239: Batmanalyzed
- Thread starter Allen Varney
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For someone who's able to to dig up old Denny O'Neil interviews and dissect the corporate ladder of AOL Time Warner, you sure do miss a lot of Batman.
Denny O'Neil whom you wrote about, would have Batman turn someone in for evading his taxes. In recent years we've seen Batman take on illegal animal research. He's gone toe to toe with with corrupt city politicians like Rupert Thorne, challenged billionaire industrialists, crossed federal jurisdiction to capture white collar criminals involved in billions of embezzled money, beat up and turned in a Senator for killing a prostitute he impregnated, and even challenged and assaulted the President of the United States (Yeah, he was Lex Luthor).
Denny O'Neil whom you wrote about, would have Batman turn someone in for evading his taxes. In recent years we've seen Batman take on illegal animal research. He's gone toe to toe with with corrupt city politicians like Rupert Thorne, challenged billionaire industrialists, crossed federal jurisdiction to capture white collar criminals involved in billions of embezzled money, beat up and turned in a Senator for killing a prostitute he impregnated, and even challenged and assaulted the President of the United States (Yeah, he was Lex Luthor).
The worst part is, in my head I had comebacks for all the arguments, all as silly as the stuff you are mentioning him doing.
I think Alan Moore and Frank Miller summed up how messed up Bats actually is, most subtly with Rorschach who everyone knows.
I used to wonder a lot about the Summer and Winter. Does he work 16-18 hour shifts in Winter and 6 hour shifts in summer?
Ahhh! don't think about it. or the fact that modern speech analysts can tell what street you grew up on.
Or who actually builds his Batcaves? Does he call nightwing to help move a couch?
But if he called Superman to help, wouldn't superman feel obligated to help build homes in Africa?
I think Alan Moore and Frank Miller summed up how messed up Bats actually is, most subtly with Rorschach who everyone knows.
I used to wonder a lot about the Summer and Winter. Does he work 16-18 hour shifts in Winter and 6 hour shifts in summer?
Ahhh! don't think about it. or the fact that modern speech analysts can tell what street you grew up on.
Or who actually builds his Batcaves? Does he call nightwing to help move a couch?
But if he called Superman to help, wouldn't superman feel obligated to help build homes in Africa?
Timeline/history:While you can call most of it cannon what you tend to focus on is the concurrent story's not all of it at once, as every other current story tends to reset the world alil bit.
Romance:It dose not matter who he's screwing as he is lonely because he keeps himself apart from others.
Masks/Hidden identity:Meh its plausible thus reasonable to think it could work.
Heros tend to trade in the normal mundane happy life for a life of complication and war with evil/crime,ect and or "self".
Romance:It dose not matter who he's screwing as he is lonely because he keeps himself apart from others.
Masks/Hidden identity:Meh its plausible thus reasonable to think it could work.
Heros tend to trade in the normal mundane happy life for a life of complication and war with evil/crime,ect and or "self".
Enjoyed the article, some excellent points made. I would have to agree with a few of the previous posts on the "always-beats-up-junkies-not-corporate-assholes" point: If we're accepting the fact that he's still motivated by the death of his parents, those would be the guys he'd be looking to beat the crap out of. So he's a little crazy. That's awesome.
I guess my other strong feeling about this topic is that I don't worry about this kinda stuff cause its just a comic book. I would agree that a story resonates more when its realistic, but I've learned to suspend disbelief when it comes to super heros. Sure, they don't make a lot of sense. But check out Batman bashing a thug in the face with a 2x4! Aw yeah.
I guess my other strong feeling about this topic is that I don't worry about this kinda stuff cause its just a comic book. I would agree that a story resonates more when its realistic, but I've learned to suspend disbelief when it comes to super heros. Sure, they don't make a lot of sense. But check out Batman bashing a thug in the face with a 2x4! Aw yeah.
We all know how and why Bruce Wayne decided to be Batman. I wont say anything further because if the writer has to make this many comments about his own articles justification then I don't like it and it's not very good.
Hi Allen, I'm a great fan of your work.
You've taken on an impossible task here though, psychoanalyzing Batman.
The problem is that there are Batmen, not Batman. Is Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Batman the same as Alan Moore's? How about Frank Miller's? Grant Morrison's? Paul Dini's? How about the current one from The Brave and the Bold cartoon series, he should be a lot of fun.
You should really just do something easier and psychoanalyze The Goon.
Still, I'll admit it's fun. If you get the Spawn movie on DVD then you can watch action figure magnate Todd McFarlane do the same thing...
You've taken on an impossible task here though, psychoanalyzing Batman.
The problem is that there are Batmen, not Batman. Is Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Batman the same as Alan Moore's? How about Frank Miller's? Grant Morrison's? Paul Dini's? How about the current one from The Brave and the Bold cartoon series, he should be a lot of fun.
You should really just do something easier and psychoanalyze The Goon.
