(One of his early nicknames was the Man of Tomorrow, after all.) Batman came of age later, beginning in the 1970s, the era of American malaise and urban decay, using cynicism as a weapon for good and training his sights on a Gotham City so broken it often looked like a war zone (often fighting super-criminals who hoped not just to plunder the city but overturn any lingering faith its denizens had in the virtue of compassion and social order). The icons were created almost simultaneously, but Superman is unmistakably a figure of his early years - the 1940s and 1950s, an era of buoyant, blinkered wartime and postwar consensus (at least as it might have been felt by most white, boyish comic-book readers), when it seemed appropriate to deploy a godlike do-gooder to do things like help cats out of trees or return purses to de-pursed Metropolis women. But this contrast isn’t just characterological it’s also historical. The former spends his contemplative moments hoping for the best the latter spends those moments vigilantly preparing for the worst. Which leads us to “day versus night.” Superman has faith that humanity will tend toward goodness if you give it trust and hope Batman lacks that faith and believes the world only gets in line if you grab it by the throat and never let go. Superman, by contrast, “is a farm boy, an alien, raised with a stable adoptive family, who has seen the worst of the world and let it teach him a profound sense of empathy.” Batman is not just a man but a broken one, who inhabits a broken universe, his parents killed by a petty criminal and raised in an era of rapid urban decay - “an old-money billionaire, a human, an orphan who has seen the worst of the world and let it all but turn him to stone,” in the words of critic Meg Downey. Let’s start with “god versus man.” Superman is an alien - which is to say, celestial - creature, born on another planet but here completely alone, completely singular in his powers, which have at times included feats like reversing the spin of the Earth to turn back time. The Batman v Superman Superfan Starter Kit As the villain Lex Luthor puts it in the new movie, it’s “god versus man, day versus night.” Related Stories Namely: how to make a better world, with Superman operating through hope and inspiration, and Batman through fear and intimidation. That is, they are about something - or some things. For that question, Superman and Batman make the perfect contenders.”īut we also want to see them fight because, to an unusual degree even for comic books, the fights mean something. Batman and Superman are both, of course, good guys, but what we so often want to see is them fighting.īut why? Why are fans so desperate to see superheroes in conflict that they urge superhero writers to employ absurd narrative contrivances like mind control or alternate universes to make happen what would otherwise be vanishingly unlikely fights (a tactic used well over a dozen times in the history of Batman-Superman tales)? One big answer is no answer at all - who wouldn’t want to see them fight? Every comics geek’s inner adolescent is perpetually asking, What’s the point of having two heroes if you aren’t also going to game out who’d win? As comics critic Chris Sims put it in a column on the topic, “When you have characters and all you see them doing is winning, it’s natural to wonder who would win harder if they ever had to compete. At this point, nobody really remembers that early, sunny friendship - when it comes to superheroes, pure friendship’s boring. (It was kind of adorable, with Batman almost acting like a kid who smilingly looked up on his star-athlete older brother.)Īnd yet, for the past 30 years, the relationship has been punctuated by a series of spectacular fights - a gruesome tussle over ideology in 1986’s graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, a dramatic dust-up due to mind control in the 2003 comic-book story line “Hush,” and, of course, an upcoming gladiator match in this weekend’s big-screen tentpole Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. For long stretches, particularly when the characters were new, they had a deeply chummy relationship, with Batman like a non-superpowered Superman - a lesser, but cheerful, do-gooder who also fought for truth, justice, and the American way. Are Batman and Superman allies or rivals, at their core? They’re definitely not enemies, and that’s only partly because they’re both superheroes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |