I have been talking to some friends who seem to know a thing or two about Batman and I have heard something very interesting. Apparently there is a point where Batman dies and Superman puts on the Batsuit. Someone cries out that Superman has to take it off because it is like wearing Batman's skin. The same person also told me that Bruce Wayne is the costume and that batman is the real "person." I just thought those were interesting things to ponder in the whole scheme of Bat vs. Man. I tend to agree with the idea that Bruce Wayne is just a mask so that Batman can go out into society and be accepted as "human." Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and ideas.
Getting back to the texts, this post I have promised to unearth the batly secrets from Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum and Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Night Returns.
I would just like to say that Arkham Asylum is a beautiful book. The shading and blending of the images do well to accentuate the madness of the characters. The variety of techniques like black and white pencil drawings, images so real they look like photographs, and all of them juxtaposed with one another draw the reader into the insanity of the asylum. It is beautiful there and I begin to wonder if Batman finds it so. Upon opening the book we find an image of a fossilized bat. That is to say that the bat's presence is set in stone. It has always been that way.
All of Batman's friends are in the asylum and they miss him. No one knows him as Bruce Wayne here. The Joker tells Batman,"We want you in here. With us. In the madhouse. Where you belong." In this moment Batman is crazy and needs to be locked up with all of the other crazies. We have pretty much thrown Bruce Wayne out of the proverbial window. There is no "Bruce Wayne" at this point. What exists is a Batman who lives as a sort of prisoner. Imprisoned by insanity? Lets look at the images and ideas that would suggest this imprisonment.
Throughout Arkham Asylum we see images of lines and bars and a lot of times Batman is overshadowed or incorporated into those lines and bars which visually suggests that he is imprisoned. These images are very much like those we find in The Dark Knight Returns.
Page 26 takes us though a series of panels where various images are overshadowed by bars. The first image is a bat, not Batman, but a bat. The next image is Bruce Wayne covered by the bars followed by an image of bars over complete darkness. Finally we see the bat (NOT Batman or Bruce) breaking through the bars. I think this series of panels tells us that the bat and the man are one in the same and that there is so much hidden in the darkness neither the reader nor Batman can discern what lies there. In the final panel I think that it becomes clear that the bat side is the victor seeing as it breaks free from the imprisoning bars. I know a lot of these ideas are overlapping and may be confusing, but I think that if it were crystal clear, then we would no longer need to read Batman comics because we would have it all figured out. That's why this is all in fun.
And speaking of fun, Joker gets to have a lot of fun at Batman's expense in Arkham Asylum. A couple of the other patients decide that they want to take off Batman's mask to see his real face. The Joker
denies them by saying, "That is his real face." Oh boy, I think the Joker really nails it for us there. So in the end, I really don't have a clear idea of how or who Batman is, only that the bat side of the whole mess is really the one in charge. To me, that side is just as crazy as the rest of the lunatics in Arkham and that is why I will always love to read Batman.
For the next post I would like to switch gears and talk about Maus by Art Spiegelman. A lot of people are familiar with this graphic novel because it has become a staple for many college literature courses. It has become an alternate medium to learn about the horrors of the holocaust and I would like to discuss why that is.
Getting back to the texts, this post I have promised to unearth the batly secrets from Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum and Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Night Returns.
I would just like to say that Arkham Asylum is a beautiful book. The shading and blending of the images do well to accentuate the madness of the characters. The variety of techniques like black and white pencil drawings, images so real they look like photographs, and all of them juxtaposed with one another draw the reader into the insanity of the asylum. It is beautiful there and I begin to wonder if Batman finds it so. Upon opening the book we find an image of a fossilized bat. That is to say that the bat's presence is set in stone. It has always been that way.
All of Batman's friends are in the asylum and they miss him. No one knows him as Bruce Wayne here. The Joker tells Batman,"We want you in here. With us. In the madhouse. Where you belong." In this moment Batman is crazy and needs to be locked up with all of the other crazies. We have pretty much thrown Bruce Wayne out of the proverbial window. There is no "Bruce Wayne" at this point. What exists is a Batman who lives as a sort of prisoner. Imprisoned by insanity? Lets look at the images and ideas that would suggest this imprisonment.
Throughout Arkham Asylum we see images of lines and bars and a lot of times Batman is overshadowed or incorporated into those lines and bars which visually suggests that he is imprisoned. These images are very much like those we find in The Dark Knight Returns.
Page 26 takes us though a series of panels where various images are overshadowed by bars. The first image is a bat, not Batman, but a bat. The next image is Bruce Wayne covered by the bars followed by an image of bars over complete darkness. Finally we see the bat (NOT Batman or Bruce) breaking through the bars. I think this series of panels tells us that the bat and the man are one in the same and that there is so much hidden in the darkness neither the reader nor Batman can discern what lies there. In the final panel I think that it becomes clear that the bat side is the victor seeing as it breaks free from the imprisoning bars. I know a lot of these ideas are overlapping and may be confusing, but I think that if it were crystal clear, then we would no longer need to read Batman comics because we would have it all figured out. That's why this is all in fun.
And speaking of fun, Joker gets to have a lot of fun at Batman's expense in Arkham Asylum. A couple of the other patients decide that they want to take off Batman's mask to see his real face. The Joker
denies them by saying, "That is his real face." Oh boy, I think the Joker really nails it for us there. So in the end, I really don't have a clear idea of how or who Batman is, only that the bat side of the whole mess is really the one in charge. To me, that side is just as crazy as the rest of the lunatics in Arkham and that is why I will always love to read Batman.For the next post I would like to switch gears and talk about Maus by Art Spiegelman. A lot of people are familiar with this graphic novel because it has become a staple for many college literature courses. It has become an alternate medium to learn about the horrors of the holocaust and I would like to discuss why that is.
No comments:
Post a Comment