Holy Thesis!

Batman as the Ameri-Classical God-Like Hero

Andrew Marshello
 Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Bruce Wayne’s Platonic American Dream 8

The Homoerotic Dynamic Duo 16

Death and the Batman 24

City of Bats 35

Gallery 49

Works Cited 60

All emphases in the quotations contained in this paper are those of the original authors. Other alterations such as
ellipses and brackets are editorial on the part of this thesis’ author.

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2
 Weird figure of the dark. The avenger of evil. The Caped Crusader. The World’s Greatest

Detective. The Dark Knight. For nearly 75 years, an icon known by many titles has permeated the

American consciousness through print, radio, television, video games, and film. With his

distinctive yellow and black symbol illuminating the night sky and his own dark chest, Batman is

a character designed to be memorable. In the years since his creation by artist Bob Kane and writer

Bill Finger, the fearsome hero has transcended his creators’ intentions and surpassed mere

memorability to enter the ranks of such unforgettable modern cultural figures as Sherlock Holmes

and Mickey Mouse. Batman, however, with his stories and cities and crime-fighting partners,

possesses something other iconic figures of pop culture lack. Like Superman before him, and the

countless imitators and inspired new characters alike that followed, Batman possesses something

pop culture icons of other mediums cannot. Superheroes - as an idea and as a genre - express tropes

from classical mythology, depicting massively powerful humanoid figures charged with the

protection of Earth and humanity. Like the heroes of classical literature, each superhero embodies

and defends an ideal, and Batman best reflects those ideals of the American society in which he is

continuously created, namely self-creation and justice.

If superheroes are gods - a premise put forward by acclaimed superhero writer and genre

enthusiast Grant Morrison in Supergods, his personal account of the history of superhero comics -

there is no god more powerful than the original superhero, the all-powerful and all-loving

Superman. First appearing on the striking cover of Action Comics #1 - exhibiting his superhuman

strength to hoist a car up from the ground - Superman was a different hero than anything that had

ever come before. Beyond the clear illustration of his power, what makes Superman so

immediately appealing before the cover is even opened is his striking visual design. The red and

blue color scheme is basic and evokes the American flag, but the yellow and red shield on his chest
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sets the hero apart while easily reminding any reader who it is they’re looking at. One of the most

enduring comic traditions established by Superman’s design is the distinctive look of his blue and

red tights: underwear on the outside. “It was common for the advanced races in pulp illustrations,”

one of the main influences on early comics, especially Batman, “to sport capes, tights, and exterior

underpants” (Supergods 14), but the ultimate influence comes from a very real source in the

contemporary America of early comics creators. Grant Morrison describes a photograph captured

of a circus in the 1930s, noting “the familiar, faintly disturbing overpants-belt combo, here worn

by men with handlebar mustaches, pumping dumbbells in their meaty fists and staring bullishly at

the camera” (14). While lost to time along with the cultural influence of the circus itself, the look

of the strongman was recognizable to those whose eyes happened upon Action Comics #1 when it

was newly published in 1938. The emphasis on pure masculine strength evokes classical Greek

values and became a defining element of the superhero aesthetic.

In spite of Superman’s instant popularity and influence upon his debut, recent years have

seen a greater public adoration of one of his earliest successors, initially created to ape the success

of Action Comics. When artist Bob Kane conspired with perpetually uncredited writer Bill Finger

to create the hero National Comics desired to replicate Superman’s success in their flagship book

Detective Comics, published alongside Superman’s Action, he took direct inspiration from then-

recent films The Bat Whispers (1930) and The Mark of Zorro (1920) as well as the mystifying bat-

like wings of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying prototype ornithopter. Initially, “Kane had designed a

hero with a black mask like Zorro’s, stiff black wings like Leonardo’s ornithopter, and red tights

reminiscent of Superman’s” (Daniels 21). Even in these early stages, Kane’s bat-like superhero

was taking a shape which owed much to Superman by aping one of his costume’s most distinctive

design choices: Bat-Man, like his comic predecessor, would be visually recognizable as a pinnacle

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of human (if not entirely superhuman) strength. Revisions suggested by Finger - including a

pointed cowl rather than a mask to evoke a bat’s ears, a black and gray color scheme, and a cape

(like Superman’s) rather than Kane’s Da Vinci-like wings - cemented their Bat-Man as a darker

visual contrast to Superman, complete with a small black bat on his chest rather than a boastful

yellow shield. Yet this prototypical Bat-Man, who first appeared swinging through the sky on the

cover of Detective Comics #27 with a criminal’s neck under his arm and two gunmen in pursuit,

had not yet realized his full American spirit.

Unlike Superman, whose well-known origins and status quo - an alien orphan sent to Earth

and raised by humans, hiding his identity as a meek reporter - were quite quickly developed, only

the dual-identity aspect inherent in Superman was seen in early Batman comics. Bruce Wayne, the

rich playboy who masquerades as a bat to fight crime, was in fact the exact sort of person the early

Superman would fight against, as “the original Superman was a bold humanist response to

Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism” (Supergods 6).

Superman’s body resisted bullets - expressing a narrative disdain for firearms - and fought rich

politicians as well as criminals. Meanwhile, the early Batman brandished a pistol and used his vast

fortune to further his anti-gangster exploits. What allowed Batman to take the cultural place he has

today is an inherent element in the Batman mythos from the beginning: an embrace of change.

Kane and Finger were not afraid to change and develop the Batman character, and one of the first

evolutions the two introduced was the addition of Batman’s character origin, two pages which

would shape the character for the rest of his existence and instantly elevate Batman to the status

of the true super man in comics.

