luthor spending millions, if not billions, to rebuild the city for Gotham to stop being No Man's Land. Instead, Bruce just hid in Gotham, slowly taking out the gangs that had conquered the city. Shows where his priorities lie.

[CharlesPhipps]

Bruce spent months in Congress petitioning for federal funding and getting stonewalled.