The Gospel of Gotham: Why Batman Has A Bible

Every myth needs a scripture. Every empire, a constitution. Every king, a sword that proves his right to rule.

And every franchise—if it wants to live past its first breath—needs a Batbible.

Not a marketing document. Not some sad sack brand guideline choking on buzzwords. A real Bible. A document forged in blood, sweat, and ink. A declaration of who the characters are, what they stand for, and the world they live in. A set of commandments, unbreakable as steel, singing with the weight of history and the promise of the future.

Because without it? You’re nothing. Just another corpse in the gutter, another name on the long list of franchises that came out swinging and died before the second bell. Thanks to Scott Peterson, we have the opportunity to read DC Comics ' vision for Batman through the eyes of its editor Dennis O’Neil (RIGHT HERE)!

Dennis didn’t just write comics. He built Gotham. He carved it into existence with the precision of a sculptor and the merciless pragmatism of a city planner. When he sat down in 1989—the year Batman took the world by the throat—he wrote The Batbible. Not as a suggestion. Not as a loose collection of thoughts. But as the law.

Because that’s what a franchise needs. Law. Structure. Truth carved into stone.

What Is a Batbible?

It’s the bones of your world. The unwritten rules spoken aloud. The lighthouse that keeps new writers from crashing your franchise into the rocks.

• Who is your protagonist, really? Not just their stats, not just their backstory. What drives them? What haunts them? What can’t they walk away from?
• What does their world look like? Not just maps. Not just locations. But the feel of it. The smell of the alleys, the weight of the sky, the sound of boots on pavement.
• What are the unbreakable rules? Batman doesn’t kill. Spider-Man doesn’t quit. The Force has a light side and a dark. These aren’t suggestions. They’re commandments.
• What makes this franchise different? Every world is a fingerprint. Unique. If you don’t define what makes yours special, it’ll get diluted, twisted, and forgotten.

The Batbible wasn’t some dry instruction manual. It had pathos. It had teeth. It cared about Batman—what he meant, what he represented. It carried the weight of his pain, his duty, his impossible, grinding war. It understood Gotham as a living thing, not just a setting. And every creator who touched that world had to understand it too, or else get out of the way.

Why Every Franchise Needs One

1. Because Without It, You Get Lost

A franchise without a Batbible is a ship without a compass, a car with no brakes. It starts strong, but sooner or later, it drifts. One writer makes the hero noble, the next makes him cruel. One artist draws the world grounded, the next turns it into a cartoon. Without a guiding document, the franchise mutates—unraveling until it’s unrecognizable, until it’s nothing but a hollow corpse with a famous name.

2. Because Every Creator Brings Their Own Ghosts

Writers are selfish. Artists have their own agendas. Directors want to put their stamp on things. They will twist and warp your world to fit their vision if you let them.

A Batbible doesn’t exist to stifle creativity—it exists to focus it. It says, “Here’s the foundation. Here’s the law. Build on top of it, but don’t you dare tear it down.”

3. Because Continuity Is a Tightrope Over an Abyss

You think fans don’t notice contradictions? You think they don’t care when you change a character’s core motivation or rewrite history for convenience?

They notice. They always notice. And when the spell breaks—when they realize the storytellers don’t respect their own world—they leave. And they don’t come back.

4. Because Without Rules, Nothing Matters

Batman doesn’t kill. That’s not an opinion. It’s the law. It’s what makes him different from the monsters he fights.

The Batbible lays down the truths that cannot be bent. The character’s core. Their soul. The thing that, if you break it, breaks everything.

And once you let that happen? You don’t get it back.

The Gospel of Gotham

The Batbible wasn’t just a guide. It was a sacred text. A declaration that Batman was bigger than any one writer, bigger than any one movie or game or show. That his world had weight. That he mattered.

And if you’re building a franchise? Yours better matter too.

Write it down. Make it law. Set it on fire so that it glows red-hot in every creator’s hands. Because without it?

Your world is just another ghost, waiting to be forgotten.