"Confined in the dark, narrow cage of our own making which we take for the whole universe, very few of us can even begin to imagine another dimension of reality."

Sogyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying 41

After Nietzsche dreamed of the Superman, the Postmodern age began to dream of another kind of superman—the superhero. The hero of the novel broadened his net to include other forms of literature and artistic expression and as the modern shifted into the postmodern,¹ many of America’s heroes became larger than life in an effort to create men and women who could combat the new challenges of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, a new genre of hero emerged—the comic book superhero. There were several among them who became icons of heroism and, as years passed, many different authors created works for them to inhabit. Because of this, these heroes changed as society changed and were able to achieve a longevity that other characters did not because they captured the imagination of authors and readers alike. Batman is one such hero. He has not only stood the test of time, but his character has also branched out to many other genres. Tales of the hero Batman can be found in old radio show scripts, novels, numerous comic books, graphic novels, television series (both animated and live action), and movies. Batman represents the expression of the general culture of American society (as that society has changed over time) and has given his readers a way to deal with the unique psychological challenges faced by the postmodern mind. We will begin this chapter with a general description of Batman, then move to his changes through history and how those changes reflect extant culture, and then look specifically at two Batman titles (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: The Killing Joke) to show how these titles are communicative because of their embedded culture, dialogic and dialectic elements, and their use of paradigmatic human events.

The tradition of masked heroes is not a new one. We have only to look back to characters such as the Scarlet Pimpernel. The pulps of the 1800s and early 1900s were full of people who battled villains while in disguise. The idea of a human bat is not new, either. In 1910, the London tabloid Jack’s Paper: The New Adventure Story Weekly ran a feature entitled, "The Human Bat" (Vaz 23). There were also numerous other stories of men being turned into bats, both in pulps and later in movies. The popularity of pulps began waning in the early nineteen hundreds and by the end of the 1930s, were giving way to comics.

The post Depression years of the 1930s were a period when famous criminals enjoyed an almost folk-hero status as men who had made something of themselves during hard times. As the national mood began to change and the law finally began to crack down on crime, the heroes became those who fought crime rather than those who committed it. During this shift, comic book crime fighters such as Dick Tracy became prevalent. They were incorruptible men who were not bogged down by the usual police red-tape and who would use any means necessary to beat the bad guys. A whole slew of pulp heroes were born: Dock Savage, the Shadow, the Black Bat, and the Spider. Jim Steranko, author of History of Comics, comments on the nature of these stories when he says, "the stories were all plot. Characterization was almost nonexistent. It would have slowed down the juggernaut velocity of the script. . . . Dialogue was always to the point. Every single word kept the story moving" (qtd. in Vaz 21). This trend would have its effect on early comics, but would loosen its grip later as character issues became more important.

In 1938, the first Action Comics #1 appeared in a 200,000 copy print run, featuring Superman on the cover and selling for around ten cents per issue (Vaz 25). It sold out almost immediately, which is an amazing response considering the price and the medium. Soon after, Detective Comics (hereafter referred to as DC) editor Vincent Sullivan asked a young artist, Bob Kane, to come up with a super hero complement to Superman. Kane rose to the challenge and created the character Batman.

Kane was born Robert Kahn in 1916, the son of an engraver for the New York Daily News (Daniels 1). His father had brought home the color comics and encouraged his son’s desire to become a cartoonist. Kane worked briefly on Betty Boop cartoons, then on ten-cent magazines such as Peter Pup and Ginger. In 1938, Kane worked for Adventure Comics and in 1939, created Clip Carson for Action Comics (1). In his creation of Batman, Kane had been inspired by the 1920 film The Mark of Zorro and the 1930 film The Bat Whispers. Writer Bill Finger, who was Kane’s collaborator, had also been inspired by Dumas’ D’Artagnan and Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. With these influences, as well as the comic and pulp tradition, Bob Kane developed Batman, designing his cape after drawings from DaVinci’s ornithopter and modeling his alter ego partially after that of the Shadow and Zorro.

Through the years, Batman has been referred to as the "Caped or Cowled Crusader," the "Gotham Goliath," "The Masked Manhunter," the "Darknight Detective," and most recently the "Dark Knight." Batman’s alter-ego is Bruce Wayne, a multimillionaire industrialist and philanthropist who lives in Gotham City. He is roughly 6’2," weighs 210 pounds, has black hair and blue eyes ("Secret Files"). Although he has always been portrayed as very attractive to the female populous, he has remained single. He is an anomalous superhero in the fact that he has no super-human powers, but relies only on his skill, intellect, and his arsenal of "toys."

The character of Batman was first introduced in Detective Comics issue #27 in May 1939.¹ Issue #27 was entitled, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate." The first story about the origin of Batman was told in Detective Comics #33, in November 1939, and in 1940, Batman was given his own title. In Batman #47, the origin was given more detail, and although some facts have been modified through the years, it has remained one of the most stable super hero origins. (Jourdain)

Batman’s origin as a superhero stems from his parents’ shooting death in Gotham’s "Crime Alley," when Bruce was a small child. Unlike the 1989 Batman movie, where Bruce’s parent’s were killed by the Joker, in the comic they were killed by a thug named Jo Chill² who had been sent by gangster Lex Moxon (who had been convicted and jailed by Thomas Wayne’s testimony in court). Bruce was then left under the care of his Uncle Philip (" Batman Statistics"). He traveled to Europe at age fourteen and spent time at Cambridge,

the Sorbonne in Paris, the Berlin School of Science, and even spent some time learning the ways of the less savory side of life on the streets. When he was twenty, he entered the FBI for an extremely short time but felt that he was not in a position to be effectual at fighting crime. (Williams, "FAQ")

As soon as Bruce came of age, he moved back into Wayne Manor and began preparing for his lifelong obsession. In an interesting twist, it is not revenge against Chill that Wayne seeks, but an attempt to keep anyone else from ever experiencing what happened to him as a child. This resolve not to seek direct vengeance is put to the test when Batman tracks down Chill in Batman #47 (June-July 1948). Batman does not kill him, but Chill’s own cohorts, after finding out that he was the reason for Batman’s crusade against crime, kill him themselves. "Vengeance is a great reason for fighting crime," says Kane: "It would take all the violence, the rage, he felt over his parent’s murder to fight injustice. It motivated him to take his vengeance out on all the criminal element" (qtd. in Vaz 27). However, if Batman’s actions had merely been motivated out of the need to revenge a single, personal act of violence, we might have seen his quest ended here. Yet, because of this powerful combination of guilt and duty, his quest is only occasionally and temporarily thwarted.

