15 Most Inappropriate Batman Storylines Of All Time

14. Bruce Wayne: Murderer? Maybe!

Women die a lot in comic books. Well, and in life as well, but art reflects life, vice-versa, all that. It's a sad trend in our media that female characters are so often left as either damsels in distress or as motivation for male heroes to step their game up, or just to act as a plot point. Well, you get all that and more with the Bruce Wayne: Murderer? and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive storylines that ran across all the Batman books throughout 2002, as the Dark Knight's alter ego finds himself banged up for the killing of radio show host Vesper Fairchild, who he'd been dating. The extended Bat-Family investigate, only to discover that Bruce's latest squeeze had stumbled across his secret identity - giving him a motive to bump her off.

Woops, nice one guys! Way to absolve your mentor, father figure, and whole reason for doing the things you do! Then his bodyguard, who gets jailed alongside him, reveals that Bruce disappeared for a period of time long enough for him to kill Vesper. This is all pretty morbid and inappropriately farcical enough until you get to the section where he starts to literally go mad at having to pretend to be a billionaire playboy for an extended period of time, breaks out of prison and announces his attention to just always be Batman forever. So: dead girlfriend as plot device, classical farce making light of her demise, Bruce Wayne going full lunatic. Pretty terrible, all told.