In three brief panels, Thomas and Martha Wayne are gunned down, the following page

portraying their young orphaned son’s training to mental and physical perfection, undergone to

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fulfill his boyhood promise: “I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by

spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals” (Kane et al. 1-2). This promise forms the

backbone of the Batman mythology and instantly transforms Bruce Wayne from a grandstanding

hyperwealthy member of the elite who preys on gangsters and thugs seemingly for fun into a tragic

and relatable hero whose wealth is a burden left behind by his parents, whose personality is a

façade to hide his never ending grief, and whose war on criminals is just and unending. The origins

of the Batman as told and retold over 75 years have neither altered nor failed to mention the

formative deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne at the hands of Joe Chill in Crime Alley, one dark

yet initially joyous night leaving the theater (typically from a showing of The Mark of Zorro, a

reference to one of Bob Kane’s primary influences in creating Batman). The establishment of

Batman’s origin story clearly defined the character’s motivations and abilities. More importantly,

it infused the character with classical Greek sensibilities while firmly rooting the character in

American iconography.

In the pages that follow, the importance of death in the Batman mythology in addition to

the character’s need for a companion, often young and male, and his narrative position as

philosopher ruler of the ideal republic he strives to create in Gotham City and beyond will be

shown to form a mythology evoking classical literature and philosophy while firmly rooted in

American tradition, with Batman himself as the superpersonified American dream. To examine

these elements of the Batman mythology, the focus will primarily be upon foundational Batman

stories from his creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, in addition to acclaimed texts from two authors:

Frank Miller and Grant Morrison. Along with Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Miller’s The Dark Knight

Returns transformed the entire comics industry and in its telling of Batman’s demise captured the

essence of the character. His follow-up, Year One, builds upon the essential Batman of The Dark

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Knight Returns to tell a new origin for the hero, one which expands on that of Kane and Finger

rather than replacing it. Grant Morrison’s epic Batman saga, spanning more than half a decade of

publication and three books – Batman, Batman & Robin, and Batman Incorporated - is also chosen

for analysis not only because of his skill as a writer, but his deep knowledge of comics history as

displayed in his historical memoir Supergods. Ultimately, the hero Bob Kane and Bill Finger

created is a hybrid of the classical Greek with the ultimate 20th century American. Batman is the

contemporary American realization of classical mythology and philosophy.

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 Bruce Wayne’s Platonic American Dream

The significance of Batman’s origin story is twofold: it provides motivation for the

character via the death of his parents and depicts his transformation from rich boy into a “nemesis

of crime.” The second page of Batman’s two page origin depicts a matured Bruce Wayne training

his body and mind to support his mission and discovering the symbol that will transcend the world

of Gotham City and become a real American cultural icon. This focus on physical and mental

ability evokes the ideal values of Socrates in Plato’s Republic. Through consideration of cultural

context and comparison to his comic predecessor Superman, Batman emerges as the purest

superheroic expression of the enduring American cultural motivation known as the American

Dream.

In 1931, James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” in what was meant to

be his book of the same name, ultimately entitled The Epic of America. Although he created the

phrase during the early years of the Great Depression, Adams, a well-traveled historian, used the

term to describe the enduring and uniquely American motivational spirit dating back to the

Revolution and forward to an era in which perceived attacks on the Dream led to a devastating

economic downturn, with many Americans having no choice but to dream once more. Historian

Lawrence R. Samuel, a scholar of the American Dream, describes Adams’ titular American epic

thusly: “Our greatest achievement was not that we were a shining beacon for all the world to see

but that each generation had saved the American Dream from forces that threatened to destroy it,

this the genuine epic of the nation” (Samuel 15). Even James Adams would have likely been unable

to predict that within a few short years of his description of such a significant portion of the

American cultural narrative, a new kind of protector of the Dream would emerge, the first of whom

was designed explicitly to defend “truth, justice, and the American way.”

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 Superheroes at their core are not an expression of the American Dream – Superman,

American as he is, is only so by chance, and was created as an alien socialist immigrant – but they

did colorfully burst into the American consciousness at a time when dreaming was all many could

do. Comics writer and historian Grant Morrison, whose credits include multiple takes on the

Batman and Superman mythologies, observes, “The original Superman was a bold humanist

response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism”

(Supergods 6). Batman too, as a successor to Superman created and published not long after the

runaway success of the first superhero’s debut, serves as a very different kind of fear response, his

origin story an agent and embodiment of the American Dream itself.

“LEGEND: THE BATMAN AND HOW HE CAME TO BE!!” Before this initial depiction

of Batman’s origin story in the first pages of Detective Comics #33, readers did not know who

Batman was or where he came from. They might have been familiar with his alter ego, Bruce

Wayne (again following in the footsteps of Superman, or in this case Clark Kent, Kane and Finger

gave the nighttime vigilante a day job as a millionaire playboy who lunches with Gotham’s Police

Commissioner), but how he came to be was a mystery. When Kane and Finger finally pulled back

the caped curtain, they revealed a crying boy at his bedside, mourning the loss of his parents and

declaring war on all criminals. This, not the swaggering rich playboy, is the true Bruce Wayne

behind Batman’s mask. Notably, the young Bruce Wayne does not decide to become a bat at his

bedside (though Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins

trilogy of films feature a Bruce Wayne who explored the bat-filled cave beneath Wayne Manor as

a child, only to be frightened by its inhabitants), he only devotes himself to his mission of a war

on crime. To that end, readers see him become “a master scientist” (the means are incredibly vague,

but it explains his detective and analytical prowess), develop his body to the point of “physical

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perfection” (illustrated by the resonating superhuman image of a man in tights lifting a barbell),

and offhandedly comment that his wealth will give him any additional means necessary to fight

crime. Among the ideal qualities of a Guardian in Plato’s Republic are “strength” and “a

philosophic disposition” (66), or “the love of knowledge” (65). Indeed, Socrates indicates that the

education of these Guardians should focus on “the physical training we give to the body and the

education we give to the mind” (68), and Bruce Wayne trains both to perfection. Through the

achievement of Platonic ideals and the reminder of the narratively infinite Wayne fortune, Bruce

Wayne’s superpowers are established.

