Hello folks,
Here is another draft. Some of the stuff might be recognizable. I just added to it. As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.
Craig Knight
April 23, 2012
Bob Kane Meets Bruce Wayne: The Genesis of the Caped Crusader
Although there have been many
incarnations of the Batman character, they all spring from what I view as his
five essential character traits. Anyone
who is introduced to the comic would be unable to get far without seeing that
these 5 components are both vital and appealing when defining him as a
superhero. The appeal of these traits is
that they could all be described as human, which is a direct contrast to many
of the superheroes displayed in the media, especially on the big screen.
Superman, for example, is paired with Batman because of each character’s
ability to offer contrasting points of view.
Batman often criticizes his counter part for his ivory towered view of
the world as result of his many extraordinary abilities such as flight, super
strength and speed. On the other hand
Superman often criticizes Batman for his inability to let others into his well
guarded psyche and inability to trust even his fellow heroes in the Justice
League[1]
The purpose of this comparison is to illustrate that Batman’s human traits
although flawed represent the best that a human being can offer in the face of
immortality. They are what make him such
a formidable opponent against injustice because he must always be aware that not
only will he will never be as strong or swift as his counterparts, he will also
age and eventually die. In essence, his
greatest strength and motivating force is that he is flawed. Although he is
often described as a dark character he possesses qualities that in my opinion
keep him honest about his limitations.
Because his abilities are not godlike, he is not expected to be a god.
He has been given the advantaged and disadvantaged position of perpetually residing
in the shades of gray that his character traits dictate, eluding black and
white classifications much like he avoids danger time and time again in his
stories. His angst from losing his
parents, resourcefulness in the face
of danger fueled by his will and his
inherited wealth, which funds all of
the devices used in his war on crime are all bolstered by monolithic self-righteousness also inherited from
that fateful moment in a dark alley in Gotham.
All of these traits have proven to be both allies and enemies of the
caped crusader. For example, his angst
creates an air of mystery, an attribute he has used to his advantage in keeping
secrets like his identity safe. Many
writers of the comic depict him as a man who is guarded and unable to maintain
relationships. Letting his guard down
always presents the greatest danger.[2]
The genesis of these characteristics leads back to Batman’s creator, Bob
Kane. Although Kane did not suffer the
same tragedies as his creation there are traces of all of Batman’s major
characteristics that stem from Kane’s humble beginnings in the Bronx NY. Bruce Wayne’s lamentable past is one that
does not come without a sense of irony.
On the surface, his wealth creates a gulf of distinction between he and
other boys his age until his parents’ death.
Although this event does not change his economic status, it is an
equalizing force that changes the course of his life. Wayne’s lens that was once clouded by wealth,
privilege and naiveté reveals a darker vision of life that up until that tragic
event was only shared by others outside of his field of vision. He makes it his duty to wipe the muck from
this lens not just for his self but also for everyone in Gotham. In essence, he begins to see that the
happiness that he was robbed of is everyone’s right not just his. His tragedy serves as proof positive that
events such as this have a lasting impact.
In this case, Wayne chooses to use his resources to make the impact a
positive one. The same could be said about Bob Kane. Like the thief depicted in
the first Batman comic, this event also stole happiness from people’s lives.
But for some like Kane it also replaced what was taken with ingenuity and
creativity. Although the effects of his personal tragedies, which were mostly
financial, did not carry the grotesque bite of murder like his creation, they
were impactful enough to force into light a creative energy that was part
regret and part hope. For example, he explains that his dad had to struggle for most of his relatively
short life to earn a living for [his] family. To supplement his income, he sold insurance
on the side. He rarely took a vacation, and his constant chasing of the dollar
left [him] with a feeling of
insecurity…[Kane] realized that
watching [his] dad’s plight was his
strongest motivating force, and this compelled [him] to use [his] talent for
cartooning to its fullest. [He] wanted
the better things in life and poverty did not fit into his plans. He also
stresses that had [his] father been
wealthy [he] doubts whether he would
have had the incentive to work as hard as [he] did to become successful at [his] chosen craft (Kane 6).
Again, irony plays a role here and creates an interesting theme that
runs through the lives of both Kane and Wayne.
It is interesting that Kane would create a wealthy character whose fear
and insecurity lie in his inability to prevent tragedy. Yet Kane himself found salvation in his lack
of such resources. Although the character and the man come from different walks
of life, they both share a common desire to overcome the poverty of the soul
that can result from an unfulfilled life.
