7 Worst Changes to Batman Lore In 80+ Years Of DC Lore

With a history that spans more than 80 years in comics, it stands to reason that Batman would have seen some changes over the years. There have been new love interests, new allies, ever-changing rosters of villains, and various refinements to the character’s personal history and story. Some changes are made to keep up with the changing times, while others are made by creative teams to tell different stories. It’s part of what keeps Batman such a dynamic and interesting characters.

However, over the years not every tweak and adjustment has been good. There have been plenty of shifts made to Batman stories that simply aren’t great and have either resulted in tales that don’t really make sense or end up being undone by other stories to the point that nothing feels very even anymore. These changes to Batman’s lore aren’t always just about Bruce Wayne and Batman directly, either. Sometimes the changes are about the characters closest to him, changes that end up leaving a mark on the Dark Knight, too. Here are seven of the worst ones, including one that really just needs to be left alone.

7) Replacing Batman with Jean-Paul Valley

While it can be argued that Jean-Paul Valley is one of the best non-Bruce Wayne Batmans ever, there are also those who would argue that Jean-Paul taking on the role of Gotham’s protecter after Bane broke Batman’s back in Knightfall is also one of the worst changes to the hero’s overall lore in DC history. With Bruce down for over a year, he stands in for the hero as Batman but pretty much in name only. Jean-Paul is a violent, brutal version of Batman, even having issues with Tim Drake (and nearly killing him) and doesn’t want to work with Commissioner Gordon or the police, either.

While Jean-Paul as Batman doesn’t fundamentally change anything about Bruce Wayne’s story, the idea that Bruce would make such a poor choice to protect Gotham in his absence largely feels out of character for the hero and, if you think about Batman as a separate entity that anyone could be, Jean-Paul’s version functionally shifts the perception of the hero. He’s a super cool character, but Jean-Paul is much better as Azrael.

6) Batman’s “No-Killing” Rule

One of the worst changes to Batman’s lore actually dates back to pretty close to the beginning. Just one year after the character’s debut in Detective Comics #27, Batman #1 from spring of 1940 established something that has been a source of great discussion and controversy for the hero ever since: his no kill rule. The issue infamously saw Batman kill a villain by hanging him from his plane, though it’s something he’s seen declaring that he hates to do even though it’s necessary. The issue got so much backlash that an editor declared that from that day forward, Batman would be against killing.

But while the idea of Batman refraining from killing in a callous way such as what he did in Batman #1 makes sense, over the years, the “no-killing” rule is something that many argue has brought more harm to not only Gotham City but to the character himself — he’s constantly having to deal with the same villains and there really is seemingly never any positive progress for Gotham in terms of crime. The rule also hasn’t been applied evenly over the years which means this is a lore shift that is not only frustrating but wildly inconsistent.

5) The Resurrection of Jason Todd

It’s a story that every Batman fan knows very, very well. Batman’s greatest failure is the death of Jason Todd, the young, under-trained Robin who was killed by the Joker thanks to a fan vote. Then, the character was resurrected, but since his return, things haven’t exactly been great with Jason and Batman and therein is the issue with the lore: no one seems to know exactly what to do with that particular father-son dynamic.

While Jason is regularly presented as being the most antagonistic member of the Bat Family, it’s the specifics of his relationship with Batman that is often all over the place. Sometimes, he’s shown as being directly in conflict with the hero, still upset over what happened to him. Others, he’s shown as getting closer to Bruce and working with him a bit better in a heroic capacity, showing real growth for both Jason and Bruce only for it to be flipped around again with Jason back to being antagonistic. This inconsistency in how that relationship is portrayed constitutes one of the most difficult changes to Batman lore because it’s constantly in flux. Depending on the story and the creative team, Jason and Bruce might have a decent relationship or they might be back to being at odds. It’s messy and it makes no sense.

4) Too Many Sidekicks

Over the years, Batman has gone from a solo vigilante to a hero with a team of sorts. There have been numerous sidekicks serving as Robin, not to mention other members of the “Bat-Family” who work with Batman protecting Gotham. At any given point, Gotham might have not just Batman, but Nightwing, Robin, whatever Tim Drake is calling himself these days, Barbara Gordon as either Oracle or Batgirl (choose your own adventure here), another Batgirl in the form of Cassandra Cain, and depending on the mood, Red Hood. And that’s just to name a few possible heroes in the mix.

And that’s the problem. Over the years, DC just keeps adding to Batman’s lore by giving him new sidekicks, each with their own connection to Bruce Wayne. It’s something that feels like it’s become unsustainable and is even more of a weakness than a help. There’s this idea of too many cooks and, well, the size of the Bat Family is a too many cooks situation, not to mention that with that many people as part of Batman’s inner circle, it can’t be that hard for everyone else to figure out he’s Bruce Wayne.

3) Barbara Gordon’s Changing Status

Another case of lore changes that don’t necessarily belong to Batman himself but still have a big impact on the hero overall is that of Barbara Gordon and her changing status. She started out as Batgirl, ended up paralyzed in The Killing Joke and becomes Oracle, but then gets her ability to walk restored and that leads to the retirement of the Oracle mantle and she becomes Batgirl again.

Changing up Barbara’s status is one of the worst changes to the overall Batman lore because it’s kind of confusing at times and also plays into the idea that the Bat Family is just too large with too many different heroes running around, but more than that it also, to some extent, shifts some of the impact of what happened to her in The Killing Joke and Batman’s role in things to be less meaningful. Batman keeps including young people in his crusade and while we don’t always think about Barbara being a casualty of that because she was targeted because of her father, it’s still a part of the larger whole. “Fixing” her by undoing some of the damage of the event also undoes some of its weight.

2) Making Bruce Wayne Poor

Bruce Wayne being absurdly wealthy and using that wealth to fund his crusade as Batman — and keep up appearances in his civilian life so no one puts two and two together — is a hallmark of the character. But DC shook things up with the “Joker War” storyline which saw the steal the Wayne fortune. While the money was taken back, it ended up with Lucius Fox because of government scrutiny — something that functionally made Bruce Wayne and, thus, Batman “poor”.  For a little while, readers got to see Batman operating on a budget but… did they really?

While DC tried to make Batman poor, he really just went from being a billionaire to being a millionaire and it honestly didn’t impact his operation as a vigilante that much. On top of that, they reversed course a few years later and Bruce got access to all his money again. Making Batman less rich for a period of time ultimately felt useless and, more than that, didn’t really change anything or make the character that much more interesting. It’s now just a random blip in his overall story that doesn’t make much sense.

1) The Death of Thomas and Martha Wayne

While the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of their young son Bruce has remained largely the same across the decades — they’re killed during a robbery in Crime Alley after the family left the movies — there have been some tweaks to the overall lore and they haven’t necessarily been good ones. Most recently, Detective Comics #1000 from 2024 revealed that there was a connection between Joe Chill and the Waynes, specifically that Thomas Wayne helped a mother and her daughter escape their abuser, that abuser who just so happens to be Chill.

This shift in the details of things gives Chill a personal motivation for killing the Waynes: revenge. While it sounds like it would be an interesting shift, the reality is that part of what makes the death of Bruce’s parents so impactful is that it was random. Bruce is himself a victim of the random, rampant violence in Gotham City. It’s part of white fuels him. Changing this inciting incident to be something more personal strips away part of Batman’s “why” and it simply isn’t a good move and is something that doesn’t need to ever be changed.

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