Bookslide III

First off, someone got to my blog by a search for the word “ouiaboo.”  Could it be that the word is catching on, or just that Katie got bored?

Secondly, I’m going to give this post my all, but the crappy weather + the time change + waiting for someone then getting too tired to wait for them anymore = exhausted.  And exhausted usually means lack of content.  But I promised you! Actual! Content!  So here it is.  I hope.  See, I already just typoed and had to fix it.  Yeah, this will go well.  If it comes off sorta delirious, I apologize.  Maybe I’ll hit a second wind in the next fifteen minutes.  That would be nice.  I probably shouldn’t have put on Mazzy Star.  There, Nickel Creek.  That’s a little less coma-inducing.

Ha, I found another typo and corrected it here, like at the bottom of the postbox, not even WHERE THE TYPO WAS.  I’m so clever.

*rubs eyes*

Okay.

Okay.

Dear God, I’m bad at this.  Me posting when I’m sleepy is like someone else drunk-posting, except that I sound more wibbly and correct my typos.

I wish I could take a nap and come back to this, but then I’d sleep through the night and miss a day, and that would suck.  Except for this stuff, which wouldn’t count.

So, Batman.

The thing about Batman is that he’s an icon.  This was a part of one of my thesis papers–or at least the Power Point presentation that went with it.  The first slide asked a question: “Can you imagine a time you didn’t know what superheroes were?” and there were a ton of pictures, which I wish I’d had more time to make look prettier, but basically they were a chronological timeline of comic book issues, TV shows, cartoons, movies with these iconic characters.  The thing is, these characters don’t go out of your eyesight for very long, even if you’re not a comic book fan.  The DC “animated universe” Batman, first on television in 1992, didn’t end his career for FOURTEEN YEARS, from the first episode of Batman: The Animated Series to when Justice League Unlimited went off the air in 2006–sixteen, if you count the comic book version of the television show.  And that was just the one incarnation.  But at the same time, there were other versions of Batman out there: Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Bale, as well as Rino Romano on a SECOND cartoon version with its own continuity.  

What’s the draw of Batman?  Or, really, any iconic superhero, but Batman’s as good an example as any.  Is it the eye-catching yellow-and-black elegance of the Bat Symbol?  After all, my friend’s little son knew the symbol on sight, yet she’s no Batman fan and they didn’t have any Batman stuff at home.  But he knew it when he saw it.  How?  Ubiquity.

Is it the simple but compelling origin story?  After all, who doesn’t know that young Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered before his eyes, driving him to a life of crimefighting in their honor?  It’s interesting to note that, as he’s grown darker over time, Batman has become the anti-Superman: the loss of his parents did not lead him to a happy, new, unbroken home in Middle America, but instead a bleak, empty existence in a corrupt city; his “real self,” Bruce Wayne, become the mask that he uses to cover his “true self,” Batman; he has no stabilizing romantic influence, like Clark has Lois, which means that he is constantly in a state of either heartbreak or anxiety; he has no powers, but instead shows excellence of human spirit.  In a way, he’s more the hero that today’s cynical world can attach itself to but we probably made him that way in the first place, based off our own growing cynicism.  We cannot be separated from this character right now, I think–that was another part of my thesis paper, that we’re not just looking at the characters, we’re looking at a reflection of our society.

Batman started as a hero and become…oh, maybe not an anti-hero (because wasn’t he always that?) so much as an asshole-hero, at least in the comics.  In Batman: The Animated Series through Justice League Unlimited, the show runners weren’t afraid to make him incredibly damaged.  In the new movies…well, time will tell what’s going on there, if they keep going.  (If so: Catwoman, please.)  You even have the “camp” Batman of the Adam West era, the Batman in the comics with Bat-Mite.  There are so many Batmen and Bat-stories to be endlessly fascinating, even without the secondary characters.

But oh, the secondary characters!  They’re easily overlooked, but that really shouldn’t be done.  They have their own histories, continuities, flaws.  Over time they have become as fleshed-out as the Batman himself, their motivations and romances and insecurities.  I guess I’ll talk about them tomorrow because I’m starting to droop again, but it was sort of coherent while it lasted (I hope).