If someone came begging Bruce to save their life but he outright refused, is that different from killing them?

If someone came begging Bruce to save their life but he outright refused, is that different from killing them?

Depends. If it's something simple and easily within Bruce's power, then yes it's killing them. If they're asking him to risk his or others's well-being, then he has the right to refuse.

I've noticed that when you pose a dire threat to his friends and family.
Old Batman will LET you die as a form of self justice I suppose.

what the fuck was he meant to do

Save him. Like a decent person would have. Wondy would have. Superman would have. The fucking Flash would have.

But not Batman, because he is a cunt.

But if someone threatened to place your family and friends in mortal danger just from revealing information on you, I would have op'ed to let them drop also...keeps me hands clean.

Is there anything he literally could have done though? Batman doesn't have magic vibrator hands like the Flash, and the dude's intangible.

Is this the character who fell through the earth?

It doesn't break the NAP so no.

Batman had little prep time so I doubt he could have saved him.

yeah.

This situation is...honestly, this is hard to put on Bruce.

Ian Peek killed a man via arson to get the tech he'd been using to spy on people and reveal their secrets.

He called Bruce to his office while constantly bragging to the public that he would reveal the identities of both Batmen, didn't show *any* remorse for the above murdering when Bruce figured it out, and then attempted to murder him when Bruce refused to aide him.

Bruce is in his twilight years and had no access to the phasing tech to study it for a way to restore Peek, and was miles away form the Batcave even if he could when the guy's powers fucked him up irrevocably. Peek did *all* of this to himself and kept trying to set himself up on the bargaining high ground and there was literally no time to stop his phasing problem by then.

Regarding Bruce's refusal to help him... Well, he's automatically absolved because of the above--Peek basically would have still died given he had minutes to live at that point, but if you're wanting to explore Bruce's refusal... Well, he's the goddamn Batman. He can figure this shit out. If he had realized then and there that Peek was already dead, why humor the guy threatening to destroy his legacy and ruin Terry's life? Maybe he had initially been playing hard ball the same way he used to hold thugs over the side of a tall building to get info until he realized how fucked Peak was, but the point remains. Peek was already dead at this point, he just didn't know it, but Bruce probably did.

Yeah, I guess Batman is just a killer by inaction.

Yeah, maybe. But HOW could Bruce have done anything to help?

Hell, he could have been on his way back to the cave to try and come up with a solution but Peek stopped him.

>"Save my life, Batman. I know I blackmailed you, your protege, and tons of innocent people with this technology I killed someone for, but you won't let me die, right?"

Fuck him.

The way he died is one of my biggest nightmares

>implying he's dead.

It's a classic pulp villain death. He preys on others and then begs to be saved when he causes his own death. He's not even honest about living amorally by force.

Reminder that the DCAU is a hollow Earth. The dude is chillin' in Skartaris.

Forgot pic.

Couldn't you also analyze the grander subtext of the episode's plot and come to the conclusion that Gothamites probably assumed that Peek's disappearance, coinciding with an attempt to reveal Batman's identity, means that Batman murdered him to keep the secret intact?

Look at how easily that sort of thing gets tied together in the real world, especially in political journalism when one of them dies young/mysteriously. Granted it's mostly crackpots that hoist that sort of thing up, or even care about it, but this was a huge story with everyone talking about it, and the guy just fucking disappears right in the middle of it all, never to be heard from again. There's no way that people wouldn't tie things together and apply it to the Batman legend.

It's only OK to kill a comic book villain if they're not marketable.

Reminder : This is a Bruce whose refusal to kill the Joker got his adopted son tortured for a month straight before his adopted son shot the Joker.

This isn't the "NO KILLING EVERNEVAHEVA BECAUSE MUMMA AND PAPPA WOULD BE SADDIES"

the scariest part is that he probably isn't dead, he is stuck completely intangible and invulnerable at the center of the Earth until the planet ceases to exist and finally releases him from it's gravity

he could be stuck alone for millions of years and never able to interact with another human being ever again

But isn't there a false sun there that he'd still fall into?

It wouldn't be hard to come to that conclusion, admittedly, though you could also surmise that he got targeted by one of Batman's villains for... whatever reason.

Not to mention his immediate reaction to that was chucking a knife at Joker's head.

You forget that Barbara is the police commissioner.

There's no way she'd ever believe that Bruce had someone off'd and so an alternative story would surface.

The false sun's gravity would be significantly negated by the surrounding Earth's gravity now equally spread out because of its mass.