Batman Settles His Biggest Fan Debate With 1 Sentence

Published Sep 20, 2026, 7:52 PM EDT

Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared's first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot.

Batman has garnered a colorful cast of recurring supervillains, including Joker, Two-Face, Mister Freeze, and Riddler. However, depending on the storyline or continuity, one of Batman’s greatest enemies has also been one of his greatest allies: the Gotham City Police Department.

Seminal Batman comic book stories like “Year One” perfectly illustrate how corrupt the GCPD is and can be, and the GCPD now boasting an immortal warlord as its commissioner would seem absurd if not for how corrupt it typically is, let alone the fact that none other than Poison Ivy was somehow elected as mayor not too long ago, as well. Most recently, though, it has never been less debatable what Batman’s perspective on the police and corruption is.

Batman Is Anti-Corruption And Believes Nobody Is Above The Law (Not Even Him)

Batman’s actions and words have always made it abundantly clear what his stance on authority is. But, for anyone who still questions whether he’s ‘pro-police’ or ‘anti-police,’ Detective Comics #1113 further demonstrates his point of view on the matter when Officer Hall thwarts the dispersal of Commissioner Vandal Savage’s indiscriminately lethal herbicide and Batman commends her for her bravery, saying:

“Good people disobey bad orders.”

Indeed, Batman is decidedly not ‘anti-police’ in general, but ‘anti-police corruption’ (anti-corruption of any kind, really). Take the GCPD’s Jim Gordon, for example; part of why Gordon has agreed to work with a vigilante is because he knows the system is so corrupt that vigilantism is valuable, much less a desperate last resort against rampant, horrific crime.

Batman understands that there is value in working with law enforcement and authority figures whom he can trust and who he believes are “good people.” Likewise, Daniel Warren Johnson’s Absolute Batman 2025 Annual #1 leaves no ambiguity whether Batman would be ‘pro-ICE’ or not:

And not even Batman is immune to the law. Bruce Wayne explicitly addresses the irony in his crime-fighting endeavors, however altruistic they may be, in Batman #12, by declaring:

“Batman and Robin have always functioned within certain shifting gray zones of morality and ethics. The spirit of the law is not its letter. Quasi-legal is not, in fact, legal. I’ve always known the final criminal I bring to justice will be the Batman himself.”

Batman’s War On Crime Has Him Regularly Fighting The GCPD

As early as issue #2 of Matt Fraction’s Batman run, readers get a fresh taste of what a scummy cop in Gotham City looks like via Officer Eddie Vargas, a man who shoots a fleeing suspect in cold blood, shoots Tim Drake’s Robin, and eventually shoots Batman point-blank in the back of the cowl with a shotgun. But Batman disagrees with a sensible officer who argues that the GCPD and the Bat-Family are on the same side, stating, “Police brutality and murder put us on opposite sides. Officers.”

Savage’s TUCO (Tactical Urban Combat Officers) squads are obviously no ordinary batch of cops, and corruption is virtually synonymous with the GCPD in literally any iteration or continuity of DC mythology, though that’s certainly a pertinent and distinctive trait of the police department in the ongoing mainline Batman run. That said, there’s a lot of good to be found and nurtured within the GCPD, and it’s being celebrated in the tie-in spin-off Batman: Bad Seeds - Gotham Central, featuring officers Gordon, Espinoza, and Baker on their own little side quest.

Detective Comics #1113 is out now.

One of DC's most iconic heroes, Batman is the vigilante superhero persona of billionaire Bruce Wayne. Forged by tragedy with the death of his parents, Bruce dedicated his life to becoming the world's leading martial artist, detective, and tactician. Recruiting an entire family of allies and sidekicks, Bruce wages war on evil as the dark knight of his hometown, Gotham City.