Alan Grant, a member of the creative team for Batman: Shadow of the Bat, feels that Batman is one of the most heroic characters ever created because he is a mortal man who, despite horrific life events, has chosen to do something about the state of his society.

He is perhaps the only genuine hero amongst all of them. People say Batman is this dark, vengeance-driven, obsessed character, but that’s not Batman in my eyes. That’s just the fuel which drives Batman. The trauma of his parent’s death is what motivates him and forces him to go on, but what makes him Batman is a decision. He took a decision to be a good guy, which is a decision in life not too many people do take. He is a self-made character. He didn’t get superpowers, he’s not a cyborg, he made a choice to be what he is. He is motivated by the terrible thing that happened to him when he was a kid, but that’s not the thing that defines his character. What defines his character is his decision to do something. (qtd. in Curtin 37)

The choice to fight crime is one which shapes every aspect of Bruce’s existence. After his parent’s death, Wayne spends his entire life becoming mentally and physically superior in order to wage a war against the criminal element of Gotham. In the newer continuum of the series, Batman fights crime with an arsenal of odd weapons (such as the razor sharp "Batarangs") but loathes the use of guns. To the surprise of many current readers, this was not always the case. When Batman was first introduced, he wore a holster and gun beneath his cape. This characterization was more in keeping with the detective part of his persona, but editors at DC decided it might be better that he not carry or use one because of the effect it might have on young readers (as well as the fact that it fit more logically with his origin, since his parents were gunned down in cold blood). That is not to say that Batman always shied away from using lethal force. But, in most story lines, Batman is more concerned with capturing the criminal element and letting the law decide each person’s fate.

Batman originally donned his costume to strike fear in the hearts of lawbreakers, an idea which sprung to mind after a bat crashed through his study window. However, Chuck Dixon, a writer of Batman: Detective Comics, has formulated a much more psychological description of Wayne’s motivation in choosing this costume.

The way I differ from most interpretations is that I think that, because he suffered his great trauma as a child, he reacted as a child. Putting on a costume, fighting crime at night in the guise of an animal—that’s part of what makes him so enduring, but it’s such a simple, childish reaction to what happened to him. He responded in that horrible moment and it set the course for his life: I won’t be afraid, I will become scarier than they are. It was the wish of a child. (qtd. in Curtin 38)

Through the years his costume has come to be useful as well as fear-inspiring. His suit has changed through the years to reflects popular culture. For example, Batman’s suit was designed to accommodate the items of his detective trade when the comic first appeared, stayed a dress-up costume with utility belt perks from the fifties to the seventies (when fistcuffs and an occasional sword fight were the most dangerous things Batman faced), and then came to function more like armor as Batman moved toward the serious (and often dangerous) years of the eighties. Batman’s costume is now an armored, technological wonder, which fits with our society’s predilection for state-of-the-art equipment in this "information age." His suit and cape are fire-resistant Nomex and lined with triple-weave Kevlar and his cowl is Kevlar-lined with Starlite nightvision and a radio link to the Batcave. His weapons include "his Batarangs, decel monofilament cord jumplines and grapnels, gas capsules, and rebreather . . . [which are] stored in his utility belt, which is booby-trapped to prevent tampering"("Secret Files"), and the points of his cape are weighted for use as an offensive weapon.

This costume works well against the backdrop of Gotham, a city modeled somewhat after New York City. If Superman’s Metropolis is the shining utopia, then Gotham is the dark dystopia that reflects the "every city" of the postmodern condition. Writer and editor Denny O’Neil says that "all cities are Gotham City, warrens of malice where the entreaties of the lost are an inconvenience, where shrieks of children are ignored, where innocents are slain on a whim" (qtd. in Vaz 72). Although not all cities are as openly bleak as Gotham, there is definitely an element of this that we can all recognize. Author Mark Vaz relates this feeling of helplessness to our desire for protection from these elements and a figure who will take care of these problems for us so we do not have to act. He writes, "Our world is more complex, and often we can only dream for that guardian figure" (72). Not only does this figure protect us, be he also acts so that we do not have to take action ourselves.

Once Batman’s costume and crusade were outlined, it was important for Kane and company to devise his adventures. Batman was born into an America "in the grip of pre-war jitters" (Vaz 9), which would affect much of what would occupy Batman in the years to come: "To survive, the times demanded a righteous sense of US vs. Them. In Batman’s world as well, the demarcation line between good and evil was clearly drawn. [It would not be until the 1970s that] Batman’s inner conflicts, and his tightrope walk between light and dark, [could] be fully developed into the mythos" (11). The times could not support the conflicted nature that Kane had originally designed, nor could it be comfortable with some of Kane’s villains. Social control in the form of an editor demanded that the dark, brooding nature of Batman be lightened up, and thus in April, 1940, Robin appeared on the scene. The Boy Wonder gave younger readers someone with which to identify, made Batman seem less bitter and more "human" to some and gave an opportunity for more dialogue. In 1941, war broke out, and "America could not handle a chaotic Batman functioning as judge, jury, and executioner" (12), so Batman’s code came to prohibit killing. In the winter 1941 issue of Batman, our Caped Crusader reminds Robin during their sword fight with the villain Blackbeard to use only the flat of his sword: "Remember, we never kill with weapons of any kind!"¹ Robin’s cheesy sidekick commentary lightened the mood and made the Dark Knight a substantially "lighter" figure. Kane regretted the change from solitary and sinister, but appreciated the necessity of becoming more "kid friendly." It is during this period in time that it became obvious that comic books in general had become marginalized and then relegated to children’s entertainment rather than being seen as a format for adults. The perception that comics are primarily for children would last until around the mid-eighties.

