Why do I like Batman?

 

Well, I can’t help but compare him to other comic book heroes. Unlike Superman, Spiderman, and the X-Men, he isn’t an alien or a mutant. He doesn’t have any remarkable superpowers that allow him to fly or punch his fist through walls or lift ridiculously heavy objects. What makes him unique?

 

His family. His heritage is that of being a wealthy entrepeuner whose father was a famous surgeon. I can’t entirely be sure if his father, Thomas Wayne, had earned his fortune or had inherited it. What I do know is that, being a doctor, he was associated with a Dr. Leslie Thompkins and that his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, had been a medic in WWII. Leslie is a compassionate woman who runs a clinic where she heals people physically as well as offers therapy. Thomas Wayne was married to Martha Wayne and they had a son, Bruce Wayne, who was their only child. At the age of eight, Bruce witnessed his parent’s murder while they walked from a movie theatre through an alley in bad part of town. Traumatized and grief-stricken because they had gone to the theatre for him, he vowed to avenge their deaths by fighting crime until the whole of Gotham city no longer became a utopian where no one would be stolen from or senselessly murdered.

 

He is gifted with his “powers” because he’d trained his entire adult life in an attempt to live up to that vow. He is gifted with incredible speed and agility from honing his skills over time. Built like a professional wrestler, as dexterous as a gymnast, with the ability to disappear almost instaneously that any magician or ninja would admire, he is a remarkable specimen of what any man could become should he seek to surpass all boundaries of limitations. Not only he is physically impressive, he’s also a brilliant and deductive person with a remarkably sharp mind. Any man would want to have his wealth or his body and any woman would want to be in a relationship with a man who had that wealth and body and especially that brain (okay and there are also men who would want to date him, too) but he has his foreboding qualities as well.

 

He has never gotten over his parent’s murders. The man whom Bruce Wayne could have been had perished along with them. As a legitimate detective in the police force or as a private investigator, he would have had few equals. But he somehow inherited from the mugger a disregard for the rules. The police had never discovered the identity of the mugger, so he decided to take the law into his own hands. He works under the outward restraints, his behaviour is controlled by his strong moral code to not kill (atleast not directly anyway) and also the urgency to not allow the public at large to suspect that Bruce Wayne is actually Batman’s alter ego. As for Bruce Wayne, the face beneath his Batman mask is ironically a mask of its own. Bruce Wayne is simply the public face, to women he is the wealthy, kind-hearted, buffoon. A lazy, irresponsible playboy who had inherited from his parents only their money and not their decency. He covers this public face, partly in shame, with the “face” of the Batman, his true personality. The men don’t know if they should be jealous of luck with women or embarrassed by ineptitude. Bruce is a shallow man, none of his romances with ordinary women ever gets particularly intimate, never as far as getting any of them in the sack. It could be that he wishes to be an eternal bachelor and to never have a child either legitimately or illegitimately. He is no woman’s husband, no child’s father, forever the son of Thomas & Martha Wayne. (Batman is Bruce Wayne.)

 

He is adept at hiding in shadows, prowls in the night, will come from out of nowhere to single-handedly dispatch nearly a dozen thugs and knock them unconscious, sparing only one of them whom he interrogates to get whatever information he wishes to have. And if he has to hang that thug upside-down from a tall building to get that information, so be it. To criminals, he is a violent and abusive lunatic or a myth. He doesn’t mind beating sense into an uncooperative criminal. If they hadn’t wanted him to attack them, they wouldn’t have committed a crime in his city. When he is through with them, he’ll leave the criminal tied up or unconscious and allow the police to arrest him. As a vigilante, he’s wanted by the police and is an “anti-hero” because he does things that a criminal would do, yet is good because fights criminals rather than directly breaking a law (i.e. doing something that willingly causes an innocent person harm).