Many of the familiar tropes of the American idea and experience –

continually rising expectations (that tomorrow will be better than
today), the entrepreneurial spirit, the sacredness of home, the
seductiveness of wealth, the pressure to succeed, our perverse
fascination with ‘hope’ and ‘change,’ and the belief that ‘anything
is possible’ – are all embedded in the Dream (Samuel 5).

Lawrence Samuel’s list of typical expressions of American ideals, supplemented with “the

impetus for personal transformation, the fantasy of a perfect life, the desire to be someone one is

not, the quest to achieve something just beyond reach, a society without poverty or crime” (5), can

be found embodied in Bruce Wayne’s creation of Batman. His entire transformation is based on

optimistic expectations – the dream of a world without crime and criminals – fueled by a war

waged out of his own home, funded by his vast fortune. For Bruce Wayne and eager comics readers

alike, Batman himself is “the fantasy of a perfect life,” born out of “the desire to be someone one

is not” (5). Bruce Wayne’s leisurely capitalist day job aside, Batman himself is a more

entrepreneurial superhero than Superman before him or any superhero after until the creation of

Marvel Comics’ Iron Man in the 1960s. Unlike Superman, and most superheroes who would

follow from either major comics publisher, Batman’s superpowers of peak intellect and strength

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are not powers he was born with, nor are they powers that were happened upon - Bruce Wayne

was never injected with super-serum or bitten by a radioactive bat - the superpowers of Batman

were achieved, through hard work by Bruce Wayne with help from his father before him (Bill

Finger’s original narrative has no issue with Bruce Wayne being from old money, but later writers

would give Bruce Wayne an active role in maintaining the fortune which funds his heroic exploits,

as actually earning the money one possesses is an important element to the American Dream in

theory, if not in cultural practice). Christopher Latch, in his own American examination The

Culture of Narcissism, calls “the self-made man” the “archetypal embodiment of the American

dream” (Samuel 10), and as far as superheroes are concerned, few if any are more self-made than

Batman, and there were none like him in 1939.

Transformation – “The enduring desire to reinvent ourselves, to be whomever we want to

be” (3) – is a crucial element of the American Dream as well as Batman’s fictional creation and

continuing metafictional existence. Beyond the importance of self-transformation, found at the

heart of the Batman mythos and many American success stories, there is the issue of mythological

malleability. “Because [the American Dream] is a product of our collective imagination, it could

mean whatever we want or need it to mean,” Lawrence Samuel explains. “Mutable and amorphous,

the American Dream is the Zelig of mythologies, able to transform itself to fit virtually any

situation or cause” (4-5), and Batman too is shaped and re-shaped to fit the contemporary social

ideals of his many portrayals. The Batman known today – not just through comic books, but

television, film, and public consciousness – has evolved greatly from the gun-brandishing pulp

hero of early Detective Comics. Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” –

the final Batman story in a world which will likely never truly see the final Batman story –

expresses the inherent flexibility in the Batman character and mythology which allows it to endure.

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With artwork from Andy Kubert depicting wildly different visual styles of Batman through the

years, Gaiman explores the many ways in which Batman can “die,” all of which carry a consistent

narrative thread: he was fighting crime or saving lives. When Batman’s guide through the afterlife,

revealed to be his mother, asks what he has learned from watching his many funerals, he answers,

“I’ve learned…that it doesn’t matter what the story is, some things never change” (Gaiman and

Kubert 13). Like the American Dream, the story of Batman endures because it has a strong core –

the American origin story of a self-made Batman born out of personal tragedy – around which the

rest of the mythology can be reshaped without changing what is definitively Batman.

One aspect of the American Dream which Bruce Wayne escapes when constructing

Batman is the issue of class and upward mobility. To facilitate his war on crime and provide a

cunning alter-ego, Kane and Finger granted Bruce Wayne a limitless fortune ultimately revealed

to be inherited from his parents. However, Lawrence Samuel notes, within the American Dream,

“Part and parcel of the framework of class is the notion of upward mobility, the idea that one can,

through dedication and with a can-do spirit, climb the ladder of success and reach a higher social

and economic position” (7). Batman is in such a position from the outset of his creation, making

him the ideal to be reached by those American Dreamers; yet the gap between his self-made origins

and his inherited wealth is obvious. In 1940, Bill Finger remedied this by introducing a companion

for Batman, one who would admire him and whose story would mimic that of Bruce Wayne. The

character of Robin, initially the alias of masked circus orphan Dick Grayson, not only filled the

role of a sidekick and dialogue partner for Batman, but also became a stand-in for the reader, eager

to be like Batman. While Dick Grayson’s admiration for Batman was sufficient in representing a

Dream of better things come true for decades, the emerging modern age of comics in the 1980s

required a new Robin, one more realistic and relatable. Enter Jason Todd, first designed to be

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similar to Dick Grayson but later revised as a poor orphan from the streets of Gotham, taken in

after stealing the hubcaps from the Batmobile (the car itself a symbol of Batman’s wealth and

status). Jason Todd is the fullest realization of the class transcendence found in the American

Dream yet absent from Bruce Wayne’s transformation. Batman takes the young man under his

wing, but Todd earns his new place by working for Batman as his dutiful partner and sidekick.

Jason Todd’s worth as a hero is only expressed after his death, when Batman tells his butler Alfred,

“Jason was a good soldier. He honored me” (The Dark Knight Returns 93), honoring Robin in turn

with his words and shrine to the boy’s costume. Dick Grayson, on the other hand, continues to

grow through the years, assuming the superheroic role of Nightwing after leaving Gotham City,

eventually returning and assuming the role of Batman after his apparent death in Grant Morrison’s

first issue of Batman & Robin. Dick Grayson’s origins as Robin in the Batman mythology mirror

those of Bruce Wayne’s Batman, and his development from a traveling circus performer to

guardian of Gotham City evokes the upward mobility of the American Dream which Bruce

Wayne’s story lacks.

