Na na na na Na na na na Batman!

[zdashamber]

When even my mom is telling me that I should blog more, it must be true... I've been very busy either doing other stuff or avoiding doing other stuff. In the process of the second, I wiped a couple more boxes off the map and cleared up a nice tasty chunk of floor space, so hey, bonus!

And now I'm going to talk about Batman. Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers wrote an article about Superman's folk-hero status. It concludes with,

Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.

Which points out pretty well why I don't love Superman. There's just all kinds of things wrong with that... Keeping people in the dark. Wishing you were less than you are. Not owning up to your potential. Leading a double life for the approval of other people.

But then, I just don't buy omni-benevolent gods. I'm cool with people who like Superman, though; different strokes for different folks.

Gaiman's wrong about Batman, though. Bruce Wayne chose to become Batman, and denying that he's done it is like pretending transgender people are just dicking around. Denying that people can change their lives if they choose... Where does that get you? "You may have a college degree, you may head a major engineering firm, but you'll always stink of the crackhouse where you were born..." Hooey. The thing about Batman is, any one of us could be Batman if we worked as hard at it as Bruce Wayne did.

...So I'm thinking this, and I'm thinking, "Though... Could we, if we weren't fucking rich?"

Yeah. It would be really cool to see a dirt-poor Batman. Without the tech doodads to shield him, a community of people on his side would serve.

I'm thinking, make him black, put him in the sketchy part of town... His parents were involved in trying to better the community from within, got shot leaving a repertory theater production by a gangbanger. Raised by his grandmother. Devoted his life to coming up with a way to stop the criminals fucking up his city. Learned martial arts from the Korean guy who ran the corner liquor store. Made friends with the guy teaching Chemistry at the public high school, and learned how to make smoke bombs. Vowed not to kill anyone else... Couldn't trust the cops to work with them, but was willing to deliver criminals to them... Drives the 1987 American-made Batmobile... Wears a ski mask and the hoodie with little Bat-ears...

It all fits. Has it been done? Can I buy a trade paperback? Because that would be friggin' neat.

Comments

[debela.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see Kill Bill 2? It's horrific, and one day I will get my revenge on Morgan for asking me to see it, but that take on Superman is precisely the take offered at the end of the movie.

I like the take on Batman, though.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I haven't seen either of the Kill Bills, since I heard it was all horrid gore... And there's so many other major pop culture movies I haven't seen yet. Like "This is Spinal Tap" or "Pulp Fiction."

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Gaiman is right about Batman and Superman, but only if you go back more than 20 years ago. In the early 80s and prior, Clark Kent was the secret identity of a Superman who came complete with living knowledge of his Kryptonian heritage, while Batman was just a mask that Bruce Wayne wore to be more effective.

After about 1985, that flip-flopped entirely. Superman became the mask that homespun Clark Kent would wear so that he could perform great deeds without wrecking his home life, while Bruce Wayne effectively killed his own psyche in the course of becoming the Batman.

That Gaiman would be out of date (or just wrong) on his Americana really doesn't surprise me.

[nuadha-prime.livejournal.com]

Exactly. These days, Clark Kent is the real thing and sadly, Batman is who Bruce Wayne has become and the Bruce Wayne identity is just a disguise.

These days, I don't like Batman anymore. I loved the Batman of the 80's but ever since the 90's and the rise of the anti-hero, writers have been writing Batman as a psychotic. He's no longer the compassionate person who became Batman to make sure noone else ever suffers what he did but a man who has to be Batman because he knows no other way to deal with his loss.

In silver-age Superman stories, I never liked that Clark Kent acted like a bumbling clutz, but now I love Superman because he is written as the same person, in or out of costume. Either way, there is no sense that he is acting.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

That's a good thing, about Superman... I haven't checked out the comics, though I'm looking forward to the movie. For Batman, I got irritated at comics in general in the mid-90s when everything I read (Batman included) was doing the "we're so grim and relevant and did I mention grim?" without any foundation for the grim, so it was just jerking-the-reader-around melodrama. I buy it that he's written psychotic now. Goddamn shame. It sounds silly, but there's no reason why a guy with a tragic past who dresses in a bat suit to fight crime has to be a psycho.

[colomon.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find there are a hell of a lot more people who are familiar with the classic versions of these characters than who follow the on-going Superman and Batman comics enough to know details like this. I guess I'm not surprised Gaiman is one of the former, too.