 

 

His relationship with the police is dicey. Commissioner Gordon is a friend of his, but only because Batman needs the information that Gordon could provide. He will ask for info while maintaining a respectful distance, comes and goes unannounced. Gordon appreciates Batman’s cooperation in some ways, but begrudges him his methods. He outwardly doesn’t seem to know Batman’s relationship with Bruce Wayne. He knows them as being two separate men. Although, at times, Bruce does admit to know Batman or have a means of contacting him, yet Gordon never investigates the connection. Unlike in the ridiculous TV show, there’s no Hot Line in the Batcave linked to Gordon’s office that can easily be traced. Mostly, when Gordon wants to speak to Batman, he’ll shine the Batsignal, or if Batman wants to speak to him, he has the uncanny ability to find Gordon when’s alone wherever he is. Gordon doesn’t feel most of the things Batman does are right or ethical, but he appreciates the assistance. Gotham is a dangerous town despite the fact of the fear its shadier elements have for the Batman. After all, he’s only one man and they are numberless. Part of the reason for his liking Gordon is the fact that had Thomas Wayne not been murdered, he would have been Gordon’s age.

 

He has allies who do know his secret, though. For many years he’d known Catwoman was Selina Kyle, but she hadn’t known Batman’s alter ego. As Bruce, he courted Selina and as Batman he courted Catwoman. He has associates who aid him in his quest: teenagers and early twenty-somethings who put on masks like he does yet to them the masks are just masks. Their true faces are what the masks cover, their true lives are lived out-of-costume. Most of them could live without being Batman’s cronies. For example, Tim Drake is (the third) Robin, but Robin isn’t who he really is. Alfred will provide most of his healing needs and will drive Bruce Wayne around, always being his conscience. He’s rather close to being a surrogate father, but he is firmly relegated to the role of butler, an employee. Leslie Thompkins also knows his secrets and she is firmly against his crusades, but will not leak his identity to the press. She’s a surrogate mother of sort. While Alfred will quietly keep his objections mostly with himself and only occasionally poke fun of Bruce’s peculiar obsessions out of humor, Leslie nags him and forces him to confront the idea that his parents might not appreciate his efforts and try to get him to seek closure by giving up his mantle of Batman. And even though Gordon himself doesn’t know, his daughter, Barbara (aka the 1st Batgirl and then later “Oracle”), does know his secret. But since Gordon doesn’t know her relationship with Batman, Batman keeps her sworn to secrecy because having her secret revealed would be more detrimental to her than his would be.

 

So……… there’s a lot of complexity.

 

 

The other DC char

 

Superman, another DC hero, is not quite as complex. He is an alien from some mythical planet known as Krypton. His father was a scientist who built a rocket ship which sent Superman as a baby to earth where he landed in rural Kansas. The Clarks found him and adopted the young boy as their own. So, he has qualities that both adopted kids and immigrants can relate to. Krypton had blown up… for whatever reason…. And he is one of the last Kryptonians. Being from another planet, he has the ability to fly, super strength, etc. etc. (Maybe some immigrants come to America and wish the country they’d come from would just explode out of existence.) He moves from Smallville, Kansas, to the big city, Metropolis, because that’s the American dream, isn’t it? His parents might be dead, but the Clark’s have always loved him as a son, so he has that family element that Batman lacks. He was enthralled with Lois Lane, a big city woman so arrogant that she can’t tell Clark Kent (Superman wearing glasses) from Superman (Superman not wearing glasses) because she at first feels so completely above the folksy bumpkin for many years. Who’d think a guy as amazing as Superman could be a milquetoast like Clark Kent? Oddly, Clark & Lois marry, Lois knows his secret, but in atleast “Kingdom Come” he’s in a relationship with  Wonder Woman & Lois is nowhere to be seen… hm….

 

Superman is a kind of a joke… he is completely outclassed by Lois and he just has no idea how Clark Kent can impress her. He believes in earning his keep, won’t steal or use Superman to gain a profit for himself, so all he’s got is the money that Clark can earn as a reporter. But Lois has more energy and ambition than he could ever hope to get. Being an invulnerable god-like person & a male,  Superman just doesn’t have her ambition. Being a woman, she has to try harder to impress her superiors. A man would do less work than she does and still get credit while as a woman, she has to work harder and gets grief for being “too feisty” for a woman.

 

 

Odd Coincidences.

·          DC’s female reporter for a newspaper: Lois Lane, girlfriend of Superman.

·          Marvel’s female reporter for a newspaper: Betty, a former girlfriend of Spiderman.

·          DC’s young male photographer for a newspaper: Jimmy Olsen, a sidekick to Clark Kent who he doesn’t know is Superman.