During the war, Batman served the dual function of helping the war effort (see Illustrations B and C) and providing a much needed escape from the war for his readers. Many super heroes were created during this time period (some in the patriotic vein of Captain America), and may owe much of their success to feelings brought on by that conflict: "Batman could be seen battling the enemy or at least selling bonds on many a comic book cover, but actual stories in which he fought the Axis were comparatively few. His was a hermetically sealed fantasy world" (Daniels 58). Mark Vaz speculates why this was the case: "Despite [Batman’s] brutal origin and the world of menace he inhabited, the Batman of the forties reflected a resolutely optimistic time—it had to be considering the nightmare of Fascist domination if the war was lost" (180). This time period brought a radio show for Batman, as well as a newspaper comic strip, which enjoyed solid popularity despite of (or because of) these tense times. The fifties, however, would bring a worse threat to the world of comics than the war ever could.

The fifties brought a time of general intolerance for nonconformity and difference, and postwar fear helped fuel the fire for McCarthyism. William Gaines, a comic book author whose titles suffered during these times, comments upon this period. "McCarthy didn’t create the times," he says: "the times created McCarthy, and they also created a bad time for comics. It was just the way people were then—they were against everything" (qtd. in Vaz 44). Overarching control mechanisms were kicking in to stifle much feared changes. In McCarthy’s hunt for anything provocative, he began targeting comics. This crackdown was made even worse by the book Seduction of the Innocent, published by Dr. Frederic Wertham. In it he leveled the attack that comics increased deviance and violent behavior in children, contending that children were being "manipulated to perverse ends" (44). Wertham also made a pointed charge against Batman, specifically that he and Robin were gay. He felt that three men (Batman, Robin, and their butler, Alfred) living alone in a beautiful manor where fresh flowers were placed daily in vases was the dream home of homosexuals. Batman writers had purposefully stayed away from romantic or sexual adventures or innuendoes to keep the comic kid friendly, but had inadvertently left themselves open to this attack. The editorial staff at the time attempted to combat this by requiring the addition of more bat-characters (Batwoman and Batgirl) to add a feeling of "family" instead of the isolation of the Dynamic Duo. They also made the authors kill off Alfred in favor of a housekeeper named Aunt Harriet. They even went so far as creating a bat-hound, the perfect bat-family crime fighting dog (see Illustration D). Plot lines became sillier and sillier until Batman once again shifted editorial staff. The comic industry as a whole tried to answer this crackdown by attempting to self-regulate, putting in place the 1954 Comic’s Code Authority, which carried weight until the early 80s (Vaz 51). However, extensive damage had already been done to the industry. By 1955, comic’s Golden Age was over.

In the late 1950s, Batman started exploring science fiction themes, from monster fads, space aliens, and bizarre physical transformations. Mark Vaz explains that "the atomic bomb was simultaneously showing promise as a source of unlimited energy and threatening the planet with total destruction, while the Soviet launching of Sputnik was pointing the way to the stars and increasing cold war fears" (64). The need to express cultural anxiety would explain the preoccupation with such science fiction topics, and this anxiety became embedded within the plotlines of many comics of the time. Miller and Novak, authors of The Fifties, outline a more psychologically complex reason in society for this shift. "[American’s] fears did emerge more indirectly. The fiction of holocaust and deformity was one expression of such fears. The novels and comics that predicted genetic monsters represented a degree of rebellion against officialdom. By fantasizing a future filled with freaks and horrors, Americans rejected the nuclear safety message" (qtd. in Vaz 64). Whether this is the case or whether Americans just needed a fantasy escape, the comic’s focus remained on science fiction and horror until the mid-sixties.

Between 1956-1961, DC brought back many Golden Age comic book heroes, and Batman and Superman ended up joining the Justice League of America (JLA) along with Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, J’Onn J’Onzz, and Wonder Woman. Batman’s own titles, however, were still relying on bizarre plots to boost sales through novelty (Daniels 94-5). By 1964, Batman was just "a hollow man being battered from place to place by whatever gimmick could be concocted" (95). Bob Kane admits that they had talked about killing off Batman altogether, but under the guidance of new editor Julius Schwartz, they were able to find a new, more realistic look for the artwork and to jettison many of the extraneous and silly bat-family members. The revamped Batman was unveiled in Detective Comics #327 (May 1964), and he sported the now-familiar yellow bat emblem on his chest.

In 1966, ABC aired the first episode of the Batman television series. The series was done in the style of camp, which was related to the Pop Art movement of the time. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were employing imagery from comics in their art, and the notion that something "could be amusing because it was corny or ridiculous was essential to Pop and its allied aesthetic, camp" (Daniels 111).¹ The Batman television series lasted 26 months and had a more drastic, meteoric rise-and-fall in popularity than almost any other show at the time. In the beginning, the show ran twice a week and had around thirty million viewers (Vaz 88). After just the first episode, there were over one thousand items which had been licensed for sale. The March 11^th issue of Life magazine details the fervor that the show caused. "There’s no escape. It’s all over the place. Madness! Supermadness! The entertainment world offers it on all sides, and the public gobbles it up. Batman conquers TV. Kids swing Batman capes in the backyard, and Bat products are everywhere" (qtd. in Vaz 88). This issue of Life also boasted the first ever cover for a comic book hero. A Newsweek article was able to capture the irony of the actions of the American viewing populous concerning notions of reality and fantasy.

