Warning! Spoilers ahead for Future State: The Next Batman #2
DC’s new Batman may look and fight like the original, but he still has a lot to learn. In fact, Future State: The Next Batman #2 proves that Tim Fox has yet to master Bruce Wayne’s greatest weapon: fear.
Fear has always been at the core of Batman’s strategy; the whole reason Bruce chose a bat as his symbol was because he needed something that would make himself appear supernatural and terrify the criminals of Gotham. All of the training and gadgets in his utility belt serve to help Batman intimidate his adversaries. In Detective Comics #33 by Bill Finger, the first issue to depict Batman’s tragic backstory, Bruce states that “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible…” From the very beginning, Batman’s goal has been to fight for justice using fear, and this line has been referenced many times over the years, most recently in DC’s Future State.
Future State: The Next Batman #2 by John Ridley has Tim hunting down two murderers while struggling to stay one step ahead of the Magistrate, Future State's evil army that has turned Gotham into an oppressive police state. Tim eventually manages to track the killers down, but by then, he’s injured and exhausted. “Maybe fear of the Bat alone will make them surrender,” Tim hopes. Unfortunately, the culprits don’t get scared. “Man, what happened to thugs being cowardly and superstitious?” Tim wonders, calling back to that iconic quote from Detective Comics #33. It’s only after Tim takes them down that he realizes they aren’t thugs at all, but parents who wanted revenge on the man who killed their daughter.
The arrival of the Magistrate’s forces ends the issue on a cliffhanger, but one thing is for sure - Tim needs to work on his scare tactics. The killers he was chasing all issue aren’t even part of the criminal underworld; they’re just civilians who decided to take justice into their own hands. If anything, they should be even more terrified of the Batman than an actual, hardened murderer, so the fact that they choose to fight instead shows how far the Dark Knight’s reputation has fallen in Future State. Then again, their reaction may also be a testament to how desensitized the people of Gotham have become. At this point, vigilantes aren’t exactly a new phenomenon - especially in a place as lawless as Gotham City - and with the Magistrate in charge, perhaps Tim’s inability to intimidate is more due to the overall abysmal state of things than his own skills.
The symbol of the Bat clearly doesn’t have the impact it used to. In Bruce’s day, Gotham’s criminals would quake in their boots when the bat-signal lit up the sky, but now the city has bigger problems to deal with. If Tim is going to accomplish what Bruce Wayne never could and truly save the city, he’ll first need to fix the Batman’s legacy.
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