New 52 Pickup: Beware the Bat

This is supposed to be a superhero “universe,” right?

The great legacy of Batman on the superhero genre is pretty difficult to overstate.

He’s granted the world one of the first radically popular superhero television series, a movie that planted the seed of the modern cinematic superhero boom twice, and is overall one of the most globally recognized icons within the history of fiction.

With that much recognition to his name, it sounds like the rest of the DC Universe is just holding him back, so why not just drop those titles entirely in favor of nothing but Batman books? That wouldn’t creatively stagnate and stifle your line with a character that refuses to leave public conscious while chopping down the diversity of tones, characters, and experiences to a single obsessive viewpoint trained to focus on the worst that the world has to offer, right?

It’s no secret that Batman titles have regularly been DC highest selling books in recent history. This is ironic considering that, tonally, Batman is also the most at odds with the philosophical undertones of the DC mythology.

The grounded nature of Batman making him more similar to the Marvel mantra of heroes you relate to as opposed to the DC style of heroes that you aspire to be has been duly noted by numerous observers and undoubtedly a substantial factor in the wide that has garnered the character such a massive following over the 79 years after his introduction in an anthology series that utilized him as a minor feature, not a star.

In the aftermath of the character’s booming critical and financial success within the zeitgeist of pop culture at a time in which the comic book medium is quite frankly experiencing the opposite, it would seem like a no-brainer to twist the laws of the universe and its less financially successful entries around the single higher selling property at face value. Their ultimate decision to do so serves as an excellent lesson in why this sort of decision making shouldn’t be handled with surface level thought processing.

Marketers have a tendency to hone in on popularity with the belief that what makes one thing work can improve the reception of another.

Rarely until the cruelty of hindsight settles in do they realize that not only is that untrue but should have even been evident when actually saying aloud, “we need to take all of the energetic and vibrant optimism and wonder of science fiction and fantasy in our setting and make it closer in tone and content to the mythology of the dark, brooding, criminal maiming, psychopath whose obsessions prevent him from seeing the bigger picture that others have to regularly deal with and whose only happy endings seem to be routinely pulled out from under him and undone by some future tragedy.”

Let’s hold off on the disservice this deals to the rest of the brand and focus on why this damages the brand of DCs precious cash cow. What makes Batman work is the contrast between him and the other heroes.

In a world of Gods and Superhuman Champions, Batman represents the cynical and fragile human element of his world.

His pessimism emulates a world wearied view similar that of everyday people, exacerbated by handling the dark nature of humanity every day. His darkness exists as a grounding offset to the larger than life reality of the rest of the world, providing the larger world with a relatable infrastructure while the other properties shine a light on his world that helps him continue forward. In removing that light, the entire purpose of Batman in the greater narrative of the DC Universe becomes a redundancy.

What makes Batman interesting in a world full of Batman-esque individuals each with unique superpowers? At best, he becomes a mildly benevolent but nevertheless dangerously unstable version of the very thing that he hunts, with little purpose. The fight for a better tomorrow becomes meaningless if beings infinitely more powerful than him are incapable of completing his mission on a grander scope.

In short, what makes him such a stand out figure of the setting becomes far less endearing when such characteristics are spread amongst the other major players; snuffing out the uniqueness of an individual by forcing the collective onto a bandwagon that it doesn’t belong to has been the primary weapon of marketing’s war on creativity for ages.

However while the consequences of this unfortunate poor balance of heft and levity can have a bad impact on the popular franchise in question, this pales in comparison to the negative effect of the other franchises, which have become even more alien than they were initially.

There will always be a way to portray high concept sci-fi/fantasy in a way more palatable to the mainstream but it will always be substantially niche by virtue of its appeals. No matter how dark or twisted you make a superhero narrative, there is no way to disguise the fact that great deals of these narratives are firmly rooted in the scientifically implausible.

How far one is willing to suspend disbelief is a personal choice but if you can’t buy into alien super beings, demigods, dimensional anomalies and sentient cybernetic organisms, how was making them all perpetually unhappy going to sway anybody’s position?

In their pitiful attempt to humanize these larger than life figures, DC has sucked all of the life, humor, energy, and excitement out of something that should have been awe-inspiring by contrast to the mundane. Instead, they’ve made it as boring as the mundane world that they believe constitutes the reality that we live in.

Gone are the days of experimenting with abilities in everyday life in order to learn about one’s newfound status. No longer does a hero perform small favors for a loved one just as a simple gesture. These characters aren’t even allowed to joke about their circumstances out of some fear of seeming silly and unrelatable, even though the competition that they’re gunning for has these moments as the highlights of their respected franchises.

Peter Parker web-swinging like a mad man across the city to get to class before the bell rings, the Fantastic Four bickering about housework and job responsibilities before assembling to save New York from a cosmic threat like taking out the trash, the X-Men having a campus wide power infused baseball game, and the list goes on.

Good superhero comic books are about infusing the exaggerated with humanity, not rejecting it unless absolutely necessary to use. It’s why the death of Jonathan Kent in Dick Donner’s “Superman” was an emotionally heartfelt tear jerker as opposed to the embarrassing lapse in logic that caused it in Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel.” Clark may have the power of a god but he’s still bound to reality by the people that he loves and they are subject to human fragility. His empathy and sympathy are what makes him human, not his contrived daddy issues.

Barry Allen strives to be a living physical miracle to bring hope and comfort to those around him out of the kindness of his heart, informing his career choice as a pursuer of law enforcement and justice. Diana Prince desires to bridge the gap between the genders in contrast to the politics and xenophobia that led Themyscira to isolate itself from “The World of Man” because she sees value in unity. Oliver Queen flamboyantly poured his resources into social projects out of a desire to help the downtrodden in stark contrast to the stereotype of his demographic.

Jaime Reyes became such a major upstart because he was a groundbreaking concept of a teenage hero who didn’t have to shamefully hide his good deeds from his family; they loved him and respected his decision with pride.

All of these characters are light-years different from the cynical Bruce Wayne, whose obsession with personally controlling the criminal element to avoid a repeat of the trauma that damaged him for life. What sense does it make to emulate that style without context? It barely even makes sense in the context of what inspired it.

One of the single best Batman moments of the DC Line up almost immediately preceding the New 52 launch was an image of Bruce instituting a family movie night with Alfred and all 3 of his Robins watching "The Mark of Zorro" on a living room couch.

This cynicism has poisoned the well of characterizations but the plotting becomes an even greater victim.

Characters can grow, be revamped, undergo personality changes and all through the framing of narrative character development. When done right, it can rescue stories that have started completely on the wrong foot, leaving a faint glimmer of hope that things can meet their potential with time. Hope in general however is sadly what has been missing from DC.

In making everybody cynical and distrusting, DC has built a world of pessimists and hypocrites, unmoved by the extraordinary events surrounding them, protected by a group of unstable trigger-happy paranoids consistently ready to shoot first before asking questions. Whatever future they seem to be protecting seems to be put equally at risk by their own actions, which allows the pervasive question to resonate of “What is the point of all this?”

“DC Rebirth” has been a massive step in the right direction towards course correcting this brand’s lack of personality beyond grim unpleasantness and hopefully the strong Comic-Con showings for Wonder Woman and Justice League continue this trend for years to come.

All it took was a couple of hundred million dollars lost to get us there.