Many people, it seems, have seen the future—and prefer the past. When the Gemini 8 astronauts were in trouble and the networks interrupted their programming to switch to NASA headquarters, thousands of calls flooded the networks, complaining, in effect, about the cancellation of their fantasy universe. They were watching ABC’s "Batman" and, ironically, CBS’s "Lost in Space." (qtd. in Vaz 90)

The bat-mania spawned by the television show helped launch two feature films as well as its own second season. The comic books were pushed to mirror this style of camp, and for as long as the television show lasted, it increased sales. When people tired of the show, they also seemed to tire of the camp feel altogether, and comic sales dropped off once more.

It was around 1967 that Bob Kane decided to retire from the comic book world. Some say it was because of arguments with the current editor, although Kane contends it was merely time for him to retire (Daniels 113). It would not be until the mid-eighties that an author would come along who would revive the original view of Batman that Kane had not been able to realize in the earlier decades.

In Batman #217 (December 1969-January 1970), new writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adam began changes that would last for the next decade. They sent Robin (who would later become the hero Nightwing) off to college, shut down Wayne Manor, and moved Bruce to a Gotham penthouse. They began to confront more topical and serious issues of the day, such as racism and drug use. They did, however, bring back some of the original tone to the comic that had been lost. "I’m sure we didn’t give it a second’s thought," writes O’Neil; "I just wanted to make it Gothic and spooky. I was being influenced by writers like Lovecraft and Poe . . . " (qtd. in Daniels 138). The team of O’Neil and Adams have been credited with bringing to life one of Batman’s most serious love interests (in the comics), Talia. She is the daughter of one of his arch enemies, Ra’s al Ghul.

The 1970s brought a proliferation of bat-related titles, which allowed other writers and artists to work on similar projects without causing problems in the normal story line continuum. In 1976, DC’s new publisher Jenette Kahn noticed that the fans were growing older and the writers and artists were growing younger (Daniels 145), effectively lessening the creator/reader age disparity. Also, the younger talent was less concerned with job security and the industry than with putting out what they considered to be "art." This shift made it easier for creators to use this medium as their desire-fulfillment both in a creative and real sense, and also made it more probable that the audience would identify with that project.

Comics fared well within this framework until the early 1980s, when comics once again saw an economic slump. They attempted to infuse more life in the Batman story lines by bringing in new characters (most notably, a new Robin) and revamping some of the old villains. It was not until 1986, however, that the comic industry got its shot in the arm. Shock waves hit the comic world when Frank Miller wrote Batman: The Dark Knight returns, bringing out a more grim and gritty character that would set in motion a domino effect for the series and for comics in general (Shutt 61). This comic was a four-issue mini-series that was made in a new packaging called the Prestige format, which included square binding, extra pages, and glossy paper. It was more expensive, but the new readership supported it. Not only was the format amazing, but so was the inside material. The Dark Knight Returns takes place when Batman is in his fifties, and he is reflecting on his life’s work and the impact that it has (and hasn’t) had. The pages are filled with self-doubt and the realization that Gotham is an even darker (metaphorically) place than when he began his crusade against crime. He has difficulty reconciling his duality and feels that the world has given up in the fight against apathy and evil.

Miller had a new agenda for the hero that was more in keeping with Kane’s initial intent. Miller writes, "I felt that superhero comics had been held back by a misperception that they were just for kids. The comic book world had become so utterly pleasant and safe that the idea of somebody dressing up in tights and fighting crime seemed beside the point" (Daniels 149). He also had a much clearer vision of the psychology of Batman.

Batman only makes sense as a response to the world being a basically screwed-up place, where all the wrong people are in charge and justice is not served. . . . You see, Batman’s basic conflict in the story is to decide whether there’s a purpose for this kind of force in the world. In a sense, it’s a classic case of a hero whose function is to make himself obsolete. . . . He essentially harbors a death wish—much like a warrior who goes into battle one last time to find peace. (qtd. in Vaz 176)

Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore gave the series praise for "radically rewriting several of the myths and archetypes that are at the heart of comics tradition itself and placing them in the context of fearful modern events. . . . In Miller’s hands, Batman is bigger than a comics icon: he is a violent symbol of American dissolution and American Idealism" (qtd. in Vaz 176). Miller wanted to keep comics "as preposterous as they are, but also [bring] in a world where the odds weren’t so heavily weighted in the hero’s favor" (151). He says that although the story was dark and gritty, it was never meant to be a "political tract," and many of the big moments in the story were intended to be ironic or self-consciously operatic. Many people may have missed this subtlety, but the audience response was nonetheless enthusiastic. Probably one of the most important trends that this comic set was the idea of consequence and causality for a hero’s actions, notions that were rarely dealt with in superhero comics.

Former author Denny O’Neil became Batman’s editor in 1986 as well, and when DC created Crisis on Infinite Earths (an event that spanned all DC titles and allowed them to make-over old characters while still retaining key elements), O’Neil asked Miller to re-write Batman’s first days as a crime fighter (Daniels 155). Because Miller had just written Batman in his old age, he effectively made bookends for the Dark Knight as he wrote Batman: Year One. Miller recognized Batman as an "American legend," and therefore didn’t change too much of the myth of Batman’s origin. His changes were ones of tone. Gotham was "less of a playground for colorful psychotics than . . . a bleak site colored by corruption: cops, criminals, and even high society are all part of the pattern" (157).

In 1989, another wave shocked the comic and movie industry as the movie Batman emerged as one of the season’s top grossing releases ($251 million gross, US) (Daniels 169). The director, Tim Burton, hired Kane as his consultant to make the closest likeness to Kane’s original vision regarding the character and tone of Batman of any representations to date. Audiences loved this vision, and it started what Newsweek characterized as Batmania, the "summer struggle for the dark soul of a mythic American hero" (qtd. in Vaz 92). Newsweek also nostalgically recalled when the Batman legend "started so simply in the spring of 1939, when comics cost a dime and bad guys only came out at night" (92).

In 1992, Burton made Batman Returns, a film which is "most true to the spirit of pushing its protagonists to the extreme" (Daniels 169). It grossed $163 million in the US, and, although its adult Batfans attended in droves, some found it "too dark and perverse . . . for a movie bound to attract large numbers of children" (169). Neither Burton nor Michael Keaton (starring as Batman) wanted to be part of "lightening up" the series or making it more "cartoon-like," and so both left the franchise.

