Batman's One Real Fear Is The Threat Readers Are All Ignoring
Warning! Spoilers for Future State: Dark Detective #3!
Batman is one of the most high-tech heroes in all of DC Comics, but in the timeline that is Future State he’s actually fighting against the technology the Magistrate uses to spy on the people of his city. Bruce Wayne is on the run, doing his best to beat back the fascist forces of the Magistrate as a bare bones vigilante in terms of both gear and sensibilities. Still trying to get to the bottom of his attempted assassination - which led to his extended Bat-Family and the citizens of Gotham to believing the Dark Knight to be dead - Batman has a whole slew of other issues to contend with, most of which stem from the Magistrate's totalitarian authority.
But it’s here that Batman completely underestimates the evil that the Magistrate is capable of and how far they will go to make sure no one slips out of the stranglehold they have over Gotham. And while he has been known to use similar surveillance tech in the past, this near future presents a familiar problem that Batman seems keen on not repeating.
In the third issue of Future State: Dark Detective by Mariko Tamaki and Dan Mora, Batman is holed up in an apartment rented from a guy that in ordinary circumstances would be written off as a tin foil hat wearing loony. Bruce does his best to stay off the grid and out of sight as he fulfills his nightly commitment as Batman by hunting down and taking out as much Magistrate tech as he can. Batman finally manages to bring home a drone that will hopefully help him truly see the scope of what he’s dealing with. Fearing that the Magistrate has invaded the privacy of the citizens of Gotham without their consent, Batman is shocked to find out that these micro-surveillance bots aren’t just patrolling the main streets and public areas of the city, but are quite literally spying on people inside of their homes at every hour of the day, “blowing past an invasion of privacy to full panopticon.”
Batman knows full well what the ramifications of this kind of surveillance means considering he once lost control of an A.I. called Brother Eye, the purpose of which was to monitor Earth’s superheroes and take them down should they step out of line. The Magistrate seems to slowly be inching towards this direction, an issue that Batman cannot allow to happen again. It's not until this issue that Bruce realizes the full breadth of surveillance in the city and the fact that there are way more drones out there than even he suspected, extrapolating his problems tenfold.
So while Batman might have had a lapse in judgment when originally creating the Brother Eye tech that eventually ran rampant across the DC universe, it seems that Future State has given Batman pause about how to use that kind of technology in the first place. Batman might not be the hero he once was, but he’s allowing his past mistakes, fears and concerns to guide him in a way that the Magistrate clearly isn’t. Judging by the leveling up of their surveillance, they might not be too far behind repeating the sins of a hero that was just trying to help.
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