system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[DC/Batman] In every hostage situation ever, why does not Batman just call Superman or the Flash to get the situation handled at light speed?

There have been several instances (e.g. A Serious House on Serious Earth, the Arkham Asylum game, etc) where no investigation were all that was needed is for someone to get in, subdue everyone, then get out. Why wouldn't Batman call any of the super-speed heroes who could finish the whole job in a second, and instead choose to wrestle every single criminal alone?
gpt
Mainly, because Gotham is Batman's city and to understand why you have to look at what he's done and why he did it that way. 

It's hard to overstate quite what a cesspool of crime and corruption it was when he began his mission. Criminals ruled every single aspect of the city, from the newspaper vendors paying protection cash to thugs, to the billion dollar corporations playing nice and paying the criminal families so their shops and warehouses didn't burn down. 

Go to the police? Oh no, no, no, that's one way to get a bullet in your head and then charged after the fact with aggravated assault on a police officer, so your family gets a fine along with the bill for your funeral (from a corrupt funeral director who will cram three other bodies in the coffin). The police were no help at all back then and the few good cops were ignored or ended up dead. 

That kind of city can't be cleaned up by the Flash because *everyone* is dirty and it needs someone who is willing to get into the dirt with it in order to make it better. Sure Flash can zoom around and grab everyone committing street crime, but they'll all be out that night by a crooked judge. He simply *can’t* get that kind of city clean. 

Batman created himself as a symbol of fear for crime. He needed them to be *afraid* of him so that it was better to be clean than dirty. Starting with the cops, rooting out the bad ones and finding ways to take them down. Destroying the Organised Crime families with surveillance and cunning and organisation of his own. Finding a way that when he hit a family it couldn’t just stand back up, it was down for good, from the big boss to the guys on the street. And more so they didn’t *want* to come back, because if they did they would have to face him again. 

Go up against Batman and you lose. Not sometimes, *every* time. He will beat you and then take every bit of knowledge you have and go after your connections, your partners, every single bad thing you, or anyone else you know does. 

He made the streets safer by making sure that if you were a thug mugging someone, you were looking over your shoulder to see if you were about to be swooped down on and slammed to the ground and have the hell beaten out of you. You got a job and earned money in construction as it was now honest work, you’d get a pay check and wouldn’t have the hell beaten out of you by a man in a bat costume. 

Gotham was a corrupt city and still is in some ways, but fear of the Batman keeps it just clean enough so that good people can make it run and work. Yes, sure there are still bad guys, but you can walk to the shop and get a non-corrupt paper from a non-extorted newspaper vendor. Then buy a hotdog that is probably not filled with rat faeces (more than usual). You can live an actual life there now and not be touched by crime. 

Bit by bit the good guys came back and took over, knowing they have an ally in the dark who would protect them without fear of what might be thrown back at him. He tore the city into the light through his hard work and holding himself up as a symbol. Do crime and you face me and *everyone* loses against me.  

So why not just call in the Flash or Superman? Well, what good does it do? Batman isn’t trying to stop one crime, he’s trying to stop ALL the crime in the city and to do that each criminal needs to know that you won’t be just zoomed off to prison, you’ll have your head slammed into the pavement and then your life dissected to see if you are just a punk kid or part of something bigger that Batman needs to know about *now*. 

If Batman lets someone else take over then it lessens the symbol and lessens his grip, we see that time and again, as soon as Batman seems to be out of the picture people start looking for a way back in. He needs to be there and he needs to be visible. 

He has got the city this far and he'll be damned if some pretty boy in a red suit is going to come in and try to do things their way - it's *his* city and it works *his* way. 

Also, maybe they were busy or something.