·          Marvel’s young male photographer for a newspaper: Peter Parker, who is Spiderman.

·          DC’s loud-mouth, white-haired editor for a newspaper: Perry White, Clark Kent’s boss.

·          Marvel’s loud-mouth, white-haired editor for a newspaper: Jonah Jameson, Peter Parker’s boss.

·          DC’s wealthy millionaire: Bruce Wayne, aka the anti-hero Batman.

·          Marvel’s wealthy millionaire: Norman Osbourne, aka the villain Green Goblin

·          In the “animated series,” both Green Goblin & Joker were voiced by Mark Hamill.

·          DC’s bald-headed genius: Lex Luthor, a man who HATES Superman & all other mutant-like people, or, as he calls them, “metahumans.” (A teller of lies.)

·          Marvel’s bald-headed genius: Professor Charles Xavier, the founder of the X-Men and a pro-mutants’ rights advocate. (Tells the truths that the public at large refuses to believe.)

 

 

One reason I might like Batman which I rarely consider important: relating to the chars.

 

·          The more human/ less dramatic a char is, the more I lose interest. It’s corny. What I like about Batman is that he uses violence to subdue criminals. Often times, just walking around in a mall, I would fantasize about leaping over a guardrail and fall down to the first floor from the second. Or beating someone up just for the hell of it, but I don’t because I know for a fact I’d get caught and don’t want to go to jail for assault. So I really like watching Batman beating-the-crap out of a criminal. Heck, in the case of The Joker, he seems to be a masochist because he might runaway, but once Batman catches & starts to beat him up, Joker will just remain physically submissive while insulting him verbally and egging on the beatings. He seems to like getting whooped.

 

·          I also don’t believe Joker’s relationship with Batman is homoerotic. More likely, he has co-dependency issues in that lives to get Batman’s attention and will kill innocents just to infuriate opponent’s sense of order. It’s a measure of non-sexual intimacy. He’ll call Batman “darling” or “precious” or something endearing to antagonize him; Batman doesn’t like it when men use such endearing terms to diss him with. Or is it, that he feels lied to because if-the-Joker-really-loved-him-then-the-Joker-would-stop-doing-bad-things-to-innoncents? Either way, Joker doesn’t, in my eyes, wish to have a sexual relationship with Batman. He likes things as they are. And, hey, he’s a criminal. If he were gay, I feel he’d rather have intercourse with other criminals who are as equally deranged as he is. I’ve had more bad days than good in my life, generally feel being miserable is my customary mood, so I wish I could just SNAP and stop caring about the consequences.

 

·          There’s some really amusing moments in The Dark Returns concerning a young boy’s reactions to Joker and Batman. Joker runs into a House of Mirrors, Batman hot on his heels. As he’s looking over his shoulder, a boy calls out “You’re the Joker, right? Batman’s gonna kick your ass.” Joker grabs the kid and shoves a gun in his face to reward him for the insult. Batman crashes through the glass and is gut-shot by Joker who throws the boy down, no longer needing the hostage. Joker runs off as the boy shouts “Batman --- he’s getting away --- get up. You got to kick his ---“ Wounded from just being shot, just barely conscious, he tells the kid “watch your language, son.” The kid answers “yes, sir.” It’s amusing in that Joker had exploited Batman’s irrepressible desire to be a hero by using the kid. Batman had just saved the kid’s life and instead of being thanked, the kid is disappointed that he hadn’t kicked Joker’s ass for the kid… it’s a matter of honor that his hero go kick the bad guy’s ass because he’d told the bad guy he was going to get his ass kicked. This is all he can think of. To his credit, Batman doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t hit the kid and tell him to shut-the-hell-up. He just firmly admonishes him to not swear. The chain of events is just so absurd. Even after being shot, he can’t help but try to be the fatherly role-model type.

 

 

 

 

What I don’t like in comics (or tv shows or movies): formulaic thinking and/or attempts to market products or beliefs.

