The inevitable post about Batman

I wanted to write more about A Stranger In A Strange Land today. I wanted to write about how it made me half an hour late getting back to St. Albans because I got on the wrong train because I was engrossed, and I didn't even care. I wanted to write about how one particular scene (for those who've read it, the one where Mike is hiding in the pool while the SS soldiers invade Jubal's ranch) portrayed an innocent soul, thinking and learning, so beautifully, that it literally moved me to tears. But I have something else to write about. Something on which I can write a whole lot more.

[Note - this post will, eventually, be talking about the video game Arkham City.  However, I take quite a while working up to it, so it will be spoiler-free until marked otherwise.  In actual fact, this tale grew in the telling, so I'm shifting all game discussion to the following post]

Anyone who's talked to me for any length of time at all has probably picked up on the fact that I'm reasonably keen on comics, and in particular on Batman. In fact, I can generally find myself sympathising with T-Rex here (hopefully, click for the original version, though I'm still getting used to how anchor tags work in blogger...):

Comic from qwantz courtesy of the great Ryan North, ladies and gentlemen!

There is, of course, a large segment of the population who believe that comics (and video games) shouldn't be considered as art on the same level as literature, poetry, opera, or films.  While I do believe that they shouldn't be judged by the same criteria, the fact that these media are capable of sustaining works of art of the same profundity is, to me, without question.  That, however, is a whole other debate for another time.

I want to talk to you a little about continuity.  This is a term that doesn't get used much outside of the comic book medium, wherein it has a very specialised meaning.  Loosely speaking, continuity is the property of multiple stories that makes them all hang together as a coherent whole.  It is possible to speak of "different continuities" (very similar to, though slightly distinct from, "alternate universes") - we could have, for instance, one Superman story with the backstory that he moved to Metropolis soon after his childhood sweetheart died, and another one wherein she's still alive and competing with Lois Lane for his affections.  Both are valid and interesting interpretations of the characters' history (though, as with anything where people get overenthusiastic, some zealots and purists may disagree).  There is a culture in the comic book medium of treating a character and their backstory not as an inviolate and sacrosanct gospel, but as a framework to climb on, swing around, and occasionally bend and warp out of all recognition.  Yes, the "main" comic series may stick to an agreed upon storyline (referred to as "canon" - both noun and adjective), but writers usually have free rein to write books exploring "what if?" scenarios.  There exist books in which the Green Lantern's power ring was found by a young and angry Bruce Wayne, or where Kal-El (better known to us as Superman) landed on Earth 12 hours later, in Soviet Russia, and grew to become an iron-fisted dictator - and very fine books they were too.

Because giving the goddamn Batman a superpower that is based on 

intelligence, willpower, and imagination seemed like a good idea at the time...

What we have, then, is a storytelling tradition in which each participant is free to take whatever they want from their predecessors, and add their own twist to characters.  Failed ideas fade away; interesting ones are latched onto, reinterpreted, and, if they're retold often enough, adopted into canon.  It's a process that allows for rich and original storytelling while maintaining a wealth of backstory reference, and I just can't get enough of it.

That said, there are some cornerstones of characters' make-up that are regarded as fairly set, in that if you were to change any of them, there would be no sense in calling them the same character.  Spiderman is always an outstanding scientist, Daredevil is always blind, Wolverine is always gruff, surly, and Canadian.  These are the sorts of things that, if you change them, you'd better be *really* sure that you know what you're doing (as in the aforementioned Soviet Superman story, "Superman: Red Son").

"For Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact!"

As I've already said, one of my favourite characters in comics is Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman.  Pages and pages have been written about him, and I certainly can't even begin to add anything new to the examination of the character.  As anyone who's been foolish enough to get me talking on the topic can attest, I could rant about him for hours, so I will do my best to be brief (and assume literally zero knowledge of the character, while hopefully adding something new to those who're only familiar with him through the two recent films).

When he was very young, Bruce, the scion of the wealthy and philanthropic Wayne family of Gotham City, witnessed his parents gunned down by a mugger in an alleyway.  Scarred by this event, he embarked on an intense training regime for many years, emerging a master of martial arts, stealth, logic, planning, and strategy.  Convinced that he could prey on the superstitious and cowardly nature of criminals, he fashioned a bat-themed outfit (complete with armour plating and various gadgets) and took to fighting crime on the streets of Gotham City and beyond.