Enter Frank Miller: Batman, Angst and the unfulfilled Soul
Modern Batman
stories reveal an individual driven by vengeance. His rage is directed not only
at the individual who killed his parents, but ineffective police force that
failed to protect his parents as well. The scene is set in a dark alley outside
the cinema where Thomas and Martha Wayne are happily preoccupied with their 8
year old son’s reenactment of a scene from his favorite movie “The Mark of
Zorro”. The tender family moment ends abruptly
when a robber emerges from the shadows and kills both of his parents while he
watches, powerless to save them. Wayne’s
effort to remedy his lack of power becomes a running theme in his adult
life. He seeks to eradicate it along
with Gotham’s criminal element as a masked vigilante and along the way meets
foes like the Joker and others who share similar pathologies but have chosen to
wreak havoc on society instead saving it[3]. But Batman’s origin as a masked avenger is
not uncommon. Other masked vigilante’s
within the comic book universe such as Spiderman and Daredevil are just a few
who share origins spawned from the painful loss of loved ones. Spiderman’s decision to become a hero came
from using his powers for self gain. His
first mission after being bitten by a radioactive spider was to enter a
wrestling competition and use the money to impress his love interest Mary Jane
Watson. After winning this competition
and getting cheated out of his winnings, he witnesses a robbery and decides to
let an armed thief escape with the purse. He later discovers that the same
thief he let escape killed his beloved uncle Ben Parker in an attempt to steal
his car. Daredevil similarly loses his
father a professional boxer, to the criminal known as the Kingpin because he
refuses to throw a fight. One vital
element of the Batman story is the recurrent and pivotal moment of his parent’s
death. Many writers both in the comic
and on the screen have revisited this moment with Wayne as he takes his yearly
excursion to Crime Alley, the place where they were killed and drops to roses
on that very spot. This crucial moment remains vital to the setting, which is
one of the most important elements of the Batman mythos. Writers who truly
understand Batman are aware that in order to truly appreciate and understand
him, this moment in his history must remain ever present. It is
here where Bruce Wayne first becomes aware of Gotham the concrete-clad beast
that he must conquer. But as Frank Miller reveals in his stories Batman:
Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, conquering the beast cannot be
accomplished without becoming a part of it. In the former, a 25 year-old Bruce,
the prodigal son of Gotham returns home after traveling the world in search of
training for his monumental task as the caped crusader. But Frank Miller’s Bruce Wayne is still a
novice to crime fighting. Although he
possesses many fighting skills, he is still naïve to the ways of Gotham. It is a city where most of the police force
and city officials are corrupt and fighting crime is no easy task. He is not
yet aware of the symbiotic relationship between he and the city. He sees only an enemy that he must
conquer. Part of Miller’s narrative
skill in this tale is in taking the reader down Wayne’s dark journey to
knighthood with his inner monologue[4]
as the only lamplight. It begins on a plane closing in on the city.
Bruce Wayne gazes out of his window as the captain announces the final
descent. He ponders that from where he
is sitting just above its clean shafts of
concrete and snowy rooftops, which are the
work of men who died generations ago it looks like an achievement. Here
Miller’s allusion to the crime ridden labyrinth that awaits our hero could
serves both a wink to those in the know and an invitation to the absurd for
those who are new to the Batman myth. He gives an even better clue about this
world that awaits Wayne as he continues to ponder during his descent on to the
city and decides that he should have
taken the train, [he] should be
closer…[he] should see the enemy. Another example comes a few pages later as he
walks through the belly of his adversary on a
twenty-block walk to the enemy camp where along the way he is sized up like a piece of meat by the leather
boys in Robinson Park, waded through pleas and half-hearted threats from
junkies at the Finger Memorial and stepped across a field of human rubble that
lay sleeping in front of the overcrowded Sprang Mission. Although Miller’s opinions of city
dwellers is of course screaming from these pages,[5]
they do represent a fair view of a character who has experienced trauma at the
hands of one of its inhabitants. In this scene Wayne is portrayed as an
embittered spirit who has declared war on the city and vengeance for the
injustice it has dealt him.