 

·          I HATE that Trojan Man gimmick used to sell condoms or that other thing for the Sloman Shield commercials… or Arm & Hammer. Spiderman would try to help a friend who had a drug addiction to try and teach the reader that doing drugs is bad or he’d help clear wreckage at ground zero of the WTC attacks, or he’d try to teach a young boy it was wrong to believe using a gun made him a tough person. I don’t expect to see myself in a story, or I tend to relate to the dorkiest char there is in the story (example, Otacon in the Metal Gear Solid series of videogames) and not the hero. 

 

·          I also don’t like how in the early years of Marvel, every one of the major chars seemed to derive their super-powers from nuclear accidents. Another odd thing is how they’d have supposedly “intelligent” scientist-type chars who are meglomaniacal twits who don’t really speak very intelligently. (Doctor Octopus constantly ranted about how wonderful he’s “artificial arms” were.) Ras Al Ghul & Bane, for instance, are as equally eloquent & fit as Batman is. (Bane is basically the ultimate steroid fanatic yet he also says things which are clever.) Al Ghul will utilize both a sharp sword AND his sharp wit when fencing with Batman. Joker’s banter in “The Killing Joke,” especially when he claims that Barbara Gordon suddenly became fixated with the delusion that she had become a coffee-table book was incredibly funny, despite the fact he’d just shot & paralyzed her and she was bleeding out as he was speaking; the violence wasn’t funny, but how he described what he’d done was. Spiderman, on the other hand, will say “EXCUSE ME!” or “whoops” or something ridiculous like that to get cheap jokes at his opponent’s expense. Not very funny. They also have the stereotypical concept that really strong chars must be very dumb as well: Rhino.  (All the major chars in Superman seem to be aliens like he is; if not from other planets, from other dimensions.)

 

·          I also don’t like Spiderman’s mask because it hides his lips. Batman’s mask is designed to show only the lower portion of his face. It proves his humanity to a degree, draws attention to this small portion of exposed flesh so people’s eyes might be drawn towards his chin. He’s very good at showing his mood by frowning to intimidate people. Joker has an obsession with getting Batman to smile or to laugh at his jokes. He’ll also show his teeth when he talks. You don’t get this from information from Spiderman. And, I preferred the comic book’s Green Goblin because he looked almost human, just he had green skin and pointy ears. If you could remember whose face might look like that yet add the green pigment to that, you might be able to deduce who he was. It’s taunting that he wears a hood to cover up his hair. So, seeing that his human qualities made the rest of his appearance and behaviour unsettling. But his wearing a mask (as he did in the movie) so you couldn’t see his lips move was an annoying hindrance. He looked like he was simply a robot.  

 

·          Another convention I dislike is when the events of the story all revolve around a holiday. I don’t care what Easter or Christmas or Halloween looks like in Bikini Bottom. It’s been DONE four thousand times, we all know what the frickin’ holidays are, so write about something else. (An exception to this is “The Long Halloween” and “Dark Victory” where murders are conducted throughout the year and as bodies of police men or gangsters pile up, the reader becomes anxious to figure out who is committing the murders and, more importantly, who will survive the carnage.) So love-affirming sappy nonsense is bad, but bloodshed is good… 

 

·          I don’t like topical references used to make something sound cool. Chars arbitrarily name-dropping  popular movies (Titanic) or TV shows (Friends) or sports teams just to make the title sound hip and yet the mentioning of those things really have nothing to add to the plot.

 

 

The “Marvel Method”

 

The “Marvel Method” basically refers to a technique that Marvel uses to produce their products.

 

1.)     The writer will make up a synopsis for what he wanted the artist to draw.

2.)     The artist draws the page.

3.)     The writer will look at what the artist drew and tailor his words to fit the drawings.

 

This process puts a strong emphasis upon the art rather than the words. I’m sure it works some people, but I personally don’t like it. I’m a word-person, not a picture-person. A comic could have the most vibrant looking pictures, but if the writing is faulty, I will walk away saying “the writing is faulty” and disliking it. I much rather prefer the approach where the writing is done first as a script before the artist does his job. In this way, both elements work beautifully in tamdem; a juggler who begins to juggle two balls and can only keep one ball aloft while dropping the other isn’t a good juggler. 

