POP CULTURE
What Makes Batman, Batman?
Spoilers: It’s not his fancy Bat-suit, or his entire armory of gadgets…
What most of the novice think is that Batman is nothing but the DC counterpart of Iron Man. And the logic they put forward isn’t entirely wrong: both are billionaires who develop tech in order to fight evil. But this is just the superficial part of it, this is the image Joss Whedon’s Justice League tried to portray.
This is where the similarities end, as any comic book reader will tell you. Beyond this, is an entirely different person who dawns the mantle of the Bat.
The Backstory
We have all been over this countless of times, probably more than we needed to, but hey, let’s just do it one more time…
Born in the house of Wayne, one of the most prominent families of Gotham, Bruce is the only child of Thomas and Martha. One fateful night, while the family is returning from a movie, the couple gets shot in a dark alley by a burglar. Leaving a young Bruce, orphaned.
Bruce resolves over the death of his parents, to dedicate his life to fighting crime, so that no child ever has to suffer the misfortune that ripped all joy from his life. Over the years, Bruce goes across the world, learning from master assassins, detectives and healers, knowledge that he would later bring back to Gotham as his aid in crime-fighting.
The Weapon
Some people believe that the Batman is just a guy in a Bat suit with all the fancy gadgets and a bit of fitness. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong! There was a time when Batman had travelled through different eras, and he didn’t have any of his gadgets, and yet he fought. He led tribes, fought sea monsters, solved mysteries, all with one and one thing alone: his mind.
Remember I mentioned that he spent years training under the best assassins, monks, warriors? In all those years, Bruce trained his body and mind, pushing himself to limits no other human has. Batman doesn’t just use a weapon; he is the weapon.
The Gotham
If you had noticed whatever I’d described till now, makes him only a highly skilled fighter. Even an assassin like Deathstroke will fit the description just fine. So, when a skilled fighter returns to Gotham, what makes him the Bat? The answer to that is incredibly simple, yet perplexing: Gotham!
Gotham is not just any metropolitan city. It has it’s own soul. One that feeds off of the horrors, the tragedies it deals upon it’s people. Not to forget that Bruce himself had suffered the tragedy of losing his parents at such a young age. A tragedy that set him on his course.
Let’s take any other superhero for a moment. Superman, for instance, fights criminals who are simple, easy to understand. Brainiac wants to destroy the Earth, Luthor wants to kill Superman, Doomsday is a mindless destruction machine, Mongul is an intergalactic conqueror, you get the idea. Similar thing can be seen for heroes like The Flash, Green Lantern or even Wonder Woman. In contrast, Batman’s regular villains include cold blooded murderers and psychopaths like Zsasz, Two-Face, and the worst of all, The Joker. When you have an exposure to villains like these, it doesn’t leave you with much to smile about.
Scott Snyder’s Batman: The Black Mirror is a critical analysis of this idea, where we see Dick Grayson under the cowl, keeping Gotham safe in Bruce’s absence. By the end of the story we see how his role as Batman is starting to take a toll on him.
Comparing Gotham to vultures the book says “…some places just have a hunger about them, son. And you either feed them what they want, or you stay far, far away.”
Bonus Lore
Major Spoilers if you haven’t read Dark Night, Dark City and/or Dark Nights: Metal series and plan to do so in the future, then skip this section.
First mentioned in the storyline Dark Night, Dark City, and later brought up in the Metal, it is revealed to us that the place Gotham is indeed a cursed land. Centuries ago, their was a group of people who tried to summon and control Barbathos: the bat daemon, by sacrificing an innocent girl: a human bat. But, one of the members chickens out in the final moment, interrupting the sacrifice. Events take such a turn that the group deserts the place, terrorized by the daemon’s arrival. On their way out, they bolt the basement, locking the girl inside.
In the present day, when Riddler brings Batman to the basement in hopes of enslaving the daemon, who still remains in Gotham, waiting for the promised sacrifice. Barbathos then reveals how he manipulated the Riddler, into bringing Batman to the basement, revealing how he had taken roots in the land, that is Gotham.
“[I am] the city that modeled you, that shaped you, whose darkness and desolation is in your soul.” — Barbathos
The Pain
Batman is, a symbol of rage. Rage inflicted upon criminals by a man traumatized by his own loss. The pain, that never healed, the Bruce never allows to heal, reigns upon his heart. So broken by the loss of his parents, is Bruce, that he never truly lets anyone come close to him. His fear of losing them too, keeps him from living his life.
“When I was a kid, I idolized him. Hell! I wanted to be him. But the older I got, the more I realized that I didn’t know him at all. How could I? Bruce Wayne is as much a mask as Batman. And I think the only thing behind those masks is pain. A pain he refuses to share with anyone.” — Nightwing
The Anchor
Bruce is a wounded child lashing out at the city for the injustice he suffered. While he did lose his family that terrible night, but he never has been alone. The family that he made along the way: Alfred, Dick, Jason, Tim, and the others. For a man who lost all his hopes, all his happiness, who was pushed to believe that their is nothing else to live for; it was this family of his that helped him. Alfred, his guiding conscience, his Robins, a beacon of hope…
“…To not be scared. To remind him that there are always good things, and good people. To remind him that he needed to trust people. And… believe the best in them.”
The thing is, you can never pinpoint to something and say Batman is Batman because of this, or because of that. Like any great character, he is an amalgam of all his joys, all his trauma, his loss, and his hopes. Batman is, afterall, a man who took his pain, his suffering and gave it a greater meaning, which in turn gave him a purpose. He is a creature of the night, he dwells in the darkness, to guide those like him, who may lose their way, into the light.