The next two films, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, followed in 1995 and 1997 respectively, and were directed by Joel Schumacher. These movies relied on flashy special effects and more campy humor for their impact. The first film, Batman Forever, did well in large part because of the portrayal of the Riddler by actor Jim Carrey. However, one of Batman’s most psychologically complex characters, Two-Face (played by Tommy Lee Jones), was given only sideline emphasis. The character of Robin was added (for the same reasons as originally added in the comics) and Batman became more "approachable." This film was met with mixed reviews, mostly from Batman fans and those who missed the complexity and subtext found in the Burton films. The second film brought the addition of Batgirl (played by Alicia Silverstone) and was even more campy than the first. The villains were trivialized¹ and plot elements seemed sewn together. These films traded the dark, brooding aura for a bright, comic look and silly stylings in hopes of capturing what Schumacher referred to as the "living comic" look, but in the end, fell into the same trap as the comic had in the late 50s and 60s.

The success of the first two films suggests that audiences were more engaged by the brooding Burton/Kane conception of Batman and his world. The stunning visuals and artistic vision of Tim Burton which brings these movies to life is reminiscent of older, film noir style. Writer Foster Hirsch describes the elements of film noir which can be applied to the first two Batman films.

Dramas of people in crisis, noir illuminated the night world of the other self that devils us all. . . .In the verve and colloquial tanginess of its dialogue, in its range of provocative themes, in its gallery of taut performances, its studied compositions in light and shadow, its creation of sustained suspense, and its dramatic use of the city . . . film noir seizes and penetrates a universal heart of darkness. (qtd. in Vaz 146-7)

As writer Alan Moore says in his preface to The Dark Knight Returns, "The values of the world we see are no longer defined in the clear, bright, primary colors . . . but in the more subtle and ambiguous tones." The darkness of film noir gives us both a visual and metaphorical way to understand the world of Batman.

This noir influence was picked up in 1992, when Batman: The Animated Series was broadcast on the Fox network. It was "an exceptionally stylish synthesis of the best elements from generations of comics and film" (Daniels 180). It had striking character designs and came to define the look of Batman for the 90s. Fox also began to run this cartoon during prime time to attract an adult audience. And attract it did. The show won multiple Emmys and ran for 85 episodes before it took its first hiatus (181). The style of artwork from The Animated Series then found its way into two new animated television shows, Batman and Robin and The New Batman/Superman Adventures. Currently, the animated world has been exploring the future of Batman after Bruce Wayne in the series Batman Beyond. Although the recent live action movies have come under fire, the animated world is receiving rave reviews from fans of all ages.

There are five regular monthly Batman comics currently being published, including Batman, Detective Comics, Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, and The Batman Adventures (which follows the look of the animated series). Added to this are numerous spin-offs with other Batman characters, several quarterly Bat-titles, and, of course, a plethora of graphic novels. Batman is currently in a multiple issue event series called "No Man’s Land," where Gotham is hit by an earthquake and nearly demolished. The government condemns it and leaves its inhabitants cut off from the outside world. And for a long period of time, Batman is nowhere to be found, so small groups of good citizens have to try and fight the encroaching lawlessness.

Although background history is crucial in understanding the Batman phenomena, we will now look to specific works to show how the Batman texts are communicative because of their embedded culture, dialogic, and dialectic elements, as well as their universal elements. For this endeavor, we will focus on two seminal texts, The Dark Knight Returns, written by Frank Miller in 1986, and The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore in 1988.¹ We will discuss the plot of each text in conjunction with culture and the dialectic and move to the paradigmatic human events of each text as the discussion continues.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Bruce Wayne is in his fifties and has been in "retirement" for ten years. The young think Batman is a mythical figure who never existed and the older ones who remember look to him either hopefully, as a savior who may yet return or negatively, as a savior who has deserted them in their time of need. Only a small handful of people in Gotham are proactive (some on the side of good, others on the side of evil), and the rest seem to blame circumstances beyond their control and wait for the winds of fate to buffet them. The destiny of the lives of the "everyman" and his city has been placed in the hands of the proactive few.

If Gotham is indeed a representation of a paradigmatic "every-city," then its inhabitants are representations of "everyman." Bruce Wayne comments that Gotham is a "city that’s given up, like the whole world seems to have" (3). The city is plagued by crime and, even more frightening to Bruce, its people have given in to the apathy that allows evil to breed unchecked. This feeling is demonstrated clearly in the panels where a taxi-cab driver is given extra money to ignore the fact that someone is being brutalized in the back, and his only concern is whether or not they might be damaging his car (19-20). This type of violence is an expected element of everyday life, and the average citizen is either too weak (physically or otherwise) to fight back or is drained of the ability to fight by pervasive apathy and self-interest. Law enforcement is overburdened and is met with resistance from "criminal’s rights groups" every step of the way. There is also the occasional tale of police corruption to darken the picture further. Common citizens are skeptical about the legal system and about the ability of law enforcement to protect them.

This conception of society and its perception of law is common in American culture. Theorist Steven Connor outlines the place of law and the will of the individual in postmodern society.

. . . the dissolution of the norms shared by communities, or imposed absolutely upon them, [is] replaced on the one hand by the sovereign individual, conceived as the ground of knowledge and rational truth, and on the other the State, conceived abstractly as the mechanism for governing the relations between sovereign individuals and poetically as the sovereign individual write large, the very embodiment of the rational, self-knowing will of the nation or people. (61)

Law attempts to make an "ethically neutral mechanism, supposedly driven by the abstract imperatives of logic and reason rather than particular political interests and purposes" (Connor 62). However, since postmodern people are doubtful about transcendental truth, they often perceive law as arbitrary. As critic Stanley Fish writes,

there are no objective, transhistorical truths or bottom lines which might serve to stabilize the interpretations of the particular historical purposes of groups and individuals . . . all is contingency, rhetoric and historicity. [Also, since] . . . no one will be in a situation that is universal or general (that is, no situation at all), and therefore no one’s perspective (a word that gives the game away) can lay claim to privilege. . . . Because we live in a world bereft of transcendent truths and leak proof logics . . . .[we can only have] temporary, and always revisable, conclusions. (qtd. in Connor 67)

However, laws must be upheld for a society to survive which cannot rely on the idea of inherent goodness of its individual parts. It must then be the goal of law to become not what it cannot possibly be in the postmodern period (see above), but what it can—an internally coherent, logically consistent and uniform system of jurisprudence.

