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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7512
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged | 1
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cannot tell you how much i agree with your points here, JB. i'm so tired of batman being "crazy"-- he isn't! he lives in a world where people put on colorful costumes and fight evil to the best of their abilities. isn't that exactly what he does? and the joker is not insane either. evil, yes-- profoundly so. but crazy? no, he knows what he is doing and he knows the difference between right and wrong. he simply chooses to do the wrong thing.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132611
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 11:26am | IP Logged | 2
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Much of the psychobabble that has beset our society in recent decades arises from our desperate need to make EXCUSES. No one, it seems, it to be held responsible for their actions. (If the origin of Spider-Man was written today, we would not be told that "With great power must come great responsibility". We would be told that great power is a terrible burden and therefore excuses anything the bearer feels s/he must do to get thru the day.)"Insanity" -- as noted, a legal term, not a medical one -- is the excuse for so much evil in the world. I prefer, in many cases, the little speech offered by Kirk Douglas' character in THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER. (Roughly, from memory) "People always want to excuse evil as madness. Napoleon was mad. Hitler was mad. But they're wrong. Evil exists. Evil IS."
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12548
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 11:47am | IP Logged | 3
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The famous old M'Naghten Rule considered "insanity" to be the inability to distinguish right from wrong. Yup -- sounds JUST like Batman!
I never cared for the Robin character, but all those issues from the 40s through 60s, when they were the Dynamic Duo, at least pretty much guaranteed that Batman couldn't go off the rails.
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Jesus Garcia
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 2414
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | 4
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Living up to an oath might be one of the symptoms of what makes the classic Batman a less than attractive character to movie makers and audiences.
The modern perception seems to be that "boy scout" characters are dull and predictable. After all, we know how The Batman will act in most situations and the lines he won't cross. The number of cinematic staging permutations are more restricted with The Batman than with a character like The Joker who will do anything at all and is continously operating outside of the box. Plus, The Batman is "serious" and The Joker is "funny".
So, if the viewing audience wants to be surprised by what goes on in a scene, The Joker will provide more bang for the buck than The Batman.
Following this logic, take away the predictability of the character -- or knock down some of his most cherished rules -- and a new, perhaps more exciting character arises.
Take The Dark Knight Book. Think of what we knew about The Batman's deportment prior to the advent of this book. What held me fascinated in the series was that I was longer sure about which self-imposed rules The Batman would follow and which he would cross-off right there and then for me to see.
In other words, TDK provided the comfort of familarity with the thrill of surprise -- we got to have our cake and eat it. Unfortunately, later spins on The Batman used TDK as a template, missing the point that a joke is funniest the first time it's told, and repetitions dull the joke to the point of making it a joke of a joke.
Personally, I prefer to think of Bruce as his father's son. Thomas Wayne was a physician, a healer, and it's not a stretch to imagine that Bruce would have inherited -- or been conditionned by seeing his father in practice -- as sense of empathy for the suffering of others.
In my book, what drives Bruce is his absolute refusal to allow his fellow Gothamites to experience the suffering he endured as a child, as a result of criminal activity. His parents are dead and in a better place, presumably not around to check on his activities. He is answerable only to himself, which works because he is basically a very ethical human being, actively nursing his wounds by preventing others from suffering as he did.
And The Batman stuff -- the costume, the cave, and the paraphernalia, as visually stimulating as it is -- is merely instrumental for me. When I see an image of The Batman, I always see a man wearing a disguise and using equipment. Otherwise, I'd be like the Joker who thinks the batmask is the real face. I don't get some Batman fans that appear to approach the character in the hopes of whetting their fetishistic proclivities: the power of the secret identity, the black leather, the secret lair, the gadgets, the working outside the law.
As an aside, I am currently reading the original Doc Savage run -- the first 181 novels -- and am surprised by how much the later depictions of Doc flies in the face of his earlier definitions. It's as if the writers/editors were responding to dwindling fan suspension of disbelief that Doc could be a Superman in mind and body, and felt impelled to demean his abilities intellectual and physical. Perhaps the same cycle is now upon The Batman.
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Leigh DJ Hunt
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 February 2008
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1570
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | 5
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"Insanity" is the same. How COOL would be be to have that kind of mania at your command (skip the part about not being able to turn it off)? How COOL would it be to be able to rant and rage and have no responsibilities? Well, 24/7, not very! ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------
Brilliantly put. Any with any sort of mental disorder would love to not be that way. Thinking insanity makes you cool is pretty bewildering to me.
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Bill Catellier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 September 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 3225
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | 6
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I've never thought of (or wanted) Batman as insane. As mentioned above, I see him as driven, focused, determined. The world's greatest detective, a premiere athlete, who protects Gotham. Insane? No.
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Mason Meomartini
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 June 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 174
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | 7
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Another ridiculous part of this is that Batman doesn't do anything other superheroes don't do. If he's insane for wearing a costume and going after villains with so much determination, then the whole Justice League is insane. But because Batman has the aura of being "dark" while the rest of DC's heroes are brightly colored, it's easy to associate insane with dark.
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John Harrison
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 July 2007
Posts: 1444
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | 8
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Batman the craziest I have ever seen Batman in a comic and the closest I ever want him to be is how he was handled in A Death in the Family.
He wants to kill the Joker but he doesn't. He has been pushed to his breaking point but still doesn't cross that line.
I stopped reading Batman after Tim Drake became Robin 3 so I have little interest in what became of him later on. By the time you add in a few more Robins and his son and his Batman Inc and him shooting Darkseid with a gun and and on and on it goes.
Batman and Wolverine both have become so unrecognizable they are oddly interchangeable to me.
They both appear in multiple titles, in teams, solo, with partners, without partners and have underwent massive character changes to what I once knew them to be.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17677
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| Posted: 07 November 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | 9
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Batman's not crazy, but I'm crazy about Batman.
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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 3856
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| Posted: 08 November 2012 at 2:02am | IP Logged | 10
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Well said, Wallace!
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 08 November 2012 at 5:40am | IP Logged | 11
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Paul Dini hit it straight on the head during his script for Arkham Asylum, the first of the Arkham series of Batman video games. During one of a set of Arkham interview tapes that you can collect, a doctor presses the Riddler and he goes on and on about how Batman "is just like us" and crazy to do the things he does because, and this is the kicker... "nobody is that selfless!"
I'm not sure why Batman gets this wrap more than Spider-Man. Is it because Spider-Man is ostensibly up-beat? It's amusing how simple-minded the whole thing is, "Oooh, Batman wears dark cloths and is grim and has a clown arch-villain so he must be CRAZY!"
I like most of Alan Moore's work, but his comments about Batman are absurd. He points out that people don't react to child-hood trauma like witnessing their parents being killed by turning into a bat-themed vigilante. No shit! People don't react to lethal doses of radiation and get fooled by pair of glasses as a disguise either. It's so trite and agenda driven, isn't it? These fans and creators get the conventions, they just can't fully accept them. Fess up.
Edited by Robert White on 08 November 2012 at 5:48am
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Joel Tesch
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 May 2006
Posts: 2823
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| Posted: 08 November 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | 12
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I'm not sure why Batman gets this wrap more than Spider-Man. Is it because Spider-Man is ostensibly up-beat? I think it's because Spider-Man (and most other superheroes) have super powers. The fact that Batman does the exact same thing, but with no super powers at all means "he must be crazy!"
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