Lawrence Samuel calls the American Dream “The guiding mythology of the most powerful

civilization in history,” and asserts “No other idea or mythology - even religion...has as much

influence on our individual and collective lives” (1-2). It is almost unavoidable that an American

superhero, especially one created in an era when dreams were all many Americans had, would

possess aspects of this cultural force. Remarkably, the character of Batman through his origin is

infused with nearly every defining aspect of the American Dream, so much so that he could be

considered an embodiment of the Dream’s values. Just as Americans want to live the Dream, the

good citizens of Gotham City want to be Batman, or at least be like Batman. In addition to its status

in the American narrative, “The American Dream can also be seen as a dominant theme in our

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civil religion or, perhaps, our civil religion itself” (Samuel 5). More than any other force or spirit,

the Dream is the American God. In the Batman mythology, that god is given a city of worshipful

subjects and idealized in the form of the Batman.

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 The Homoerotic Dynamic Duo

While the Batman mythos echoes classical values through Batman’s embodiment of the

ideals expressed in Plato’s Republic, a more problematic aspect of classical Greek culture has

pervaded the world of Batman since the introduction of one of its most popular heroes. This

particular issue of social interaction between men and boys was troublesome to some early

American readers, including one man in particular who caused a social backlash against comics

and a revision of the dynamics of the Dynamic Duo. The relationship between Batman and Robin,

especially the first Robin Dick Grayson and his immediate successor Jason Todd, reflects the

classical Greek value of pederasty, a word which implies pedophilia in contemporary America.

The evolution of the Batman-Robin dynamic in the wake of controversy reflects American morals

and once again results in a conception of the character which simultaneously exists in the classical

world he recalls and the American society which spawned and continues to influence him.

In his introduction to The Symposium, Plato’s depiction of an intellectual Greek male

gathering of the same name and philosophical exploration of the concept of love, translator

Christopher Gill discusses what he calls the “erotic-educational relationship” prominent in the text.

This relationship, he writes, “is one between an older and a younger male, in which the older

initiates the younger into ‘virtue,’ as understood in male citizen circles” (xv). While the inclusion,

discussion, and ultimate endorsement of love between an older and younger man in The

Symposium does not reflect the attitudes of classical Greek culture as a whole, Plato nevertheless

portrays a very real type of romantic (and often erotic) relationship which existed in that society.

Plato’s second recorded speaker at his fictitious symposium, Pausanias, following an endorsement

of homoerotic desire by Phaedrus, bifurcates the male erotic-educational relationship into two

forms: Common and Heavenly. Common love, according to Pausanias, “is the kind of love that

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inferior people feel. People like this are attracted to…bodies rather than minds” (13). Common

love can be heterosexual or homosexual, but Heavenly love “is directed [by men] at boys…feeling

affection for what is naturally more vigorous and intelligent” (13). This love, “which aims to

produce virtue” (16) in the younger boyfriend, is the superior form according to Pausanias. When

Socrates tells of his dialogue with the wise oracle Diotima towards the end of The Symposium, he

endorses Pausanias’ conception of Heavenly love, with one key revision, summarized by Gill:

“The lover’s motivation is directed only at making the boyfriend better and not also at sexual

gratification” (xxxi). With sexual contact removed from the ideal of Heavenly love, the early

relationship between Batman and Robin can easily be placed in such a context. Early comics within

the confines of Batman’s Gotham City featured few women and no female heroes. As a pinnacle

of strength and intelligence, Batman expresses a Pausanian/Socratic value for the vigorous and

intelligent in his training of the Boy Wonder.

When Bill Finger conceived of a young male partner for Batman, it was not to fulfill any

romantic or sexual needs of the Caped Crusader, but more basic human needs: companionship and

conversation. “The thing that bothered me,” Finger once said, “was that Batman didn’t have

anyone to talk to” (Daniels 38). Enter Dick Grayson: Robin! The acrobat-turned-crime-fighter

ignited audience passions and gave young readers a heroic character to identify with, inventing the

“sidekick” superhero role in the process. In 1955, after fifteen years of existence, Robin’s role –

along with the role of comics in American society – was threatened by a very real antagonist to

superheroes. That year, a psychiatrist named Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the

Innocent, a book describing the various social evils he believed were perpetuated by comic books.

Among those was sexual deviance, and within that category was homosexuality; to illustrate the

perceived endorsement of lesbian and gay activity in comic books, Wertham chose two specific

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superheroic targets: Wonder Woman and Batman and Robin. Wonder Woman’s early stories,

written by an S&M enthusiast, often explicitly reflected sexual themes, especially bondage, such

as when after releasing a group of Nazi slave girls, “Wonder Woman’s solution was to allow them

to continue to express their nature as born slaves by relocating to Paradise Island, where they could

enjoy bondage under the loving gaze of a kind mistress” (Supergods 43). When it came to Batman,

Wertham saw beyond the child-friendly surface content of Bill Finger and Bob Kane, among other

contemporary artists working on Batman titles such as Jerry Robinson, to assert that “Only

someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to

realize a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature

‘Batman’ and his young friend ‘Robin’” (190). The distinction of a mature Batman and a young

Robin is important, not only for better understanding the team’s relationship in context of the

Greek erotic-educational relationship, but Wertham’s own interpretation of Batman and Robin in

such a context: “The term pederasty does not mean – as is often erroneously believed – a crude

physical relationship between young men. It comes from the Greek word pais meaning a youth or

boy…Pederasty means the erotic relationship between a mature man and a young boy” (189).

While Wertham intended to disparage the Batman comic books and (successfully) turn public

opinion against them, his basis of interpreting the Batman and Robin dynamic in the context of

Greek pederasty is not unfounded. A reader of early Batman stories may observe, as Wertham did,

the following status quo:

At home they live an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and ‘Dick’
Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a ‘socialite’ and the official
relationship is that Dick is Bruce’s ward. They live in sumptuous
quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler,
Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit
by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner:
‘Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past

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 few days.’ It’s like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together
(190).