In the world of Batman, Commissioner Gordon has always been not merely another character but the embodiment or symbol of law. It is critical that he be a solid force in a topsy-turvy world where even other law officers have come under suspicion. In The Dark Knight Returns, Commissioner Gordon is loosing the fight against crime and needs the once awe-inspiring figure of Batman to help him in his fight for a better future. The idea that law must be upheld for society to survive is also what makes Batman different from other vigilantes who often prescribe their own justice. Batman, more often than not, defers to law in order to separate himself even more firmly from the chaotic nature of society and the criminal element.

The second embedded element that The Dark Knight illustrates (and Batman lore in general) is the idea of the duality of the postmodern mind. In Batman texts, the splitting of a character’s identity is not simply the idea of playing "dress-up" so that a singular entity can fight or perpetrate crime, but the actual manifestation of dual identities which are separate and sometimes autonomous. Most of the characters in Batman have multiple identities which all assume equal importance to his or her psyche, and, in most cases, this splitting has occurred due to the necessity of the mind to accept two mutually exclusive truths or existences. The external dichotomies cannot be changed, synthesized, or made into any sort of unified opposites, and so this deadlock of dialectic is internalized and creates a split psyche to deal with this problem.

Batman is the most obvious example of this splitting of identity. When his parents were killed, the small helpless boy dealt with the trauma by devoting half of his personality to continuing to exist in society and the other half to becoming the type of man who would, one day, no longer be helpless and scared. Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist playboy who moves with aplomb in the high-society social circles of Gotham while Batman is a vigilante whose only motivation is justice. The schism between the two is irreparable, no matter how many years go by, and while Bruce struggles to be normal, Batman struggles to find a way to erase the past through current actions. Although it may appear that the two identities are mere facets of a single entity, we find that this is not the case.

This sectioning off of identity is common (though often not as severe) in the mind of the postmodern. Because the postmodern mind doubts reality and perceives the world as fragmented and often meaningless, it attempts to combat these notions to allow some type of continued and meaningful existence. The idea of compartmentalization has long been a fact in the psychological realm, but the characters in the world of Batman (and our world as well) all show some form of compartmentalization, which leads to a dualistic perception of reality or, in many cases, the splitting of identity into two unique halves. Compartmentalization is generally defined as a defense mechanism of the mind that allows certain information or ideas to be shut off from the rest of the mind to allow an individual to function. For example, this is the way in which a person can have a tour of a meat packing factory and still be able to order a Big Mac for lunch an hour later. It is the disassociation of one fact from the other. Postmodern existence, with all its irreconcilable dichotomies, requires a person to compartmentalize in their day-to-day lives. Yet, compartmentalization of psyche is most profound in cases where an individual has suffered psychological trauma (has experienced abuse, war, etc.) and the mind has protected itself to allow the organism of the individual to function in day to day existence. In the most severe cases, it can lead to full-blown multiple personality disorders or memory blocking of traumatic events.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Bruce is fighting to stay in retirement because of a promise he made to a former Robin, but the pressure to take action against the social chaos is unbearable. He says of his Batman identity, "He tricks me . . . when the night is long and my will is weak. He struggles, relentlessly, hatefully, to be free" (4). And Bruce is addressed directly in the comic by his Batman persona, who says to him, "You are nothing—a hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me—smoldering, I burn you—burning you, I flare, hot and bright and beautiful—you cannot stop me—not with wine or vows or the weight of age—you cannot stop me but still you try—still you run" (16). We can see here just how far comics have come from being perceived as material for children to that for adults. Only an adult mind could truly appreciate those feelings of age and of the longing that is expressed here for the vigor of youth.

We can also see from this passage that Batman and Bruce Wayne are perceived as being separate by the very being within which they co-habitate. And this separation becomes more evident as each part exerts a negative force upon its psychic counterpart, driving them farther away while Bruce tries to deny his other identity. Bruce is never a whole and seamless man, but is complete with both of his unique identities firmly in place. When the aging Bruce once more dons the Batman suit, he says, ". . . I’m a man of thirty—of twenty again. The rain on my chest is baptism—I’m born again." We can see the rejuvenating power of the role of hero on the whole entity of the man in this passage, and we feel Bruce’s relief and rebirth as Batman is allowed to come forward. Because he is human (unlike such heroes as Superman and Wonderwoman) he has to face the downfalls related to aging, but his identity as a hero has an impact that helps to counteract his physical (as well as mental and metaphysical) aging. This struggling with aging and the attempt to regain the fire of youth resonates with us as a paradigmatic human event, and we are therefore even more acutely relieved when Bruce submits to his Batman identity and releases us empathetically from the bonds of age and decrepitude.

Batman is not the only crimefighter in his world with a secret identity.¹ Throughout the years there have been a myriad of more secondary heroes who also carry the burden of duality. Yet it is not only the heroes who have a splintered identity. Not only are his crime-fighting contemporaries plagued by this duality, but the villains which populate Gotham are also struggling with it as well. It seems as though Kane was closer to the postmodern mindset than were his contemporaries when he created his rogue’s gallery in the forties.

These dark figures almost all represent the duality of the mind and exemplify the "most perverse possibilities lurking in the dark side of human nature" (Vaz 160). We will talk in more detail about the Joker’s duality when we discuss The Killing Joke, but there are many other villains which exhibit this duality which will, for now, occupy our attention.

