“The Batman” opens March 4, and anticipation is running high with Robert Pattinson in the starring role. One question that has come up in the lore over the decades and no doubt will resurface in an election year: Is Batman liberal or conservative?

For decades, certain critics have argued that Wayne, the billionaire playboy of Gotham city who fights crime at night, is a right-winger. After all, he’s super rich, dresses well, and hates criminals. 

The argument was first made in reference to Frank Miller’s 1986 opus, “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.” This entry in the superhero series tells the story of an aging Batman who comes out of retirement to wage war on a city plagued by lawlessness and gang violence. The Dark Knight becomes the strongman leader of his own clean-up-Gotham mutant gang.

One critic of “The Dark Knight Returns” was Art Spiegelman, whose graphic novel “Maus,” published in 1987, has become part of American literature. In a 1996 interview in the Comics Journal, he blasted the Dark Knight as “a rather fascistic Reagan-era hero.” 

Mr. Spiegelman also indicted the artwork of the legend Jack Kirby (1917-1994), who almost solely gave birth to the superhero comics renaissance of the 1960s. He argued that Kirby’s work has fascistic undertones: The heroes are built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and such archetypes express “the triumph of the will, the celebration of the physicality of the human body at the expense of the intellect.”

More recently, journalist Jerry Boyer claimed that the 2012 Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” is a celluloid argument against left-wing rebellion. “The third film in the Batman series is a direct polemical assault on the French Revolution and its political heirs,” the conservative Mr. Boyer wrote, “which includes Occupy Wall Street and perhaps Barack Obama.”

Then came 2016 and the political rise of Donald Trump. Damien Walter of the Guardian saw a direct line between Batman and the Donald: “It’s not much of a leap from Miller’s masked strongman to Donald Trump’s bid for presidency. Some may find the idea of the American businessman swinging from the rooftops clad in spandex hard to stomach, but the similarities are clear enough. Both storylines feature an aging billionaire lost inside a delusional fantasy of his own heroism, who truly believes that only he can solve the problems confronting the modern world — for Gotham’s mutant army see international terrorism.”

Still, an argument can be made that the Caped Crusader also swings left. Liberals love cities and the idea of putting down roots despite the geographical disruptions of capitalism. Bruce Wayne loves his home city; even though  it is crime-ridden and robbed him of his parents, in story after story he insists that “Gotham is not past saving.” It would be easy for the billionaire Wayne to live anywhere in the world, but like the liberal who refuses to flee during the postwar flight to the suburbs, he won’t give up on his home.

An orphan, Bruce Wayne generously supports homes for other kids who have lost their parents. He might even believe it takes a village to raise a child.

Batman does not kill: Does this make the case against the death penalty? 

The Dark Knight has also shown some desire to rehabilitate criminals. In “The Killing Joke,” Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker, kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and attempts to drive him insane. When Batman shows up, the Joker justifies his actions on the grounds that a personal tragedy unfairly caused his own insanity. 

After Batman discovers the commissioner hasn’t cracked, he tells the Joker: “Despite all your sick, vicious little games, he’s as sane as he ever was. So maybe ordinary people don’t always crack. Maybe there isn’t any need to crawl under a rock with all the other slimy things when trouble hits…. Maybe it was just you, all the time.”

That lecture could have come from Fox News’s Sean Hannity, yet just a few panels later Batman tries to help his enemy. Explaining that if they continue on their murderous course one of them will wind up dead, Batman offers an alternative. “I don’t know what it was that bent your life out of shape,” he says, “but maybe I’ve been there. Maybe I can help.”

Batman as Oprah? 

It will be interesting to see what Mr. Pattinson, an actor with an open, empathetic face — and who is best known for his role as an emo vampire in the “Twilight” films — does with the role, and how his character leans.