If the mid-twentieth century anti-homosexual vitriolic tone is removed from Wertham’s writing,

it can be read as a neutral and frankly accurate assessment of the nature of Batman and Robin’s

relationship at the time. When Playboy Magazine asked Grant Morrison to psychologically analyze

various superheroes he has written, he said of the Masked Manhunter: “Gayness is built into

Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no

denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the

whole concept is utterly gay” (Edwards), speaking to the almost romantic closeness of Batman and

Robin. In its original Greek context, the Batman and Robin relationship – while Socratically non-

sexual – is pederastic in its nature of a non-parental loving relationship between a man and a boy

for the sake of the boy’s improvement and growth. Such companionship, however, was taboo in

American society at the time (and most Americans would likely still shudder at the mention of

love between a man and a growing boy), and the accusations – which turned social crusaders

against comics and inspired a Congressional hearing – led Detective Comics, Inc. to make

substantial changes to the world of the hero whose flagship book gave them their name.

Today, Batgirl may be one of Gotham City’s most famous heroes, behind Batman and

Robin themselves, but in 1955 no such character existed or was even thought of by Batman’s

creators and continuing creative team. The criticisms raised in Seduction of the Innocent –

including, in addition to a wordy accusation of homosexual propaganda, that “there are practically

no decent, attractive, successful women” in Gotham (191) – caused DC to hastily introduce a new

hero, Batwoman, to serve as a new partner and potential love interest for Batman. However, their

relationship (best characterized in present-day sitcom terms as “will they/won’t they”) did little to

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confirm the practically celibate Batman’s heterosexuality; in one notable issue, “Batwoman

responded to an apparently impending doom by pledging her love to Batman, and he reciprocated,

only to declare his comments a white lie once the danger was past” (Daniels 92). The attempt at

introducing a female counterpart/love interest for Robin – the inconsistently named Bat-Girl,

completely detached from the later Batgirl character – may have unintentionally made the Boy

Wonder even more of a lover for Batman than before Wertham’s attacks. In Batman #144,

published in 1961, Bat-Girl attempts to use a trans-dimensional elf named Bat-Mite to woo Robin,

but “Robin resists, citing the example of Batman, who had renounced ‘romance’ while he was a

crime fighter. Then Batman and Batwoman show up to announce that Robin is too young to make

such a decision and will therefore be obliged to endure Bat-Girl’s unwelcome advances while the

adults look on approvingly” (Daniels 94). Robin is so unwilling to engage in romance with a girl

of his age that Batman actually resorts to forcing him to appease the girl. In this comic, it can be

assumed that Batman and Batwoman are playing the respective roles of father and mother, but

Robin’s response to the potential romance was anything but that of an eager son awaiting his new

step-mother. Batman #122 depicts Robin’s dream of a Bat-marriage, but the cover alone – upon

which Robin exclaims, “Gosh! What’ll become of me now?” – reveals a nightmare scenario in

which Batman no longer needs Robin. Robin needs to be needed by Batman, no Robin more so

than Dick Grayson. Even after an attempt to reduce even the hint of homoeroticism in the Batman

and Robin relationship, Robin still serves the role of eager young boyfriend in search of virtue

from his older lover.

As Batman’s audience aged, it was finally determined that the Boy Wonder could not

remain a boy forever; Dick Grayson grew into a Teen Titan and Batman adopted a new sidekick,

the ill-fated Jason Todd. In A Death in the Family, a late 1980s Batman story in which Jason’s

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still-new Robin runs away from Batman only to suffer death at the hands of the Joker, Batman

reveals his own anxiety regarding his boy partners: “It’s just that I felt so adrift when I lost Dick

Grayson as a partner. … I guess the truth is that I was lonely…didn’t want to go it alone” (99).

Not only is Bill Finger’s idea of a lonely Batman canonized in this passage, it is used as a legitimate

motivator for young male companionship. The specific loneliness left by Dick Grayson’s departure

is echoed elsewhere; in The Dark Knight Returns; when the female Robin Carrie Kelly appears to

save Batman, he assumes she is Dick Grayson and calls out to him in his mind (82). When Batman

fights alongside an adult Dick Grayson, Batman still expresses a fondness for Dick’s boyhood self:

“I think about when he was younger. When I was younger. It was a different time. Simpler. And…I

miss it. I miss those days. For that…it’s hard to be around him” (Winick et al. 14). It is not the

Batman and Robin dynamic that is homoerotic (an issue avoided after Jason Todd by the

subsequent introductions of Robins who respectively are an unorphaned boy living with his

parents, a girl, and Batman’s own son), but the specific relationship between Bruce Wayne and the

first Robin, the young eager Dick Grayson.

In addition to prioritizing virtue over physical attraction and pleasure, Platonic Heavenly

Love is characterized in The Symposium by constancy. Pausanias criticizes the common lover as

“not constant, because he loves something that is not constant: as soon as the bloom of the body

fades…‘he flies away and is gone’…but the man who loves goodness of character is constant

throughout his life” (16). In his time as Robin, Dick Grayson often worried about his time with

Batman coming to an end; he feared Batman would find a new partner, or worse, a permanent

lover (once again see Robin’s fear of a Bat-Marriage on the cover of Batman #122). In a flashback

to the earlier days of the Dynamic Duo in Batman: Last Rites, Robin confronts Batman over

Batwoman, asking “Are we always gonna be Batman and Robin” (Batman RIP 179)? Later, when

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Dick Grayson has taken over the role of Batman in Bruce Wayne’s absence and Bruce’s son

Damian serves as his Robin, Damian asks Dick a similar question: “If my father returns…we can’t

be Batman and Robin anymore, can we” (Batman Reborn 94)? It is a question that hinges as much

on Dick’s role as Batman as it does on his past role as Robin. Bruce Wayne will always be Batman,

and when, not if, he returns, Dick will always be there to fight on his side. Damian’s role as the

new Boy Wonder, the young Robin being taught virtue by the loving older Batman, is threatened

by the return of the new Batman’s old lover. While the grown Dick Grayson would be unlikely to

resume fighting in red and green tights, his previous role as Robin and love for Bruce Wayne

would complicate the new Robin’s dual role as Bruce Wayne’s son and Dick Grayson’s

companion. Damian may as well be asking Dick, in the face of two Batmen reunited in Heavenly

Love, “Gosh! What’ll become of me now?”