Our first example is Harvey Dent (formerly Harvey Kent), a lawyer who was ravaged by a criminal’s acid attack and, in contrast to Bruce, turns toward his dark side. He was first introduced in Detective Comics #66, but didn’t find his way back permanently until the 80s.¹ He became known as the criminal Two-Face because one side of his face is unmarred and handsome and the other is hideously disfigured. His mind follows this schism as well, and he regards himself as a pawn of arbitrary destiny. He uses a coin to decide the fate of himself and those around him to emphasize the fact that one choice of action, good or bad, is equal in his estimation. Two-Face was Kane’s exclusive brainchild, probably taken from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 tale, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Daniels 45).

The Dark Knight Returns again allows us to experience the pain of Dent’s duality. He has gone through reconstructive surgery on his face and intense psychotherapy to cure his attendant madness. However, once he is released, he immediately begins a course which he knows will cause him to be caught by Batman. When Batman confronts him, we see that instead of the surgery making Dent a complete and sane whole, it has made his mind become the antithetical half; rather than his face being half maimed/half wholesome and his mind half maimed/half wholesome, the surgery makes his face completely wholesome and his mind completely maimed. Only in the duality maintained by his now "natural" state can Dent’s psyche remain in balance. Batman’s sympathies are evident in the text, and we are also able to see Batman’s own struggle reflected in that of Dent’s (see Illustration I). We can also see from this series of panels the dichotomy between Bruce’s human and animal selves. When he was only Bruce Wayne, his denial of his Batman half resulted in his subconscious becoming wholly animal. This struggle between human and primal elements is a paradigmatic struggle which has been seen in many cultures in many different time periods (especially, refer to the Geertz passage in the Introduction).

Another dualistic character from Batman lore who may on the surface seem silly is the Scarecrow, former psychology professor Jonathan Crane. He dresses as a scarecrow to induce a fear upon which he feeds, but is most noted for his ability to influence dreams/nightmares. He digs under the surface to access the subconscious fears of his foes, and he has been know to torture his victims to retrieve some of the neuro-chemicals that their brains produce (because of their fear) and which he believes will keep him from going insane. Other examples of psychical duality are the characters of the Riddler and Catwoman, and many more that follow this dual nature who are too numerous to describe here. However, both the villains and our hero are subject to the whims of fate in a postmodern society, and most struggle (some more convincingly than others) to deal with their dual natures and identities. Bruce Wayne is no longer a man who dons a suit and fights crime, he is Batman. Just as all attempts to reconcile the villain’s duality fail, so does Batman’s attempt to heal the rift in his psyche to become a whole man.

One of the final cultural aspects of interest in The Dark Knight Returns is the idea of good and evil needing each other for their existence. This comic wrestles with the idea that the very existence of superheroes necessitates (even creates) arch-villains. Many of the commentators and journalists who are shown in this comic feel that if Batman had remained MIA that most of the arch criminals would have stayed away as well. However, it is important to notice that Gotham was riddled with crime even without the larger than life heroes and villains. And it seemed as though there was no such thing as altruism on the part of the common individual. From psychological studies, we know that there is indeed a perceived lack of altruism and empathy in society at large. However, it has also been shown that if a person is able to view another human with empathy, that altruism increases. We can see in The Dark Knight that Batman’s empathy for others causes him to act in a way which betters his society. We also see that his empathy for the villains (his reaction and empathy with Harvey Dent and in the next comic we will look at, the Joker) causes him to attempt to make decisions which are in their best interests while still upholding the law in most cases. The desire for altruism in society is communicated clearly through this comic, and we may therefore conclude that there is a perceived lack of altruism in the extant culture of the author. But we can also see in the text that the author does not believe that evil can be extinguished if there is no good. Therefore, good must fight to maintain a balance where they will never really be rid of evil because they require it in order to be able to perform altruistic actions. And it seems an excepted fact that there cannot be a situation in which only goodness exists. This is what a postmodern mind might consider an impossibility (either because of the pervasive cynical or "realistic" view of the world). But both good and evil seem to be ever-reoccuring forces. The ideas of the birth and death and rebirth (either metaphorical or actual) of both good and evil are very strong here. Perhaps because of the ability of the hero (and thus the reader empathetically) to understand the nature of the villain, we see that the lines between good and evil often blur, but need to be reasserted in order to maintain a balance.

Many of these cultural threads are also included in the other comic selection we will be looking at in this chapter. In The Killing Joke, we are given a glimpse of the Joker’s origin from Jack, the out-of-work comedian with a pregnant wife to support, to the hideous grinning arch-villain, Joker. Jack has begun a life of crime to support his wife, but when she dies by electrocution while testing a bottle warmer, the senseless nature of her death leaves him disconsolate. However, his criminal associates will not let him back out of a heist they have planned. Unfortunately for Jack, Batman shows up during the job and knocks him into a vat of chemicals. He is disfigured and all of these things together make him go insane. But it is an interesting sort of insanity that the Joker maintains. He is fully aware of the alternative of sanity and how the "real world" functions, but chooses instead to adopt an identity which is mad in order to deal with/function within that reality. The Joker contends that the only difference between him and the "normal" members of society is one bad day.

In order to prove this, Joker captures Commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara (after shooting her in the back and taking pictures of her nude body as she bleeds to death). He has taken the commissioner to an abandoned amusement park in order to put Jim Gordon in a situation which is comparable to his own in order to drive the commissioner mad (thus proving his point). As Jim is exhibited, naked, to the circus freaks with whom the Joker has surrounded himself, the Joker explains his predicament (see Illustration E). The Joker then attempts to show Commisioner Gordon (and instruct us as well) that madness is the "emergency exit" through which people can avoid all the black and senseless things which happen. He urges the audience to understand the reality of the situation, sighting examples such as how close we have come to World War III because of a flock of geese on a radar screen, or the fact that the trigger to the last World War was the argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war creditors (see Illustration F).

