(no subject)
So Jl8. Most adorable comic ever. But as tooth-decayingly sweet as this panel is (showing Alfred switching on the Bat signal to call Bruce home for dinner), it pretty much also drives home the point that Alfred carries a lot of the blame for the way Bruce grows up. I mean, Bruce may have been the brooding, sulking, angry, hyperintelligent teenager from hell with the kind of self-obsession and force of will that will go on to let him wear a giant bat costume to beat up people in the streets when he's older, but at some point he was a (presumably) loveable child who only wanted to be cuddled and comforted. And where the hell was Alfred with less of the 'Master Bruce' and more of the 'so help me God, if you don't get out into the sunshine and skin at least one knee playing with the neighbourhood kids, I will force you to take babysitting jobs, young man'? I know there's a difference between guardianships and wards and actual adoptions. I can also imagine Alfred didn't want to rock the boat or destroy Bruce's last desperate grasp on his parents by taking their place but honestly, these wounds should have been tended in childhood and clearly weren't.