DC’s Heroes: Batman
This year, DC celebrates 80 years of the caped crusader's existence from his first appearance in comic strips to his transcendence into modern pop-culture.
He’s considered as one of the greatest comic book superheroes and in my opinion, a hero with the best rogues gallery (the Joker, Bane, Ra’s al Ghul, Two-Face, Scarecrow, Penguin, Ridler, Poison Ivy, etc).
There’s just so much to talk about Gotham’s hero, when it comes to his amazing ninja-fighting and detective skills, etc, etc. In short, he’s Batman.
Here, I’ll focus on things that I found intriguing about the caped-crusader which are the three hero archetypes with a couple of examples of other heroes and names from classical literature.
But first, a brief history of the creation of the Batman.
The Creation of the Character
Back in 1939, with the success of Superman in Action Comics, the editors at National Comics Publication (which is known as DC Comics) were prompted to request for more superheroes. Bob Kane responded to this with the creation of “the Bat-Man”.
As part of the costume, the bat-wing like cape was suggested by Bob Kane and interestingly, the inspiration behind this was Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of an ornithopter flying device.
Bob Kane’s collaborator, Bill Finger, devised the name Bruce Wayne, for the character’s secret identity.
Bill Finger later said that his suggestions for the character were influenced by Lee Folk’s The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic-strip character that Kane was also familiar with.
As an aristocratic hero with a double identity, Batman has predecessors in Zorro (created by Jonathan McCulley in 1919), who, like Batman, performed his heroic deeds in secret, averted suspicion by playing aloof in public and marked his work with a signature symbol.
Now with that mention about the character’s introduction into the comic book universe, let’s look into the heroic archetypes, starting with this one….
This is the type of hero who is known for their strengths and abilities to do great deeds.
A superhero like Superman is an extension of the classic heroes such as Hercules and Samson, who were among the inspirations behind the creation of the Man of Steel, according to the creator Jerry Schuster.
The key feature of the classical hero is that they are flawed and sometimes foolish.
For example, Samson is overly-trusting to tell Delilah of the source of his strength which in the end, leads to his demise.
Batman is no exception from this. He isn’t perfect, but his flaws as shown in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, are aligned to another type of hero…….
Some superheroes have tragic backstories.
In the case of Batman, young Bruce Wayne witnesses the cold-blooded death of his parents at Crime Alley.
Other examples heroes known for their tragic backstories are Spiderman/Peter Parker who loses his uncle Ben after being shot and Superman, whose home planet, Krypton is destroyed, together with his parents Jor-El and Lara.
Even though Batman has faced other devastating events in his life such as the death of Jason Todd, the first Robin in the Death in the Family or the death of Rachel Dowes in the Dark Knight movie, to mention a few, this doesn’t single-handedly make him a tragic hero.
According to philosopher Aristotle in defining what makes a character tragic:
“It should, moreover imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation.”
The essence of what makes a character tragic is that it makes us feel pity for them and fear for ourselves.
To understand how this works, we need to first eliminate the things that make one, not fit to be a tragic hero:
i. If we see a perfect man fail, it merely shocks us and therefore, this isn’t a tragedy
ii. If we see an evil man succeed, nothing is more alien to the spirit of tragedy
iii. If we watch an evil man fall, we will feel morally satisfied but not pity or fear
The key thing here is that pity is as a result of misfortune on someone that wasn’t meant to be and fear is by the misfortune of a man like us.
A tragic hero isn’t perfect, otherwise, we couldn’t relate to that hero but the hero should be better than most men, i.e. he should be more capable and more moral.
The tragedy only happens because of their “error of frailty”, i.e. actions that they thought were morally correct, as opposed to vices, and the punishment, as a result, must be worse than the crime.
This can be clearly seen in the Dark Knight, where, Batman’s refusal to kill the Joker, his fatal flaw, results to the death of Rachel, the half-scarred-faced Harvey Dent (and later his death) and the death of the persona of Batman.
In the Dark Knight Rises, after the tragic events of the Dark Knight, we see Bruce Wayne as a broken man. Throughout the movie, there’s a theme of rising up, from a hermit to the hero that Gotham needed.
This reminds me of what Alfred Pennyworth tells Bruce in Batman Begins:
Then there’s this other archetype….
To get this clear, this isn’t to be confused with a hero in a romance story.
The term romantic, in this context, is derived from romanticism, a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that emphasized subjective emotional qualities.
The romantic hero is a rebel who is against the systems of society, its systems of justice and its hypocrisy. Such a character is a reflection of the disintegration and violence in society.
They are introspective, melancholic and wanderers. They have intense psychological struggles, centers of intense mental activity and they are visionaries.
From that, you can see a vivid outline of Batman’s character.
In Batman Begins, Bruce is shown by Rachel Dowes, the other side of Gotham City, an impoverished side that doesn’t incorporate his ideas of a great city.
He isn’t satisfied with the systems of justice, and he wanders away from the world to endure the intense training montage to become Batman, later in the movie.
From the introspective point of view, Batman has diagnosed Gotham as lacking and he uses his skills, intellect and resources to build his gear to fight crime.
Another interesting thing about romantic heroes is that their ability to recognize the damage of their actions, particularly those that involve the pursuit of revenge.
Bruce Wayne was about to kill Joe Chill, the man who killed his parents until someone else did that. Dante from the Count of Monte Cristo seeks revenge for the injustice that was done to him.
Later these two characters recognize this; Dante regrets his actions of revenge and redeems himself by helping others and Bruce Wayne regrets nearly killing Joe Chill. Their redemption isn’t just recognizing the potential for good between themselves and the rest of society but also the potential for evil that they are capable of as well. They examine themselves first.
This is what sets Batman apart from Ra’s al Ghul, who believes that Gotham is so corrupt, that it doesn’t need salvation from its damnation, without analyzing himself, and with that, he can act in an immoral manner, by using the fear gas to terrorize the people of Gotham.
Batman believes that there’s good in Gotham. Despite the evil that’s in that city, he has people of goodwill he can trust: Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox, Rachel, Alfred Pennyworth, the Bat Family, among others.
Batman is my favorite superhero. He isn’t perfect, but he’s willing to do all he can to getting rid of the evil that took his parents lives by ensuring justice is served, which is his sole duty to Gotham and he believes that even the worst of criminals (I mean the Joker for example) can be rehabilitated to be better versions of themselves.
And a quote from the graphic novel Batman: The Long Halloween, my favorite comic book, by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale:
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