Caped Fear

 Dear Detective Comics,

My name is David, and I have come to America from Israel four months ago. My father was invited to work here for two years. Back in Israel, and now here, I love your comics a lot, and I wonder why don't you send Batman to Israel to solve the Palestinian-Israeli problems. Believe me, we need someone like Batman in the Middle East. Thank you very much. —David

I have a confession.

And no, my name's not secretly David. I found this letter printed in the back of Detective Comics, late-June '93 edition, while doing some Batman "research." Despite its disarming naïveté, I'm not sure that the Middle East needs more obsessive, cave-dwelling vigilantes consumed with vengeance. Nevertheless, David will belatedly get his wish when the fifth film in the comic-book franchise, Batman Begins, starts its international theatrical run. But I know how he felt: I could've used a Separation Wall when I was a kid.

Oh, right, my confession:

There were no girls sitting at my eighth-grade lunchroom table. Not that there would've been room for any. Or for lunch, come to think of it. Instead, tattered sheets of notebook paper covered the green Formica. That these flimsy pages were filled with half-baked but painstakingly rendered (16 lines tall, son!) comic-book sketches fresh from my dizzy head made it easier to ignore the impact of aluminum foil balls on the back of my skull. Unless, of course, those neophyte marksmen left their bread crusts crumpled inside. Then it kinda hurt. Hence the need for a barrier, or at least a clearly marked demilitarized zone.

This was 1993—a dismal time for bookish young fantasists, and not merely because of the dangers inherent in cafeteria critiques. You could hardly flip a page without finding a beaten, bloodied pulp depiction of your favorite superhero. Doomsday bells tolled for even the most famous of all caped crusaders, Superman, in the guise of an overmuscled, sub-eloquent beast named, well, Doomsday. Some cried sacrilege. I collected multiple copies.

But what chilled every pitiless, capitalist bone in my body was the literal breaking of the Batman in the pages of DC Comics. In that year's story arc,"Knightfall," Batman fell victim to the machinations of Bane, a philosophical, drug-addled supervillain who loosed every criminal from Gotham City's Arkham Asylum, forcing Bats to round up all his old collars—Joker, Two-Face, Riddler, and others—before the final fight. Having watched Batman devote his life to inspiring fear in his prey, I blanched to see him go limp with terror at Bane's discovery of his dual identity. Bane broke Batman's back with all the grace and ease of Bo Jackson snapping his baseball bat. And with it, what some might call my childlike innocence.

Let me explain.

I've always been Batman. Or rather, I was always a Bat-freak. Nearly everyone has pledged allegiance to a superhero at one time or another. My father was an Aquaman-Antman kind of guy, and my uncle was partial to the enveloping aura of Mr. Fantastic. I took after their closest cousin, Dan, with whom I share an affinity for certain winged mammals and men who dress like them. In much the same way that fans claim a favorite superhero, those devoted enough to one in particular can surely state their fave from among the hero's many renderings. And few superheroes have had more iterations than Batman.

"My theory is that there have been about five Batmans," said longtime Batman editor Denny O'Neil in a 1991 interview, "and I don't have any quarrel with any one of them. They were all right for their time, for the sensibility of the audience—or the perceived sensibility of the audience." There's the ur-Bat: Bob Kane and Bill Finger's May 1939 co-creation, then but one in a line of archetyped idealistic aristocrats (like Zorro and the Shadow) who deigned to protect the ordinary by solving crimes and busting perps while wearing flattering tights. But Bruce Wayne's traumatic backstory (he witnessed the murder of his parents at a young age) wasn't an original element; Finger added it six months later, articulating Batman's vigilante quest with psychological pathos and Sisyphean resolve. Birthed from a miasma of pain and fear, Batman sought to inflict both on Gotham's criminal populace.