The Bat Within
January 20th, 2010 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: Batman, DC comicsDoes anyone remember a certain Bat story that came out a while ago?
Batman is out at a strangely casual event with the Justice League. It’s something between a company party and a training retreat. They make their way through various scenarios in an out-of-the-way place, and everythings going fine at first.
Then things start getting strange. Even though an event should have ended, it keeps going on and on, the conclusion retreating farther and farther the closer he gets. A town that should be in one place is in another, and is completely deserted. One moment it’s day, the next it’s night.
At first Batman thinks that it’s the work of a supervillain. The rest of the Justice League doesn’t agree, however, and insists that everything is normal. Batman begins to suspect his friends are either deliberately testing him, or under some sinister, greater power.
Then it all becomes clear. None of it is real. He’s dreaming, trapped in his own paranoid mind, and he has to wake up.
Then I wake up. (Bam! Did you see that twist ending? I sure didn’t.) Yes, I twisted it all up on you (though the above story probably was published sometime back in the sixties), meta-style. I know, there isn’t anything interesting about listening to someone else’s dreams.
There is, however, something interesting about listening to someone’s inadequacies. The reason the setting kept changing randomly was my brain being unable to hold onto the narrative. Everything that happened was obviously a dream. It’s just that I didn’t know it was a dream. Batman did.
Apparently, there is a Batman inside my brain. And he’s smarter than I am.
My only hope now is to eat, drink, and laze myself flabby so that he decides I’m inadequate and doesn’t try to take over my mind and force me to fight crime in my sleep.
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“Apparently, there is a Batman inside my brain. And he’s smarter than I am. ”
well yeah.
Coincidentally, I have a Bane inside my brain. Now my medulla oblongata is in a wheelchair and it’s been replaced with a darker, more extreme stand-in.
That’s fantastic! Great story.
If more people had a Batman inside their brain, I’m sure the world would be a wonderful place. Or possibly, it would be a more paranoid and aggressive place? Depends on which flavor of Batman, I guess … hmm …
hah! great dream. i had one the other night that Joe Quesada was my dad and he was running the “Joe Quesada Museum” out of his house. all he did was tape his penciled pages up on the wall and call it a museum. no one ever came to visit the because it was a real plain house somewhere in Queens that had pieces of paper taped to the walls. eventually he decided to move out and give me the house, so i moved in with my girlfriend. but he still wanted me to operate the Joe Quesada Museum, which was part of the deal of me getting the house. but since no one ever visited, i decided to start taking down some of the art from the walls.
Just last week I dreamnt wolverine and I traveled back in time and fought white supremacist in what had to be “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” setting. Reading comics and watching TNT before bed will do that to you.
That Batman’s name is the Esther of Zur En Arrh.
@Stevenson Murray:
That’s a comic I would read.
Esther, this story made me smile; thank you for sharing
I think that dream is better than Batman looking at you and saying… “I am your father!!!”
Or maybe it isn’t.
@Gavok: Then you have it much worse.
@one zen bullet: Where’s my plaid cape?!?!
@Carver: given what happens to the kids of comic book characters, my dream is much, much better.