The Four Color Media Monitor

The Rushville Republican has a writer who talks about the long-running debate on if Superman is better than Batman. But, as expected, it really misses a lot of deeper points that can be made.

Superman’s hold on the world is that his existence deals with being. How do you live with your gifts? You cover them up with a dull suit, head off to an ordinary job, and wake up every day knowing that the fate of the world rests in your hands. He’s can’t help but be super--his arsenal of superpowers coast in his blood and permanently set themselves in his ways. He cannot cease to be Superman.

Batman, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. While Superman tends to be a symbol of things to strive for, Batman is a symbol of what people can become if they work really hard. He’s dark and deeply conflicted. He chose his fate as a crime-fighter, destiny did not choose him. He transformed himself into a rubber-wearing crime fighter with a cool car that gets scandalously good gas mileage, and chose to stock his basement with cool gadgets. His disguise is to hide the fact that he is ordinary, with no superpowers, and with which he covers with his souped-up doodads. With the presence or Robin, they become a crime-fighting team--although the little green underwear-wearing orphan makes Batman look like a crime-fighting baby-sitter.

According to an online poll, if you are a Superman fan, your favorite colors are bright, bold and primary. You travel alone. You revere with strength and grace. You believe in truth and justice. Your favorite gadget is--again, who needs gadgets? You think Hollywood doesn’t understand the purity of heart or the nobility of purpose. You are shallow, but sincere, and your favorite time of day is morning.

If you are a Batman fan, your favorite colors are muted, murky and muddy. You travel with a sidekick. You revere intelligence and canniness. You believe in vengeance and skullduggery. Your favorite gadget is--well, who can name them all? You think Hollywood gets it, and you are a deep and ironic person. Your favorite time of day is midnight.

So again, I ask, which is better?

You want to know, Ms. Elizabeth Gist? Okay, I'll tell you. It's not which character I'm going to argue here, it's the approach to characterization I'm going to. And until, I dunno, maybe the early 1990s, Batman had plenty of that, namely, humanity and sincerity, courtesy of stellar writers like Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart, and Gerry Conway. But then, courtesy of the obsession with imitating Frank Miller's storyline in The Dark Knight Returns, just about every writer for about a decade started to turn Batman into a self-righteous joke of a crimefighter, saddling him with half-baked, half-hearted storylines, and then, just when Ed Brubaker tried to fix things by restoring some humanity, DC made it worse by shunning all that in favor of coming up with a persecution of their own properties in Identity Crisis, Superman included, that claimed that the reason he became such a somber mess with very little humanity, if at all, was because his very own fellow crimefighters caused it to him. And at the same time, they confused everything by showing Batman getting all worked up over what the Justice League was doing to Dr. Light, while ignoring the crime the said supervillain inflicted upon Sue Dibny.

That, IMO, is what's wrong with Batman today. It's not that his world is dark and bleak, in contrast to Superman's bright and optimistic one. It's that the characterization is way below par, and further damaged through PC tampering.

With that kind of problem at hand, is it any wonder I've bought so much more Superman books than Batman books?

In any case, I do enjoy the optimism of Superman better than the darkness of Batman. Mainly because there's so much wider a range for adventure provided, certainly in the solo books.

I'll have to disagree with the reporter though, on the notion that being Batman means having a sidekick, or that being Superman means working alone - because Bats has worked alone, and effectively, while Supes has worked on many an occasion with his teen cousin Supergirl, Kara Zor-El, she being his sidekick. Wherever anyone got the idea that Bats only works with sidekicks while Supes doesn't is beyond me.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, Superman