Bruce Wayne's Greatest Weapon is Useless in Batman Beyond
Batman's greatest weapon is fear, but a Batman Beyond story in Batman: Urban Legends #7 shows how wrong Bruce Wayne was for choosing this method.
Warning: spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends #7 are ahead.
As a hero sworn to never use guns, Bruce Wayne's Batman relies on fear as a weapon in DC Comics. By choosing to use the image of the bat, Bruce Wayne's superhero persona is rooted heavily in the reputation that precedes him. Batman himself has no superpowers, making his fearsome demeanor entirely a performance. And while the merits of Batman's fear-based approach have been debated, a new story in Batman: Urban Legends #7 has pointed out the biggest shortcoming of Batman's reliance on fear.
In "Batman Beyond: Wake," Terry McGinnis comforts a dying Bruce Wayne as his mentor reveals the truth about the night he realized his days as Batman were over (written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, art by Max Dunbar, colors by Sebastian Cheng, letters by Aditya Bidikar). In his newly designed Batsuit, Bruce went up against a group of criminals and was quickly overwhelmed: "They were the kind of men that shouldn't have taken me a second thought. The cowl alone should have turned them into an easy victory. The reputation is a weapon. The fear is everything." In a last ditch effort, Bruce picked up a gun lying on the ground and aimed it at one of the men, scaring him: "When I picked up that gun... I saw the fear in his eyes. Not fear of the Batman. That man wasn't afraid of the night... or of vengeance. He was afraid of the gun."
Bruce's discovery that Batman no longer inspired fear in Neo-Gotham proves why Terry McGinnis needed to take over for him in the role. While Bruce Wayne was able to accomplish a lot during his time as Batman, his over-reliance on fear placed limits on his work for the city. Bruce realizes this the moment that he recognized that the man's fear of the gun was the same fear that he had been thriving off of as Batman. By using the same emotion that a pointed gun conjures, Bruce Wayne failed Gotham with his methods as Batman.
Terry, on the other hand, does not rely on fear to gain information as Batman. Apparent in both this issue as well as in the original television show, Terry is a much more direct communicator whose presence isn't meant to intimidate the same way as Bruce Wayne's Batman. When he tracks down Wayne Enterprises' interim CEO, Felipe Ehrenreit, Terry tells him that he can easily break through the glass that separates them, but chooses not to because he didn't want to make an "enem[y]." Instead he makes a personal, matter-of-fact plea to Felipe to divulge information on behalf of all of the people dying in Neo-Gotham. While his costume certainly lends Terry's Batman a commanding presence, he does not coast on reputation alone like Bruce did, and this benefits him in the long run.
Bruce Wayne's discovery of Neo-Gotham's new relationship to fear creates a striking point of difference between him and Terry McGinnis as superheroes. In this sense, it evidences how Terry was supposed to be a more hopeful version of the Dark Knight, one that was not burdened by the trauma of Bruce Wayne. While Bruce was pushed to adopt fear as a weapon after watching his parents get murdered in front of him, Terry's steadier upbringing gave him crucial perspective on many of Bruce's methods. From this, it has never been more important for Bruce Wayne to pass on the Batman mantle to Terry McGinnis: so he can be the hero that his mentor never could be.