T w e n t y S i d e d

Last week I wrote about Batman’s potential for variety. Variety thrives best when anchored to a strong core, and Batman has a strong core. You have the suit, the logo, the batcave, the batmobile, Alfred, and the rogue’s gallery. Add to that the various ephemera: sometimes there’s Robin, sometimes not, sometimes the gadgetry is emphasized, sometimes not, sometimes Batman is more of a conventional superhero and sometimes it’s something more like a detective story.

That’s the practical core of Batman, but there’s also a moral core. And it’s not the no-killing rule, if that’s the thing you just thought of. In case you haven’t already read it, Shamus wrote some good stuff on that. To me the moral core of Batman is the acknowledgment that Batman is a vigilante. Many or even most superheroes are vigilantes in practice, but their narratives rarely acknowledge that. In Batman, or at least Batman at its best, it’s written into the story somehow, even if it’s only in the background.

Every American probably has their own thing about this country that especially bugs them. In fact, I have several. But our collective infatuation with vigilante fantasies is at or near the top of my list. I can personally tell you that my heart sank a bit when I learned they were rebooting the Death Wish franchise. And yet I’m a big Batman fan. So what gives? Part of it is that Death Wish protagonist Paul Kersey doesn’t have a grappling hook, or even a cape. But the bigger part is that Batman at its best handles the vigilante subject in the right way.

To cite an example, I’ll tell you about my personal favorite Batman work, out of all the comics and movies and shows and games. My personal favorite Batman work is the 2008 Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan/Heath Ledger one: The Dark Knight.

Are you disappointed to read that? I’m a bit disappointed to write it. When I want back through all my various Batman stuff, I was hoping that I could claim that some obscure comic or episode of the animated series or something was my favorite. Instead, I had to pick the Batman thing that’s probably attained more mainstream success and critical acclaim than any other.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Doing Batman Right 2: The Core”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

It’s accidental Batman week here at Twenty Sided. I was planning to post this last week, but had to delay, so here it is. In this series I’ll be writing my opinions about the general Batman zeitgeist, where I think it’s gone right, and where I think it’s gone wrong.

I decided at a very young age that Batman was my favorite superhero, and I’ve stuck to that decision since then.

I was very much into Batman as a kid. Once, when we went to drop my Dad off for a flight, I wore my Batman costume to the airport. It wasn’t Halloween or anything. I just wanted to wear my Batman costume.I regretted that decision once we got inside. I didn’t like attention, and I didn’t anticipate how much attention I would draw by wearing a Batman costume to the airport. I even liked things that were Batman-adjacent. Somehow I learned that Batman had been partially inspired by Zorro, so I became a Zorro fan too.

Looking back, I’m not quite sure what it was that enchanted me so much about the character – what Batman had for a young me that other superheroes didn’t. I suspect I was attracted to the versatility of the character. On the one hand, I knew the character could be, and often was, dark. On the other, I watched the Adam West show religiously. Neither dark Batman nor Adam West Batman seemed either more or less Batman than the other. Which meant that if I wanted to pretend to be Batman, which I often did, there was plenty of freedom of tone in that fantasy, which was a great relief to me during the confusions of preadolescence.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Doing Batman Right”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.