Firstly, my new book Pretty Words for Hateful Bastards is available to sell in all formats.
Amazon Kindle and Paperback. Smashwords in all eBook formats.
So today I just got back from being away from the city. A trip that allowed me to get hammered and introspective. It made me think about the future of my written works and the universe I've been building for over a decade, and just now putting it into form. Aside from that, it made me think about how I'm really doing all of this world building to ultimately make a comic book.
Recently, I've been reading graphic novels, particularly Batman. The world is perpetually in love with Batman, and can you blame them? Batman's had so many sides to him, so many years, and so much mythos, that at this point talking about him further would be a waste of everyone's time. But we love having our time wasted by Batman.
It all begins with being born in an alley. The iconic place in American folklore where all tragedy strikes. Every alley in America has the criminal element waiting for some square to take the wrong shortcut home. It helps establish the randomness of Batman's origin and makes you feel that this story could happen to anyone. Since in America, the land of opportunity, everyone can grow up and become president (all thanks to our other American folk hero, Lincoln). It makes you feel that you could be Batman.
Of course not all of us can be Batman. But as a child, urging your parents to make dangerous shortcuts in dodgy slums, those parents you're trying to march off into your orphanhood are getting in the way of your true calling. What you really could achieve is being adopted by Batman and becoming Robin. Which is essentially becoming Batman in waiting. After all, Jason Todd was recruited trying to steal hubcaps from the Batmobile.
But, yes, having inexhaustible wealth is a huge part of even owning a Batmobile. And as far as we know, no multi-billionaire is tooling around their hometown fighting crime. Let alone looking up random orphans to take under their wing like you're Annie. But it fulfills that dream inside of us that our parents aren't our parents and our real parents are our culture's royalty and they're going to die and I can do whatever I want.
And deep down inside, apparently, we all want to fight crime. Or at least seeing those that we deem to deserve justice be hoisted by their own petard.
Batman fulfills that idea of man becoming driven so far by good that he faces his own fears and comes out the other side. He is superlative, but still a mortal man. The only difference between you and Bats is all those wonderful toys and Bruce Wayne's ability to turn a multi-million dollar medical company entrusted to him into a hundred-billion tech leader in all scientific disciplines. And of course years of training, data harvesting and resource management.
Batman is the full spectrum of everything right and wrong about comics. But that's because he's had to endure every age of comicdom and be re-written to be cool, dark, campy, gay, and all spaces and mixtures in between. Batman wears a hat for everyone. Even the people who haughtily say they don't like Batman.
The story of the Bat is a primal one. And there's been dozens of amazing interpretations by the greatest talent in the fields of storytelling. But to accept the story of Batman, you have to accept the entire ugly history. From alley to return, Batman is the modern day Jesus. Consistently resurrected to sacrifice his body and bleed to save us all from ourselves.
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