Dark Knight Strikes Again: Politics as Usual
August 26th, 2013 by david brothers | Tags: dark knight strikes again, frank miller, lynn varley
I always liked this page from Frank Miller & Lynn Varley’s Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
I really dig that bit, despite the Ayn Randiness of it. I like how it perfectly sketches that character out, giving him a moral immovability that’s also present in characters like Rorshach. There is Justice and there is Crime, and one must be eliminated at all costs.
Hawkboy discusses his life as if it were a conflict, a constant series of battles between Us and Them, the Just and the Fallen. There is always something To Be Triumphed Over, which ain’t necessarily the best way to look at the world. The directness of the statement appeals to me a great deal. It posits a world where change is not only possible, but possible due to the direct intervention of human hands. If something’s gone wrong, you reach out a hand, you take hold, and you fix it, and that thing has no choice but to bow to your will.
“I do not accept these deaths. I do not accept this crime.” That mentality sits at the root of a lot, if not most, superheroes. With precious few exceptions, your average superhero is doing something that is wildly illegal, but they’re doing it for “good reasons.” When people talk about how cape comics have fascist or authoritarian elements, they’re talking about Superman bending a dictator to his will, Batman creating a surveillance state for the protection of the people inside it, the Punisher playing at executioner. They are the Good Guys, so what they do is by definition Right and Just, even when it is illegal and horrible, because we know their hearts are in the right place.
This sort of doctrine really only works in comics, where you can “avenge” someone’s death and have that be an actual ending or provide closure. Real life doesn’t work like that. There are a lot of things that will bow to the power of mind and bone and muscle and will, but then there are greater things that will never bow. You will have to accept death. You will have to accept crime. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you’re too poor to afford boots, right? But it’s nice to think about a world where we have total control, instead of none.
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I really enjoyed this thought, thank you for sharing it so well.
Superheroes are power fantasies for girls and boys who are powerless in their real lives. When someone like Miller or Nolan tries to make them real, the character’s two dimensionality starts screaming out ‘Look at me, Why am I wearing a mask”… “Look at me, why am I wearing spandex tights with underwear on the outside”…”Look at me, I’m suddenly trying to make sense of how ridiculous I am.” It’s Michael Jackson trying to make himself white to prove he is not who he is. Just make superhero comics and embrace it. If you wanna be meaningful, make non-superhero comics…. and quit trying to make out like a plastic flower is a real flower. A plastic flower has benefits a real flower can never have. Every little thing in life does not have to have ten tons of serious meaning.
This was something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but you stated it in a super-solid manner, David. Comics, superhero comics especially, can be a very “direct” medium, but that can also amplify what life SHOULD be in a way the audience can connect to in a much stronger manner.