Although he may grow out of the yellow cape and green pixie boots, the role of Dick

Grayson in relation to Bruce Wayne’s Batman is one defined by the pederasty of Platonic

Heavenly Love, a growing young man eager to learn virtue from his wise and strong older mentor.

Furthermore, even half a century after Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, the creative minds

behind the Batman mythology avoid introducing new Robins who may unintentionally imply any

romantic or sexual relationship within the Dynamic Duo. Despite this, the pairing of the old Robin

with Batman’s son as Batman and Robin evokes the original Wayne/Grayson team’s pederastic

elements even in - or perhaps as a result of - the hypermasculinized world in which they fight.

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24
 Death and the Batman

Inherent in Batman’s origin in every conception of the character since his background was

first established is the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha, when Bruce was a

young boy. Universal across every portrayal of Batman is that a young Bruce Wayne, in the wake

of his parents’ death, declares war on all criminals. From this grim origin, the Dark Knight

proceeds in his crusade with only two rules dictating his behavior, rules born from the murder of

his parents at the hands of an armed mugger: no guns, and no killing. Death is an unavoidable

reality for Batman, one which is always pervasive in his thoughts via the traumatic death of his

parents. The classical Greek consciousness struggled with death as the young Bruce Wayne does,

specifically in its mystique and inevitability, and Homeric poetry reflects this regard for death

through the motivations of its god-like heroes. For Homeric heroes as well as Batman, specifically

in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, an honorable death is the ultimate goal of life and the

ideal outcome of fighting in war. From the conception of Batman as a Homeric god-like hero, one

can find others who work towards honorable deaths and inspire the hero in their passing, as well

as arrive at the nature of the Bat: patron god of Gotham City which Batman embodies as its

Homeric Caped Crusader.

Jasper Griffin, in a chapter of Homer on Life and Death entitled “Death and the God-Like

Hero,” begins by outlining the difference between men, heroes, and gods in Homer’s writing:

“Heroes…were bigger and stronger than we are,” he says, “The heroes were nearer to the gods

than…men” (81-82). These heroes of legend possess great strength, rivaling that of the gods if not

matching it, but differ from Homer’s anthropomorphized Greek gods in one notable regard:

mortality. Griffin summarizes the key difference between human-like god and god-like human in

a single sentence: “Gods are deathless and ageless, while men are mortal” (82). While a case can

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and, in fact, ought to be made for Batman as a metatextual god figure considering his cultural

immortality beyond the confines of fiction, Batman is in fact mortal as the central figure of his

own mythology. Cliffhangers in the notoriously camp 1960s Batman television series often

involved Batman (and Robin) in near-death situations from which they must escape in the next

episode; an immortal hero would have no concern for such trivialities as being dropped into a pool

of acid. The long-running comic franchise has also featured stories in which Batman must face his

mortality; most notably Grant Morrison’s aptly titled Batman RIP and Frank Miller’s The Dark

Knight Returns. While the “death” Batman RIP leads to - in which Batman looks death in the eye

down the barrel of a cosmic gun - is reserved for the superhero crossover Final Crisis, his attitude

towards death and his ultimate gambit to evade it in The Dark Knight Returns is the greatest single

example of Batman as the Homeric god-like hero.

“This would be a good death…but not good enough” (1), Bruce Wayne thinks on the very

first page of The Dark Knight Returns. Wayne is racing a new high powered car, and it overheats

as his thoughts of death ring louder than the cries in his earpiece to abandon the vehicle. At this

point, Wayne has retired from the role of Batman, and it is clear that his war was lost; Gotham

City has fallen into disarray, with criminal “Mutants” roaming the streets and openly terrorizing

citizens. It is only after this close encounter with death - like the deaths of Thomas and Martha

Wayne at the beginning of Batman’s existence - that Batman returns to Bruce Wayne’s thoughts.

In Homer’s poetry, “Death is constantly present in the hero’s thoughts” (Griffin 93), and so it is

with Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. The Dark Knight cannot make his titular return without

the renewed thought of death in the hero’s mind; just as it did for the young boy at his bedside,

death births (or in this case, rebirths) the Batman. The context of death’s constancy in the mind of

the hero is crucial, and Griffin writes specifically regarding thoughts of the hero’s own death. From

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the mental reemergence of Batman, which brings with it a conception of the higher power Batman

follows and a physical renaissance of the hero and his war, the Masked Manhunter begins to

welcome the thought of death, but only on his repeated terms of a “good death.”

There is yet a hole in the assessment of Batman as a Homeric god-like hero, and that is the

lack of a god figure in Gotham City. The hero, as shown above, is restricted and guided by his

mortality, destined – as all mortals are – to death, but distinct as a hero in dying a glorious death

against a truly honorable foe. It is helpful to note the nature of immortality in Greek gods: “The

frequent description of the gods as ‘existing ever,’ applies only to the future, because in the

fantasies constructed for the gods they could not exist forever backwards. They had beginnings

without predictable ends” (Vermuele 122). Like mortals, these gods have points of origin and only

exist eternally and undyingly from that point. The moment of creation for the god-like Batman

comes the night of Bruce Wayne’s unfortunate orphanage, when he declares a war on criminals at

his bedside. However, while the hero is born in that moment, the identity of Batman is not

constructed until years later, after he has completed his training to peak mental and physical ability.

