Batman Part Three of Three: The Bat Family

The third and final key to the success of Batman is his relatability. He seeks justice for the death of his parents. While doing this over the years, he has acquired a new family. This allegory of how many families are not conventional helps the reader relate to the series.

Batman, otherwise known as Bruce Wayne, obviously is the most important factor of the Batman comics. His relentless pursuit for justice offers an image of apex humanity. His origin story is not terribly bleak; even though he becomes an orphan, the wealth of his family keeps him afloat. Both his wealth and morality make him accessible to readers; he is the person the readers themselves want to be.

When he was made an orphan, he was put into the care of his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is the second most important character in the Batman comics. He serves as the new father figure to Bruce and the guardian of his interests. For a long time, he was the only person Batman trusted with his secret identity. His love for Bruce and the Wayne family cannot be denied, especially after the portrayal by Michael Caine in The Dark Knight trilogy.

As Batman fights justice, he takes on a protege. The first one is named Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin. Dick Grayson’s character evolves from sidekick to an independent hero named Nightwing. Other characters are introduced throughout the comics including Batgirl, Batwoman, Red Hood, and Oracle. Batgirl becomes Oracle when she is handicapped while fighting crime. This character serves to show the importance of diversity in comics. The Batman comic offers up a crippled character who is still able to serve and aid the community. This diversity and representation is shown throughout the Bat family.

Without the series’s ability to change over time and relate to evolving audiences, combined with its villains and setting, Batman would not be an American cultural icon.

Batman Part Two of Three: The Villains

A protagonist can only be as heroic as his antagonists are wicked. This is one of the keys to Batman’s success and popularity. His comic have produced the world’s most memorable baddies. From their various ailments to their differing psychological diseases, the villains in the Batman comics truly make people love to hate them.

Batman’s villains can be classified in two major categorizes: those with physical enhancements and those with psychological warfare. The first group of villains, those with physical enhancements, represent the fantastical realm of possibilities within the comic book genre. Members of this order include Two-face, Poison Ivy, and Mr. Freeze. One of the physically enhanced villains, Clayface, was an actor who became deformed in an accident. Though he is not widely popular, this shapeshifter should be heralded as a champion for overweight and large people everywhere. While Marvel comics has their main shapeshifter Mystique (a skinny, nude, blue skinned mutant, most recently played by Jennifer Lawrence) as a sex symbol, any popularity attained by Clayface has come from his sheer villainy. Clayface should feel accomplished since he is not “selling sex” like other villains in the comic book genre. On the other hand, it is all but impossible to find a female villain not clad in skimpy costumes. Poison Ivy, for example, wears little more than underwear and plants (most recently played by Uma Thurman). She is a brilliant scientist and environmentalist who falls into chemicals and becomes mutated with the plant poison ivy. These villains tickle the imagination and come to life vividly in both cinema and cartoons.

The second group contains many more villains. The group founded on psychological warfare includes such villains as Ra’s al Ghul, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, Edward Nigma a.k.a. the Riddler, and the infamous Joker. As the most famous of comic book villains, the Joker has become an icon in himself. As a patron of chaos and anarchy, the Joker represents complex and hypocritical ideas of social order through chaos (represented best on screen by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight). Other villains compel the stories forward with nothing more than their regular human intellects. They show that one does not need fanciful gadgets or gene manipulation to be powerful; they only need their minds.

Many of these villains push Batman to face ethical, physical, and psychological barriers that challenge the reader mentally.

Batman Part One of Three: Gotham

The Fox network’s new show Gotham, based on the comic book character turned American cultural icon, attempts to portray the origins of the characters in the Batman universe. Batman has appealed to a greater fan base than other heroes for decades. This fan base comes from the writers’ ability to portray real life scenarios in the Batman comics. So, the first key to the success of Batman is the setting, Gotham.

When he first appeared to the public, Batman was clad in a blue-grey suit, in sharp contrast to the modern dark batman. At the beginning of the comic book era, Superheros were bright and colorful with little depth. They fought outlandish villains who seemed distant from reality. Over time the comic book world has evolved into the rugged, gritty parallel of society, but the city of Gotham has always been this way.

While Superman lived in Metropolis, an allegory of the best parts of urban living, Batman lived in Gotham. Gotham was and still is the slum of the superhero world. No fictional city is able to inspire a reader to the extent of Gotham. Just the mention of the name Gotham, a dirty, gritty city comes to mind. The setting is one of the most important parts of story telling; Gotham has become home to everything from organized crime, as seen in the show Gotham, to terrorism, as seen in The Dark Knight Rises.

The old adage that says, “the players may change, but the game stays the same” is false for the Batman franchise. His opponents never change, but their methods have become more sinister as the years progressed. His villains have adapted their crimes to parallel society in innovative and provocative ways. The Joker was introduced in the very first issue of Batman, and he has continued to change over the years. In a more recent reincarnation of Gotham, the Joker is not  a clown, but an insane psychopath obsessed with chaos. Batman has achieved such a high level of success because of his and his setting’s ability to adapt with the times.