B A T M A N
CHARACTERISATION
The character I’ve chosen to discuss is Batman, being the darkest and most mysterious of all the comic book characters. Along with superman he has become one of the most recognised comic book heroes in the world. I’m going to look at how and why he was created and what made him such a huge success in the comic book world.
With the massive popularity of Superman in 1939, there was a request by Detective Comics (DC Comics) for more superheroes to be published in comic books. This is when a man named Bob Kane created a character called ‘the bat man’. His creation was inspired by many movies and characters including the mark of Zorro, the Shadow, Dracula, the Phantom, Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing of a flying machine.
In the story, Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents being murdered whilst he was just a child. Obviously this tormented and grieved him for years until he decided to train himself to his physical and intellectual peak to fight crime in Gotham city.
Like every comic book character, Batman is the alter-ego of a ‘normal citizen’ called Bruce Wayne. A playboy, industrialist and philanthropist. After he inherited all the wealth of his parents and decided to grow up to fight crime, Bruce Wayne created his double and called him Batman. He wears a costume. But unlike most of the other superheroes, his is distinguishable by just the outline, with his large cape and pointed ears. The Batman logo is also one of the most recognised symbols in the comic book genre. His look and his stance are meant to be as imposing and intimidating as possible, using fear as a weapon.
Unlike every other superhero, Batman does not have any superhuman powers. He wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider or given a ring with unlimited power, he didn’t draw his power from the sun or had an accidental chemical bath. He worked his ass off to become Batman. He makes use of intellect, detective skills, technology and physical power to fight his war on crime. This is what makes him more realistic and respected than any other superhero.
If you type the word Batman into google.com, you will find just under 50 million entries, which only superman can compete with. Spiderman, James Bond and Mickey Mouse don’t even come close. So why is it that Batman appeals to us much more than most other fictional characters?
Like most American fictional heroes, Batman’s soul purpose is to bring all evil-doers to justice. Having gone through such trauma as a child, we can all sympathise and relate to his (and our) obvious primal sense for justice. We want to see evil being punished and through Batman, we know that justice will prevail regardless of the odds.
A few months before the start of the second world war, 67 years ago, the Batman comics were created during the time of the Great Depression in America and a time when the world was teetering on the edge of turmoil. The vision and idea of a bat-man flying out of the shadows and handing out justice offered a darker and more realistic hero than that of a god-like hero from the planet Krypton. It offered a hero that kids can relate to. A hero that they, in theory, could grow up to become.
Bruce Wayne was obviously motivated by the grief that ate at his soul. His form of release for this pain was to project it into the evils that had been inflicted in him by his trauma to conquer the fears that gnawed at his psyche. This kind of distress left him (as it would leave anybody) with two routes in his life path. Either a quest to heal, or a quest to destroy the pain. Batman has walked a thin line between the two routes throughout the years. There are two distinct personalities which emerge from this; Batman the Caped Crusader, and Batman, the Dark Knight.
During the 1970’s, the artist and writer Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams explored the Caped Crusader part of Batman and Bruce Wayne’s psyche, where Batman finally emerges as a sympathetic character. Neal Adams drew the character as grim, determined, and most of all, bat-like. Theirs was a character fraught with angst - part detective, part romantic, part avenger, and completely human.
In 1986 Frank Miller presented a Batman which went beyond the roots of the character to examine Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego. Namely the question; Is Bruce Wayne Batman, or is Batman merely portraying Bruce Wayne? That is the core of the Batman mythos and also mirrors the yin-yang nature of humanity.
We are presented with a universal hero in the Batman, a character that at once represents and shows the duality of the mind with a clarity that speaks best in a visual vocabulary. The reason that Batman is such a success is that Batman strikes a universal chord that all of us can relate to. His obsessions echo our fundamental need for balance. In an uncertain world we all need a Batman to protect us.
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