Still, I'll admit it's fun. If you get the Spawn movie on DVD then you can watch action figure magnate Todd McFarlane do the same thing...
I don't read superhero comics often, for various reasons, but one is their conservative view of crime. Crime in superhero comics since the 1940s has been about bad people doing bad things. It's rarely about the situations that leads people to do those bad things. Superheroes beat up thugs, but rarely address the social problems that are the cause of most crime. I'm not a bleeding heart--someone who assaults or murders somebody else should be subjected to the full court press of the law--but most criminals are symptoms of greater problems that are almost never addressed in superhero comics.
I know I'm painting with a rather broad brush here, and that some comics writers have addressed my points above. (I also remember a bit of dialogue in Batman Begins that implied Bruce Wayne's father's philanthropic work did a lot to keep Gotham's crime rate down back in the day.) But I still find it hard to swallow the overall trend in comics, as I'll explain:
The black gang, the Italian mafia, the Chinese Triad, the Columbian cartel, and the Russian Mafiya. So the subtext is, the rich WASP industrialist is clearing the stereotyped ethnic vermin from "his" streets. Sigh. And this situation was essentially recycled for The Dark Knight, along with heaps more anti-Chinese sentiment, which annoyed the hell out of me.
(This comic also insulted me professionally, given its handling of databases and IT. That it was written by Greg Rucka, who I usually respect, was salt in the wound.)
I guess I'm really irritated because Batman is an intelligent guy. I like intelligent heroes. And Batman should be smart enough to know that while mobsters and muggers and the mentally ill are a problem, they're a symptom of much bigger problems. The guy can save the earth from Braniac but can't make a dent in Gotham's poverty problems? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless]
I know I'm painting with a rather broad brush here, and that some comics writers have addressed my points above. (I also remember a bit of dialogue in Batman Begins that implied Bruce Wayne's father's philanthropic work did a lot to keep Gotham's crime rate down back in the day.) But I still find it hard to swallow the overall trend in comics, as I'll explain:
OK, I like The Godfather and The Sopranos as much as anybody, but as an Italian-Canadian I'm really getting sick of the shallow mobster typecasting. And I know my people don't have it half as bad as others do. One Batman trade I read was Batman: Evolution, where Batman has to clean up Gotham after the whole No Man's Land arc. And who does he have to clean up?TheBluesader said:
The black gang, the Italian mafia, the Chinese Triad, the Columbian cartel, and the Russian Mafiya. So the subtext is, the rich WASP industrialist is clearing the stereotyped ethnic vermin from "his" streets. Sigh. And this situation was essentially recycled for The Dark Knight, along with heaps more anti-Chinese sentiment, which annoyed the hell out of me.
(This comic also insulted me professionally, given its handling of databases and IT. That it was written by Greg Rucka, who I usually respect, was salt in the wound.)
I guess I'm really irritated because Batman is an intelligent guy. I like intelligent heroes. And Batman should be smart enough to know that while mobsters and muggers and the mentally ill are a problem, they're a symptom of much bigger problems. The guy can save the earth from Braniac but can't make a dent in Gotham's poverty problems? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless]
I do not get how you got your first statement from anything I've written, but I am not going to quibble.Crimson_Dragoon said:
I get that you think Batman is Awesome. He is written that way. Literally, Batman is the only other fictional character that can use his name as an answer to anything. The only other one is Jesus of Nazareth.
The guy can save the earth from Braniac but can't make a dent in Gotham's poverty problems?
I'm reminded of Marvel's Emperor Doom, where Dr. Doom successfully conquers the world, and solves many global problems like hunger and poverty.
However, he also has to attend boring committee meetings.
I've heard Batman described by one of the current writers as "A mentally ill, disturbed individual, like Twoface or Joker, with different goals and a moral compass." That's a pretty good way to rationalize why he focuses on beating up two-bit thugs in Gotham rather than stopping genocide in Africa or solving world poverty or whatever.
As a comic fan, I've always thought the character "Moon Knight" was a lot more interesting than Batman; a guy with limitless focus and genius, but who is basically being driven insane by his gifts. And we've seen that throughout history with our gifted individuals. Batman is basically supposed to be a fictional DaVinci, and DaVinci was known to have social anxiety and thought to have a lot of mental issues.
As a comic fan, I've always thought the character "Moon Knight" was a lot more interesting than Batman; a guy with limitless focus and genius, but who is basically being driven insane by his gifts. And we've seen that throughout history with our gifted individuals. Batman is basically supposed to be a fictional DaVinci, and DaVinci was known to have social anxiety and thought to have a lot of mental issues.
- Apr 1, 2009
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I always thought marvel was more interesting then dc, marvel always had more going on and dc it tended to be pretty black and white with things.... altho I dont really like super hero comics that much, most of them tend to be rather boring to me with a few exceptions.... that I cant think of right now. Hrmm