Artist and creator Bob Kane, with the writing of Bill Finger, expediently portrays Batman’s choice

of identity as a moment of clarity when a bat flies through his open window. Frank Miller,

following seeds he planted in his ending story for Batman, expands this point of origin in Batman:

Year One. After taking a beating on his first patrol night as a vigilante, Bruce Wayne returns home

to his mansion and bleeds in his chair by the window, holding a bell with which he could call

Alfred to save him. His father’s bell, the call for his faithful servant, represents his inheritance: the

money and all that comes with it. Wayne makes a different choice as a bat, almost larger than life

in appearance, crashes suddenly through the window. “Without warning, it comes…crashing

through the window of your [his father’s] study…and mine…I have seen it before…somewhere…it

27
frightened me as a boy…frightened me…” Bruce Wayne’s realization of the bat’s significance

draws him to deliver the same dialogue penned by Bill Finger over forty years prior: “…yes, father.

I shall become a bat” (22).

The language of Bruce Wayne in Year One’s portrayal of the moment the Batman identity

is finalized holds two points of curiosity. The first is Wayne’s statement “I have seen it

before…somewhere…it frightened me as a boy…” Considering the author’s previous work, Bruce

is almost certainly referring to a moment in The Dark Knight Returns in which an older Bruce

Wayne recalls the first time he found the cave under his childhood home which becomes the base

of his anti-criminal operations. As he reconstructs his memory, Wayne narrates as if he were still

that six year old boy in the cave, witnessing its eerie inhabitant for the first time:

Something shuffles. Out of sight. …something sucks the stale

air…and hisses. Gliding with ancient grace…unwilling to retreat
as his brothers did…eyes gleaming, untouched by love or joy or
sorrow…breath hot with the taste of fallen foes…the stench of dead
things, damned things…surely the fiercest survivor--the purest
warrior…glaring, hating…claiming me as his own (18-19).

The bat that crashes through Bruce Wayne’s window in Year One, when this earlier passage is

considered, is not any bat but the same bat a young Bruce encountered, one which he says claimed

him. The second point of interest in the Year One excerpt is Bruce Wayne’s final statement, taken

directly from his original origin: “Yes father, I shall become a bat.” The intent to become a bat

(and, Miller expands, not just any bat but a single bat which haunts Wayne) suggests

transformation. In Greek heroic tradition, transformation - a fantasy “of conquering or postponing

death” (Vermuele 128) - allows the mortal man to climb “up and down the ladder between earth

and heaven, animal and man and god” (130). As Bruce Wayne faces the threat of death after his

first night on the battlefield, he chooses to accept the bat’s childhood claim on him. That bat, which

28
imprinted on him as a boy before his parents’ death and returned in his manhood, becomes the Bat:

patron god of Batman and, in time, all of the good heroes and citizens of Gotham City.

Alhough the death of his parents - constantly recalled via the image of a gun and his

mother’s scattering pearl necklace - and his own inevitable death are motivators for Batman in The

Dark Knight Returns (and indeed countless other Batman stories), an ally’s death weighs almost

as heavily on him as the loss of his parents. As he recalls his boyhood discovery of the Bat’s cave

after his first of many near-death experiences, Batman looks to a glass case in the center of his

former base of operations. The Bat calls to him in the cave, “Huge, empty, silent as a church,

waiting, as the Bat was waiting…--and he laughs at me, curses me. Calls me a fool. He fills my

sleep, he tricks me. He brings me here when the night is long and my will is weak…I gave my

word. For Jason. Never. Never again” (19). The Bat calls Bruce to take up his insignia once again,

and it is revealed that his retirement was partially motivated by the death of the second Robin,

Jason Todd, who at the time of the book’s publication was alive and actively serving under Batman.

Along with Alfred (Batman’s most faithful and constant companion who drops dead at the exact

moment Batman’s heart stops at midnight), Robin is Batman’s closest ally in his war on criminals.

The loss of Jason Todd is a catalyst for the fear of death Batman eventually overcomes, a fear

which is not only of his own mortality, but which reinforces a lesson he learned as a young boy:

everybody he loves can, and will, die. Batman of course blames himself for Robin’s ambiguous

death, and he overcomes his fear of bringing death to his partners when he accepts the streetwise

Carrie Kelly as Robin. Although Jason Todd’s death establishes a fear of mortality for the god-

like hero, the Bat’s tempting of Bruce towards the case rekindles Batman: “Master Bruce,” Alfred

asks, “Whatever happened to your mustache” (20)? Batman feels his face in surprise; the mustache

which cemented his civilian identity as Bruce Wayne is gone. With this unconscious shaving,

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Bruce Wayne has awakened as Batman once more. In classical Greek tradition, “We understand

that suffering is universal for men…and must be accepted. And glory is attached particularly to

the tomb of the dead” (Griffin 98). Bruce Wayne’s confrontation with the case at the behest of the

Bat calls him back to war, to fight in spite of the loss of a good soldier and achieve a similarly

glorious death.

A few years after the publication of The Dark Knight Returns, DC published a Batman

storyline entitled “A Death in the Family,” later compiled as one story in a book of the same name.

The story, filled with American foreign policy issues akin to those featured in The Dark Knight

Returns but with the more contemporary enemy nation Iran in place of Russia, is notable for

fulfilling one of Frank Miller’s foundational plot devices: Jason Todd, as Robin, is beaten by the

Joker before dying in an explosion. While controversial (the ultimate outcome of the blast was

determined by a phone poll), A Death in the Family revitalized the Batman status quo by giving

him something new to fight for. In fact, Batman contemplates breaking his cardinal rule and killing

the Joker in his rage after Jason’s death: “Looks like this is it. The final showdown between the

Joker and myself. Guess I always knew it would someday come to this. One of us is going to die”

(Starlin 125). Jason’s death again prepares him to face his own, and though his standoff with the

Joker does not end in death for either of them, it shows an acceptance and pursuit of death

motivated by the death of a fallen soldier. “The status of being memorable and significant after

death, the status which Homer’s own characters have for him, is achieved by great deeds and great

sufferings” (Griffin 96), and the suffering of Jason Todd at the hands of the Joker – symbolized in

descendant Batman stories by the crowbar used to beat him – results in the erection of a Miller-

like glass case memorial to the second Robin, complete with the engraving “A Good Soldier.”