Batman: Year
One is a coming of age story for the dark knight. It comes just before he actually realizes
that the film of corruption that consumes Gotham is a vital part of his identity,
an identity that feeds on the night. So
he decides to embrace this part of Gotham that awakens at dusk and form a relationship
with it. His heroic deeds however are
not without their share of breaking and entries, assaults, and obstructions of
justice. In essence, all of the things
that people, especially criminals fear about the night must include Batman or
he will be obsolete. In the 1980’s Tim Burton was the first to take the torch
lit by Miller and attempt to take Batman’s noir setting to the big screen.[6]
Although Burton’s attempt was a failure
by many fan’s standards, it did enable Warner Brothers who was soon to follow
and reaffirm the hero’s relationship between Gotham and the night. In an episode
entitled ‘Nothing to Fear” from the Emmy Award winning “Batman: The Animated
Series”, it becomes evident when he shouts the words, ‘I am vengeance, I am the
night, I am Batman’ as the villain Scarecrow attempts to drive him insane with
a fear toxin which reveals Bruce Wayne’s greatest fear; disappointing his
father. Batman shouts this declaration
to anchor his self, face this fear and reaffirm why he dons the cape and cowl. In
essence, Batman needs Gotham as much as it needs him. Without it he is merely
Bruce Wayne Billionaire playboy who lives off of his father’s money. Gotham is a living-breathing reminder of his
parent’s death and his purpose, especially when the sun goes down. When reading the Batman comic, the reader is
always conscious of that alley where Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed. He [Wayne] keeps the reader hyper-aware of
this small stretch of darkness and tar through his many excursions through the
dark streets of Gotham, while behind the wheel of the Bat mobile, and as he
stands on rooftops gazing down at the city.
The reader can get the sense that somewhere below there is an injustice
waiting to happen just like the one that happened to his parents. A large part
of Batman’s appeal in this regard is that he is self-aware of his many assets
as well as his human limitations. As he
gazes down at the city where he lost the two people most dear to him, he is
ever conscious that although he can save many like them, he cannot save them
all. In spite of this he possesses an
impenetrable single-mindedness that often borders on insanity and he has
maintained it at the risk of failed relationships, perpetual loneliness, and
the inevitable disappointment of a mission that is doomed to fail (at least in
his lifetime)[7]
eventually because of old age and death.
In the book Batman
and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul, David M. Hart attributes the
dark knight’s ill-fated choice to a Heideggerian[8]
definition of angst. In these terms
angst is defined as an individual’s
uncomfortable feeling of authentically confronting the certain possibility of [their]
own death. In other words, when a person confronts their own death,
they see that it is something that no one else can do for them, something they
will have to face alone. This in turn casts their whole life in a new light…[As
a result], the completed story of their
life will be the result of the possibilities chosen for their self from out of
the situation which they were thrown into birth. (Hart 220)
Heidegger’s definition
adds yet a clearer focus to the recurrent rooftop scene described earlier. As Batman gazes upon the streets of Gotham
and ponders all of the crimes that he will both succeed and fail at preventing,
he can at least find comfort in the fact that he has chosen to do something
about it. The fact that this is a choice
that creates adversaries even in his personal life (ie; his alienation of Robin
and a host of love interests) is of little concern. Because he is mindful of his own mortality, Batman is able
to maintain a single-minded determination about his mission, seeing his life
and his world exclusively in terms of the singular project he’s chosen for
himself. Instead of being driven by guilt over his parents’ death (an event he
really had no control over) or from the criminals who had nothing to do with
it, perhaps the real impact of that fateful night was instilling in young Bruce
Wayne an authentic understanding of his own life as finite and limited. If
Heidegger’s claims about our relation to death were right then the
consideration of his own death in angst would have allowed Bruce to decide on a
life for himself without any regard for the exceptions of so-called normal
society free to organize his entire existence around a mission of his own
choosing, and limited only by the possibilities into which he finds himself
thrown (which aren’t very limiting when you’re an heir to billions), an
authentic recognition of his own inevitable death could have allowed Bruce
Wayne to become Batman purely out of a sense of responsibility for his own
existence. (222)
When David Meets Goliath: Resourcefulness in the pursuit of Gotham
Batman’s resourcefulness in the
face of danger could be perceived as a modern day re-telling of the David and
Goliath story. Many of the villains he
faces are mere mortals like him. But
they all share the common goal of conquering the giant that is Gotham City. Each of the villains he faces in some way wish
to make the city their own, from villains like The Penguin, who seek to reap
its financial benefits to the Joker who want to watch it burn their goal is
always to conquer Gotham. Batman stands
at the center of the battle taking all comers.