The Joker feels that madness is the only way one can rationally deal with this reality. He is unable to compartmentalize this information in his psyche to allow him to go on functioning, and it has driven him mad. As Batman arrives on the scene, he reiterates his final point—that everyone is merely one bad day away from becoming him. He says, "I’ve demonstrated there’s no difference between me and everyone else. All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day" (38). And he points out (guessing correctly) the fact that this is probably what has happened to Batman, even though he is fighting for the opposite side. In a final attempt to get Batman to understand, he says, "you have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there’s some point to all this struggling. It’s all a joke. Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for . . . it’s all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can’t you see the funny side?" To which Batman replies, "Because I’ve heard it before . . . and it wasn’t funny the first time." Batman does not disagree here, which tells us that he may be feeling more empathy for the Joker’s position than is specifically stated, yet he fails to see the humor that is implicit (in a mad sort of way) in the meaninglessness of life. He hangs on to the meaning that has been given to him by law and by some sense that he is taking positive action for mankind.

Jim Gordon hangs on to this thread as well and does not let the incident drive him crazy: in fact, he tells Batman to bring Joker in "by the book." Gordon can be said to symbolize law in this case, and his attempt to remain whole under pressure is commendable. The monstrous experiment has failed to push him over the edge; his one bad day has not made him turn his back on the only shred of stability in his life: the law. No one in the script, especially Batman, denies the claims that the Joker has made as to the terrible nature of existence, but both Batman and Gordon rely on the belief system that gives them some meaning, some hope, that things will eventually become better. They are able to support the duality necessary to continue to remain sane in a sometimes meaningless and mad world.

At the end of the comic, Batman has beaten the Joker and is ready to take him back to Arkham Asylum. He asks the Joker to let him help them both by trying to fix their individual problems together. He wants to try to avoid what seems to be the inevitable necessity of them killing one another. The Joker says that it is too late for him (and thus for Batman as well) and illustrates his reasoning by telling a joke about two crazy men who are attempting to break out of an insane asylum (see Illustration G). Batman finds that he cannot keep himself from laughing at the punchline, and this allows us to see just how close Batman is psychologically to the Joker—how similar they are¹. We see that it is only a matter of will and choice that Batman is not the Joker. This duality is perfectly representative of the postmodern mind, where both aspects of the psyche constantly struggle for dominion. Yet neither can be triumphant and still allow the psyche to remain balanced. The use of humor in this case is not only ironic, but it acts as a safety valve for us as readers so that we can deal with a situation that we cannot deny is horrible.

Besides finding the idea of the duality of the postmodern mind embedded in these Batman texts, we also find an embedded ideology which explores the notion of individual choice and will. We can see from the episode in The Killing Joke that, although events may be beyond our control, the choice of how to meet them is our own.¹ It is a bizarre and terrible world we live in, and there may be no "silver lining" in sight, but we can choose what part we will play within the structures of our culture. This element allows readers to engage with the text. We can see in the world around us all the terrible things that humans are capable of and how it seems sometimes that events are senseless and brutal, but we struggle to maintain a belief that life is good and that the forces of good will prevail. The Batman stories meet our horizon of expectation regarding how the world works, but allow us to perceive a possibility that is better than the one in which we currently exist (not a place where our duality is mended, but where we are able to accept that state and still work toward a better society). The dual nature of our minds is able to support both at the same time, and so we empathize with Batman in his struggle to bring about this good. But we require a character as complicated and fragmented as we ourselves are for this empathetic transferal to take place.

As Neal Adams says, "I believe any character that’s any good represents the deeper parts of human beings in general" (qtd. in Vaz 107). Postmodern readers are attracted to the depth and realism present in the Batman comics because it reflects to them their culture and individual duality of mind. Batman has often played "second fiddle" to Superman in previous years, but Superman lacks the dark reality and psychological depth to be able to be the object of empathy for current readers. As Jules Feiffer, author of The Great Comic Book Heroes contends, "Batman, as a feature, was infinitely better plotted, better villained, and better looking than Superman. . . . Batman inhabited a world where no one, no matter the time of day, cast anything but long shadows—seen from weird perspectives. Batman’s world was scary; Superman’s never was" (qtd. in Vaz 31). Superman was generally more popular during times when people were not able to face the dark side of their world and were looking for an escape through an alien being with superpowers which would banish all darkness. A common visual still found in Superman comics today is a crowd of waiting, helpless people who are looking up to see Superman overhead, and it looks almost as if he is radiating divine light upon their faces. The postmodern mind appreciates the compelling nature of darkness and realizes it as much closer to their own state. However, they also know that Batman is human and has goodness within him. In the early 90s many other comics attempted to push the dark, brutal nature of mankind without the balancing light and lost many readers because of this sense of hopelessness. Because of his complex nature, readers are more able to empathize with Batman—even become him. The only way for Bruce to deal with this split is to accept both identities in their dual state (as seen in The Dark Knight Returns). The character of Batman shows postmodern readers not how they can become whole once more (which is an impossibility), but illustrates how they can come to terms with their duality. Because we have all felt the pull of this compartmentalization (though perhaps not to this extent) and because we face a society very similar to that portrayed by Gotham, we can engage in empathetic transference with Batman. And we know that this is indeed how Kane felt in his empathetic transference with his creation as he has often been heard to say, "I am Batman" (Daniels 1).

Author and editor Denny O’Neil says that "the idea of an essentially moral and compassionate hero is not an outmoded one" (qtd in Daniels 201). But Batman chronicler Les Daniels says that even O’Neil has often noted that "there is certainly more to Batman than simple sweetness and light" (201). Daniels continues, saying that

There’s a sinister side to the character which appeals to everyone who grew up, if not as brutally as Bruce Wayne did, to realize that the world can be a very dangerous place. For those millions, there’s a certain satisfaction in imagining what it might be like to be Batman, to be alone in the dark and not be afraid, because everyone else out there in the dark is even more afraid of you. (201)