 

Examples of good writing…

 

Batman: Gotham Knights, issue 50,  “Pushback, book one” by A.J. Lieberman. The story opens with the words “We strive to be what we are not.” / “It’s not merely that we fail to live up to our best ideas.” / “It’s the fact that our best ideas ---“ / “---what we can accomplish ---“/ “--- are for most, ideas that tend to be the opposite of our natural abilities.” / “All of which makes the person who knows himself ---“ / “---who knows his limits ---“ / “--- his frailties ---“ / “--- his weaknesses ---“ / “--- all the more dangerous.”  These words are transposed over the horrifying sight of Edward “The Riddler” Nygma crashing through the skylight of a fancy party for rich socialites. The people stand over his body, revealing modest curiosity about the man who’d fallen into their midst, but don’t seem to be offering him any first aid. If anything, they probably are feeling discomforted that his apparent suicide had interrupted their amusement and he’d broken the glass of the skylight.  It’s not entirely clear who the narrator or speaker is refering to as being the “dangerous” humble people. Obviously, Nygma is meant to set an example for the rich snobs. Standing above, draped in shadow, is a figure who at first appears to be Batman. We don’t find out until the next issue who it is. The consideration that Nygma had jumped is cancelled out by the appearance of the person who’d pushed him, but we aren’t sure of the pusher’s identity. Okay, perhaps philosophical ramblings aren’t your thing?

 

Perhaps. Later on, there are three men in a boat, all of which have shotguns. They seem to be discussing what they each feel to be the worst way to die. The first man says, “A lack of attention.” The second man says, “What?” First man says, “I think I’m gonna die from, like, a lack of attention.” He can’t seem to think of an example. The second man is skeptical, “what the --- how in the freakin’ “H” do ya think that’s gonna happen?” The third offers falling in a manhole. Meaning he couldn’t be paying attention and next thing he knows he walks right into an open manhole. The second man doesn’t get it. He demands, “like a real manhole in the street?” The third man says, “other than your mouth, you know any other kind?” Haha!  They second man doesn’t comment on the implied gay accusation and presses “are you livin’ in a cartoon movie or somethin’? Who falls into a manhole?” The second man amends that he just doesn’t want to die a humorous death that would cause others to laugh at him when he’s gone. The clincher comes when the third man says, “I don’t wanna get stuck in a waste pipe like that guy in the movie where he’s busting’ outta prison.” Ofcourse he’s talking about THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. The fun part is being able to deduce the movie reference without being told the exact title.

 

Another good example is Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk Vol. 2, Issues 1-4, “Boiling Point” by Bruce Jones (part of their Digital Comic Book Series) where Bruce Banner, a police negotiator, and a man who holds people in a convience store hostage all meet up in a chance encounter with tense circumstances. The whole story has a flow… beautifully done.

 

 

An example of bad writing is Ultimate X-Men, Volume 3: Issues 1 – 6 by Mike Millar & Chuck Chuckausten. The story is muddied with too much snappy dialouge, the plot is fairly preposterous… “The X-Men embark on a their first-ever field trip trying to follow Professor Xavier’s dream to spread peace.” Field trip!?!?!?! Argh! It’s mostly drivel, random one-liners thrown in here & there, dumber than a sock. The only good part comes at the end, though. Professor Xavier’s comments are pretty interesting. He starts out having faith in what he is attempting to accomplish. We see that Magneto has been subdued with a mental block from Xavier and is taking care of Down’s Syndrome children. Things go awry, and horribly wrong. Xavier feels he has failed and considers terminating the whole thing. Magneto, however consoles him and reveals that he’d bought a ticket to Xavier’s lecture of his own will. Due to the block he doesn’t remember his past and thinks he’s just ordinary Erick Leshner, teacher of disadvantaged children and he also doesn’t reckognize Professor Xavier, but he was enough in agreement with Xavier’s cause to wish to listen to the man speak. Xavier weeps at this evidence of his nemsis’ rehabilitation. Several times he and two other telepaths commented how it was nearly impossible to surprise a telepath and yet he’d been so caught up in his own feelings of regret that Erick Leshner had bought the ticket without his being aware of it. He realizes that even though events hadn’t gone according to his plans, he had actually been doing the right thing the whole time by allowing the various X-Men members to have a cause larger than themselves to believe in.  It is best to accept it when things go wrong and try to look on the bright side rather than fixate on how terrible it is something had gone wrong.