So, Exactly How Demented And Evil Is Scott Snyder's Batman?!?

I have to confess--despite being usually of high quality, I am not a huge fan of Scott Snyder's Batman run.

It's just a matter of taste--I like a Batman who occasionally foils a bank robber or investigates a mugging. Common, "ordinary" street-level crime is beneath the notice of Snyder's Batman, though. The entirety as his nu52 run on the title has been obsessed with long, longer and longest arcs about threats to the very existence of Gotham City.

Who has time to worry about gun-runners when a secret society is about to take over the city? Bodega hold-ups? Please--Batman must be focused 100% on whether the Joker, who might actually be an immortal god, can use mysterious chemicals from his spine to turn every single person in Gotham into a Joker-Zombie, all of whom will die any minute! When the Riddler is transformed into a madman more powerful and successful than Ra's Al-Ghul, who has time to stop drug dealers? Batman has no time for your petty crime!

Again, well-done. Just not to my taste.

But perhaps just as off-putting is how Snyder made (old) Bruce Wayne into a totally evil mother-frakker.

[SPOILER ALERT] In the last apocalyptic arc, Bruce had his entire memory wiped clean by DC Science--and now he's bright, innocent Bruce Wayne, who never experienced the tragedy that drove him to become Batman.

Well, Superman comes looking for Alfred, seeking his help to "fix" Bruce. And Alfred dismisses him, saying that there's no way that Bruce could ever be Batman again without that burning memory of his parents' murder to drive him.

And Bruce evidently thought the same thing:

That's right--Batman actually planned to clone himself, and implant his emotional trauma into each clone, so it would become Batman and continue the legacy.

Not only is that as demented as anyone in Arkham Asylum...it's also the exactly the same plan as the world's greatest megalomaniac tried 30 years ago:

Maybe I shouldn't be disturbed that the plan Batman came up with to continue his legacy is the exact same one that Victor Von Doom used to continue his legacy. It could be that I'm wrong to believe that Batman is dissing the ability of every Robin and other protegee he has had, and apparently determined to create his own line of Kristoffs. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned to think that maybe making your hero a self-absorbed destroyer of lives maybe kind of a little bit warps the definition of hero.

But that's the nu52 in a nutshell for you--where the most popular hero is no better than Doctor Doom.

From Batman #43 (2015) and Fantastic Four #278 (1985)