He too wants to conquer the giant but if asked he would say that it’s
simply so that order may prevail. But the close observer would discover that in
a city like Gotham, this is an impossible goal and he knows it. But if nothing
else it offers good story telling. And as long as there is a beast called
Gotham to fuel Batman’s angst the stories will continue. Tony Spanakos in the
book Batman and Philosophy: The Dark
Knight of the Soul offers the view that:
Gotham [City], particularly its
government, is the source of Batman’s angst. Thomas and Martha Wayne [his
parents] were murdered because the state was incapable of maintaining law and
order, and Bruce Wayne’s response was to become the crime-fighting Batman, trying
to correct the lack of order in his city.
Though extreme, this reaction is not unique. Nearly all of the major characters in the
Batman pantheon are reacting against a state that is perceived as either too
weak or too restrictive. Batman…has a
more nuanced vision of public safety in that he supports the state but rejects
its exclusive authority in the area of security. This highlights the precarious nature of
political rule, and it also explains why the Batman has such a problematic
relationship with the state. (Spanakos 2008)
Spanakos’s point
sheds light on a vital element in Batman’s motivation to become a hero. His distrust of the criminal justice system
forces him to react with vigor to the injustices in Gotham City. Because he is the hero in this tale, his
stake in the pursuit of Gotham is established forthright. But as mentioned earlier, his task is not a
simple one because Gotham is a beast that feeds on fear and corruption. In BM Year One, Bruce Wayne realizes this but
like David he meets the challenge unabashedly.
He is David with a slight advantage however. He has the financial
resources to take on the mob bosses and corrupt police force that run the city.
In this context, Goliath meets Goliath. However,
Wayne must become David whenever he dons the cape and cowl. This makes him
unique among the giants he often calls his allies in the Justice League. He realizes that the police force would
immediately throw him in jail if he were caught because in a city as corrupt as
Gotham, a vigilante is the last thing they need.
[1] The Justice League is a
team of Superheroes consisting of the Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash
and a host of others from the DC Comics Universe. Batman joined this team later in his career
as he grew mature enough to realize that he could not save the world on his
own.
[2] In a two part graphic
novel series entitled The Widening Gyre and Cacophony written by
famed filmmaker Kevin Smith, Batman actually does this. He finally reaches the happiness and
catharsis of finding a woman that he both loves and trusts. The added bonus is that he does not have to
hide who he is to her. Further icing on
the cake is that he discovers a new hero in Gotham who is just as talented as
he is. In this story Batman does the
unthinkable. He reveals his identity and the location of the bat cave to his
new fiancé and this new hero. The results are catastrophic thus confirming the
point that a Batman without angst would not only mean the undoing of him, but
the entire Batman mythos as well.
[3] There are various origins
of the Joker and they all have a unique perspective on the character’s
motives. For the sake of continuity I
will refer to Alan Moore’s version taken from the story “The Killing Joke”. In this story he is depicted as a former
engineer who quits his job to become a comedian. After he fails at this endeavor he becomes
desperate to feed his pregnant wife and decides to help a group of gangsters
rob a business next door to his former job at a chemical plant. During the
planning of this robbery he finds out that his wife and child to be are killed,
but he is forced by the gangsters to continue with the job. Batman foils their
plan and in an attempt to escape he falls in to vat, which bleaches his skin,
turns his hair green and his lips ruby red. After this the man known as the
Joker emerges.
[4] The character’s inner
thoughts are usually indicated by a yellow square with text, not to be confused
by the dialogue bubbles, which indicate that characters are talking to each
other.
[5] Later in his career Miller
was berated by many of his fans for his extreme and allegedly racist views
especially about the Middle East. He has
also made many inflammatory statements about the OWS protestors. Many of these statements can be found on
Miller’s blog.
[6] More on this later.
[7] In the animated series
Batman Beyond, the older curmudgeonly Bruce Wayne is not far from this
description. However, he does find an heir to his mantle. The story is set in a dystopian future where
flying cars and other types of high technology are the norm, but the criminal
element is just as bad if not worse than in Wayne’s hay day as the bat. The new Batman Terry McGinnis loses his
father to a corrupt businessman who happens to be Bruce’s business
partner. Bruce recognizes that his
partner is corrupt but finds it hard to expose him. He decides to use Terry to help him do this
and continue to fight crime in the new Gotham. He furnishes him with a new and
improved bat suit that gives him heightened strength, flight, and an arsenal of
weapons. The suit also comes equipped
with video and audio communication devices so that Bruce Wayne can have birds
eye view of all McGinnis’s crime fighting excursions and advise him along the
way.
[8] Although my knowledge of
Heidegger and hardly a platform I would use to analyze Batman, I thought that
this argument was consistent enough with my own.
