Hey, here’s
a quick caveat: the very first comics I read were from The Greatest Batman
Stories Ever Told, followed quickly by TPBs of The Dark Knight Returns, Prey,
various ‘of The Demon’ books, and Year One. This comes from a place of love. Ahahahaha!
Well…
Batman is
the most poorly-realized supercharacter of the last 30 years. Overexposed is
not descriptor enough.
Look,
Batman can't punch Darkseid. Or Superman, or anybody like that. Even Spawn… it’s
ludicrous, and I’m the last primeval agitator to defend freaking Spawn. ‘No powers’ does not trump
‘actual powers’. Can you defeat a back-alley rapist with a smoke bomb and a
sucker punch? Sure, I guess. But a planet-ruling nigh-immortal alien warlord
with an army made up of the entire
population of Apokolips? Not so much. Just who or what is Batman, anyway? Is he a mysterious, fearsome urban legend spoken of with hushed whispers and darting eyes? Or an idiot in a fetish costume throwing proprietary boomerangs at plant monsters and 3-eyed aliens jerks with cranial fins? I doubt that Bob Kane and Bill Finger envisioned their creation palling around with Captain Atom and delivering terse one-liners to a room full of people who could shuffle him off this mortal coil with a wayward sneeze.
It doesn’t work both ways, even in the realm of comic book logic. Think about Wolverine – you can have him fight the Hulk because his bones don’t break and he heals and all that. Fine, ok. While a ‘street-level’ character at his core, Wolverine’s specific ruleset allows him to sort of ‘scale up’, since the skeleton, healing factor, and claws are all effective against more powerful threats, and even then it mostly plays out as him attacking and getting knocked away repeatedly while Cyclops inevitably saves the day. But even Logan doesn’t go toe-to-toe with Apocalypse. He and the Hulk fight. Once the death-rays and alien fleets come into play, well, that’s a job for Phoenix or the Fantastic Four or whomever. Have Gambit go up against a pissed-off Banner and all that’s left is half a deck of cards and a chunky puddle with a stupid accent (no insult to any real-world Creoles, but Gambit straight-up sucks).
Imagine Gangbuster taking on Mordru,
or Lock-Up trying to slug it out with Mongul, (Richard Dragon vs. the
Anti-Monitor? I can keep going) and then explain how the guy who ritually refuses to
use the technology at his disposal to arm himself suitably would stand a
snowball’s chance in Hell of even surviving long enough to think about
throwing jabs at a demigod. Forge once built a gun that had the express
capability of killing the Hulk, but that doesn’t mean he can do it. Batman
throws novelty shop spy gimmicks and swings on ropes. People lost their shit
when Aquaman, one of the most powerful beings on the planet, 'merely' on the Wonder Woman level and godlike in his own element, stabbed Darkseid in the face with his trident (the Trident of Neptune,
I might add). Yet where was the outcry when this obsessive sociopath (Batman,
not Aquaman) put on some totally rad 90's gauntlets and attempted to bring
fisticuffs to a guy who can match Superman on a good day? Batman is beyond effective
against other humans (mostly), and shitty metahumans that have gimmicky abilities.
Still, old Brucie has been bested by the likes of Bronze Tiger, Lady Shiva, and
that guy who led the Mutants gang in The Dark Knight Returns (the comic I blame
for planting the seed of this moronic trend). Oh, and that Bane guy. So is he an accomplished
hand-to-hand combatant with few peers and a bevy of tools at his disposal?
Well, sure. Is he patient, skilled, and using advanced military-level tactics? Of
course! But it avails him naught when you’re talking interplanetary monsters.
Tony Stark might be a pussy in a business suit, but Iron Man is a regular guy
with basically the same resources as Batman, and while he turned that into more
than some kind of autistic Halloween, I still don’t see him beating Darkseid or
Superman, or even putting up much of a fight.
The point is you can’t just throw an established
character into any situation based on popularity and/or visibility with no
regard for the myriad stories that have come before (I sound like such a dick,
I know). The stories have to make sense inasmuch as following the basic
rules/laws/characterizations they have established, or it's just a cheap pop, going for shock value and a comic panel that ends
up in the forum signatures of people who write things like “not changing my
sig until I get a stand-alone Ten-Eyed Man movie” or some such impotent crap. If
you write a story where Batman gains Superman-level powers, fine. It’s been
done, but it doesn’t’ stick because the primary value in that sort of story is giving
a different take; this is what made so many of the Batman Elseworlds one-shots
so much fun. But those renditions of the character are one-offs for a reason,
and since we’re talking about regular-continuity (for all 3 months that
continuity lasts in the DCU), let’s just tell a story where the characters act
and perform in a way that doesn’t crap on the near-century of established canon
(not that DC Comics has cared about canon since the first Crisis). Batman IS
NOT Superman, or Thor, or Peter Cannon, or Doctor Bong. He’s Batman, just
Batman, and that’s fine.
Batman
needs to stop fighting oversized starfish in the middle of the day if he wants
to keep up the 'urban legend' nonsense, and I think audiences today realize
that petty criminals are not part of some secret society of ne’er-do-wells
anyway. Maybe mugger-stalking Batman just doesn’t resonate anymore, in a world
of modern fears and globalization? Is that why he's put into so many conflicts outside his purview?
If Batman
breaks some purse-snatcher's leg, he doesn't get on his ham radio and alert
every other petty crook when he gets released from the hospital, or put in a
call to Killer Moth (there’s an underused character if there ever was one) from
a payphone that costs a nickel. No, he uses a normal phone to call his lawyer
and sue the city for allowing a vigilante to assault citizens without any kind
of authority or justification. Batman is a nightmare for the legal system even
in a city as corrupt as Gotham (which seems to have a police force of 6). The
rich have beaten down the poor since time immemorial; Bruce Wayne (who studied
law at Gotham University, according to my memories of various Silver Age
flashbacks and The Untold Legend of The Batman) is apparently unaware that
crime, especially nonviolent crimes and theft, is a last resort for people
without resources or options in life. His billions could be better spent on
educational programs or even funding the GCPD, but true to form Batman is
selfish and narcissistic, more intent on satisfying his (unachievable) personal
vendetta than making a lasting difference. ‘Superstitious and cowardly’ is a
much more fitting descriptor for Batman himself, as the average criminal is
more likely to be desperate and in need of social services than not.
So much of
the character is couched in a pre-WWII sensibility about the nature of crime
and socioeconomic relationships (I really didn’t think I was going to end up
going this way when I started this) that these ideas are probably out of the
realm of context for a mainstream superhero book. It’s
funny, when I see Captain America get in Thanos’ face, I’m like ‘Cap, you
selfless beacon of humanity, you better hope Adam Warlock shows... oh, there he
is. Late to the party again, Adam. Now make with the anti-Thanosing, could ya?’,
but when Batman is in the same position, I think ‘How is that grappling hook
going to stall Imperiex, exactly?’