Batman has a prolific and well-established "Rogues' Gallery" of villains who cause havoc on the streets of Gotham, with none more well-known than the Joker (mostly thanks to Heath Ledger's absolutely fantastic portrayal of utter insanity).  A man so utterly detached from reality that he views almost everything as one big joke, he is so dangerous because he is so completely unpredictable - he's just as likely to walk away from a bank vault having taken only a single one-dollar bill as he is to take everything and kill everyone, including his accomplices.

Why so serious?

The reason why, in my opinion (and that of many other professors of Batmanology), Joker is such a well-used character in the Batman mythos, is that he is the the yin to Batman's yang.  He is utterly without qualms with regards to killing, where Batman has a strict no-guns-no-killing policy - he glories in chaos and pandemonium, while the whole point of the Batman revolves around control and order - he is often portrayed as overtly sexual, often enjoying cross-dressing or homosexuality, while Bats is the very definition of straight-laced and uptight (in fact, today I learned that, among other things, yin is associated with the concept of female and yang with male - to quote the Joker in Arkham Asylum, "What do you really fear, Bats? Failing to save this cesspool of a city? Not finding the commissioner in time? Me, in a thong?")

But, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with the idea knows, yin and yang don't simply mean opposites.  Rather, they are portrayed as being two complementary facets of a single concept, "as part of a dynamic system" (thank you for that last bit, Wikipedia!), which is absolutely true of The Joker and Batman as well - and that concept is insanity.  Yes, it's obvious that The Joker is utterly (forgive me) bat-shit insane, but what those who are not nerdy/cool enough to immerse themselves in the mythos often don't realise is that Bruce Wayne is just as fucked up.  The entire Batman persona that he's created is a replacement for the protection that wasn't there to save his own parents.  He hasn't moved on at all; he is essentially still an eight-year-old boy stuck in the Anger phase of his grief, striking out at the criminal world that took his mother and father away from him.  It's telling that, while discussing the symbolic importance of an incorruptible crimefighter, Bruce often talks about Batman as if he is a separate person.  Batman is Bruce's imaginary crimefighting friend that he never grew out of - he is the justice and control that a scared and confused young orphan would have craved.

Yep, not handling it well...

But their complementary nature goes further.  Though I know of at least one prominent Bat-scholar who disagrees with me on this point, most authors take the view that The Joker and Batman have a codependent relationship - they could not exist without the other.  Without Batman to foil him, Joker would derive no satisfaction from his plots - in some sense, he wants to get caught, it's just a test of how far he can get.  In fact, a number of authors (most notably Frank Miller in his fantastic The Dark Knight Returns) have posited that it is Batman himself that causes such unusual personalities as The Riddler, Penguin, and Two-Face to emerge, in reaction to his presence.  Indeed, in the most commonly accepted of Joker's origin stories, he was a down-on-his-luck comedian that agreed to join a criminal gang on one heist to support his wife and family, and went insane after the appearance of Batman caused him to fall into a vat of chemicals and become horrifically scarred.

But the converse is also true.  Were it not for Joker and the cohorts of the criminally insane who populate Arkham Asylum, there would be no need for Batman.  Bruce Wayne would have to shed the mask and finally come to terms with his grief.  Yes, his aversion to killing is ostensibly to keep himself "better than them [criminals]", or, with a little pop psychology, because his initial traumatic event involved a dual murder - but, on a deeper level, it also serves to ensure that he always has a fresh supply of villains to thwart, untroubled by self-awareness.

Arrgh I could go on.  I could go on and on and on, comparing interpretations, tying in other characters (Catwoman and Ra's al-Ghul being particularly interesting in their interactions with Bats/Bruce) and examining their motivations and flaws, waxing lyrical about how much depth and variety various writers have brought to the genre (and railing against its perception as shallow), but I'd be in danger of veering into the territory where the only people who'd still be interested are those who already know it all already, and God knows my poor skill as a writer means I can't add anything new to the analysis.  What's more, this post was originally meant to be a review for Arkham City, with just a few lines of introduction to Batman, and look here if I haven't gone and splurged words all over your screen!  So, without further ado, on to the encore...