Personally, for nearly the last twenty years, I've read DC comics regularly, usually 1-3 titles every month. It's not at all unusual for me to pick up Batman (and to a lesser extent) Superman comics -- but I never read their mainstream on-going titles. That's as in (as far as I can remember) I don't think I've read even a single issue of either since John Byrne left Superman.

And I'd say in the non-mainstream-continuity mini-series I do read, the characters are still normally portrayed the way Gaiman describes. I'm particularly fond of Matt Wagner's Batman comics...

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Eh, my view on Batman comes mostly from Batman: the Animated Series, which showed in the early 90s, I believe. There they definitely made Bruce the guy Batman played.

B: tAS had more heart and seriousness than any other version of Batman I've seen... I stopped reading the comics because they were so far off it, and haven't gotten back into the habit.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

My reaction to that article did put me in mind of your take on _American Gods_. I don't think Gaiman's out of date, though; I just think he's got a bit of an odd take on things. I mean, out of date probably plays a part in this, but in general reading his blog I get the same impression, that he's a clever interesting fellow who has a unique set of priorities.

[cochese.livejournal.com]

As debela mentioned, that theory of Clark Kent came up in Kill Bill as well. (Me, I liked the whole damn set of films.) If the date on the article is accurate, then the theory came out in Kill Bill first. But I'm not hip enough to know if Tarrantino was quoting someone else on that, either.

Street level Batman? The two immediate ones that come to mind are the re-imagined Nighthawk and the Punisher.

Straczynski did a re-imagination of Marvel's Squadron Supreme, which was kind of the Marvel knock-off of the JLA. You can get more info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squadron_Supreme
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Power

Straczynski tweaked with a lot of the character concepts and in general made everything a bit more "realistic." Nighthawk in this universe became a black character from meager beginnings, but his family had become well-off. They were killed by a bunch of rednecks. So JMS's Nighthawk: Black, but not poor.

Alternately, though I've never been a big fan of the comic, the Punisher was never the wealthy dilitant that Bruce Wayne was. But he's white.

Otherwise, I think the only non-powered black superhero that's coming to my mind are the Falcon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_%28comics%29
and War Machine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Machine

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

The Punisher seems more the psychotic that nuadha_prime is talking about... Admittedly, I never read any Punisher stuff, but his schtick seems more like vengeance with guns blazing.

Anyway, thanks for the links; the ones that come with your commentary seem useful...

[cochese.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I think it begs the question of, "What sort of person decides that the best way to deal with crime is to go out every night and beat the shit out of criminals?"

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

A person from a comic-book world.

Duh. ;p

[cochese.livejournal.com]

Here's a list of black superheroes. You may find something I didn't:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_superheroes

I suppose, also, Green Lantern John Stewart doesn't have any innate powers, but he's pretty far from what you were looking for. Without his ring, he's just an architect. =T

I'll do some more poking around later.

[(Anonymous)]

This is Mike.

Have you read Astro City? It features, among other things, several somewhat disguised takes on classic superheroes -- in some cases, slightly revisionist takes on them, though as a whole, Astro City is not deconstructionist.

Anyhow, its Batman equivalent is black, and, while not poor, not a multi-billionaire or anything. Still has a fair number of tech tricks, though (the guy is supposed to be an engineer at a big company, and one gets the impression he indulges in a bit of office-supply-theft).

On the other hand, I'm kind of amused by the idea of "anyone could be Batman... oh, but not everyone could be rich." If you're willing to buy into the sort of self-actualization that would let "anyone" be a world-class athlete, AND a world-class detective, AND a world-class technician/scientist/inventor... Is it that much of a stretch to imagine that anyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become rich? I'm pretty sure that the statistics would say that you'd have a better chance of being born below the poverty line and die a millionaire than that you could achieve true greatness in either science or athletics, much less both.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Nah, I'm not actually that up on my comics knowledge... I've barely touched a comic book since about 1993. Astro City, from what you say, sounds worth picking up a trade paperback...

Anyway, pish tosh, man. If I intimate anything, it's that it's extremely unlikely that someone starting from dirt poorness could become both Batman AND a millionaire. And for Batman, I'm not setting the bar at "packed to the gills with tech doodads"... The ideal is served well enough by a smart guy who's a good martial artist, dresses in a bat-like costume, uses some tech, and is out to stop criminals non-lethally. The world-class scientist stuff isn't essential, and the world-class athletics is overhyped.

[ewilen.livejournal.com]

Rorschach from Watchmen is a bit like a dirt-poor Batman.

Crossed with Travis Bickle, Columbo, and Sewer Urchin, that is.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Huh! Good point! Particularly the psycho Batman nuadha_prime reports from recent years.