Batman is NOT An Anti-Hero

A word you hear thrown around a lot, sometimes willy-nilly is "anti-hero" to describe a character, and more often than not it's not entirely accurate. An example and probably the most misused example is Batman, I hear people often say how Batman is the greatest anti-hero of all time, and all I can think is "he's not an anti-hero! He's just a hero!". An anti-hero is someone who you're supposed to question your support for them, they do good things but with a negative consequence, they make you question if the ends justify the means and are they really someone you should hope wins in the end? Batman is someone who you clearly root for from beginning to end, no matter what the story. He's not a conflicted character in the sense of an anti-hero, he always has good intentions behind what he does, always wants to help people, is incredibly selfless, never kills and would be willing to die to protect just one soul. The only reason why people view him as an anti-hero is because he follows this archetype of anti-heroes being dark & brooding, like The Punisher or Rorshach, now those two are anti-heroes, they have questionable morals, deplorable actions but always end up with a good result. Batman doesn't have questionable morals, in fact it's the one thing that's consistent in every adaptation, and his actions, while arguable, no one innocent ever suffers because of him, and when someone does suffer, it's always as minimal as needed, he never takes it too far.

And that's another stupid trend, the idea that anti-heroes have to be dark & brooding in order to be anti-heroes, when that's not true, some of my favourite anti-heroes include Monkey .D. Luffy, Sarah Conner, Spike Spiegel, Jack Sparrow & Nathan Drake. They all have questionable morals or actions and can be incredibly selfish, violent, deplorable or even cowardly, they have all the qualities of an anti-hero but are not dark & brooding. So let this be a lesson to you, not all anti-heroes are dark & brooding, and not all characters that are dark & brooding are anti-heroes.

-Danny