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 When contemplating his life early in The Dark Knight Returns, retiring Police

Commissioner James Gordon privately reveals his own uncertainty about death, thinking, “Dying

never seemed real to me when I was young…” (58). The contemplation of death by Commissioner

Gordon - whom Miller portrays as the only good cop in a corrupt system in his later, but

chronologically earlier Batman: Year One - echoes the very real fear of death experienced by many

humans but particularly notable in the Greek consciousness, which Emily Vermuele observes “was

a major archaic theme in all Greek arts” (120). For classical Greeks, death was a permanent state,

one dreaded by normal humans and heroes alike. In Homer, “that effect [of death as the end] is

achieved, in great part, because the poet insists on…showing that even heroes fear and hate it”

(Griffin 94). Not only does the mortal and un-god-like Commissioner Gordon (for all his goodness,

Gordon is not endowed with a Bat insignia until he is accepted as an honorary but non-serving

member of Batman’s international anti-criminal syndicate) begin to contemplate the inevitability

of death as he ages, the older Batman is not without his fear of death. Not only does he take steps

to avoid an untimely death, but the lingering trauma of his parents’ death manifested in his pledge

not to kill is made absurd in his refusal to end the life of his mortal foe, the Joker. Batman

acknowledges the Joker brings death everywhere he goes, and these murders could be prevented

by the Joker’s death at his own hand: ““I’ll add them to the list, Joker,” he thinks as he pursues

the demonic clown through a murderous carnival deathtrap which has claimed the lives of innocent

Gothamites, “The list of all the people I’ve murdered—by letting you live” (The Dark Knight

Returns 117). Wiser in his age, Batman now holds himself accountable for the Joker’s murders

due to his longstanding refusal to kill him. When the Joker is finally cornered, with no way out

and defeat certain, Batman reveals his flaw, one which will lead to the apparent conditions of his

later death: it is not that Batman will not kill the Joker, he cannot kill him. Batman snaps the Joker’s

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neck, an act which appears to kill him but is laughed off by the taunting Joker: “I’m really…very

disappointed with you, my sweet…the moment was…perfect…and you…didn’t have the

nerve…paralysis…really…” (151). Batman’s regret – “…Voices calling me…a killer…I wish I

were…” (150) – expresses a failure in the god-like hero to do his duty, rendering him unworthy of

the glorious death he repeatedly denies himself and reinforcing the undesirability of the state of

death.

What is most important in the designation of the Homeric god-like hero is not a fear of

dying, but the ability to overcome that fear and achieve a hero’s death. “This is what interests the

poet very much” in Homeric poetry, says Jasper Griffin, “the sight of a hero succeeding in facing

his own death” (95). After repeated refusals to die – “This would be a fine death,” he thinks after

taking a blast to the chest high above Gotham, “But there are the thousands to think of” (The Dark

Knight Returns 51) – and defeat of Two-Face, the city’s Mutant criminals, and the Joker, Batman

still insists on dying a death he can fully endorse. “‘Gods and men honor those who are killed in

battle’ is the Homeric theme of mortal courage in risking the only life we have” (Vermuele 121),

and Batman overcomes his failure to face death in the book’s final act, in which he faces a greater

foe than ever before: Superman. Superman is not a character belonging to the Batman mythology

(although the characters and their respective mythologies have a long tradition of intersecting),

and he goes beyond Batman’s state as a god-like hero. Superman possesses cosmic powers far

greater than what the mortal Batman can hope to attain through any amount of self-improvement,

and he appears immortal even in the context of The Dark Knight Returns in which he is caught in

a Russian nuclear missile explosion. “When [gods] are wounded, it hurts and they cry, while

mortals try to laugh or be stoical” (Vermuele 124), and Superman’s cries for help to his “Mother…”

the Earth (The Dark Knight Returns 178) contrast the laughing fit of the Joker when he finishes

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Batman’s incomplete killing (151) as well as Batman’s stoic reactions to pain throughout the text,

exemplified during his battle with the Mutant leader after taking a beating: “Ribs intact—no

internal bleeding—let it look worse than it is,” and after the breaking of his arm, a simple “—No—

Don’t go into shock...” (80-82). The god-like hero and his mortal foes are used to experiencing

pain, but man’s alien superior is less accustomed and begs nature itself for mercy. It would be

difficult to classify Superman as a Homeric god in The Dark Knight Returns, as he is ultimately

mortal (or else it would be pointless for a mortal to fight him at all) and chooses the Earth as his

patron god, but he is clearly something beyond Batman. He may not be immortal, but by his steel-

skinned nature he is less mortal than Batman, and is his superior in all physical aspects. Batman

chooses Crime Alley, specifically the very lamp under which his parents were gunned down, to be

the place of his battle with Superman, and therefore the place of his death. Vermuele writes of “the

Greek hope that intelligence was a major defense against death” (119), and Batman possesses such

a hope in his fight against Superman; his strategy and planning are crucial in weakening Superman

and allowing the two to fight as equals. However, Batman seems resigned to his mortal fate as he

prepares for the battle: “…In one hour…at midnight…a grand death…” (The Dark Knight Returns

187). Batman fights valiantly, but as he predicted – in fact, prepared – just as he is about to deal

the final blow to Superman, he falls dead in the same spot his parents perished decades earlier.

Still unable to kill but no longer haunted by death, Batman embraces his own mortality. What

follows – a planned resurrection days later at Batman’s own funeral – does not lessen the impact

of his death as experienced by his peers, who after death regard him as a hero.

“Gods and men honor those who are killed in battle,” Emily Vermuele is quoted above

describing the Homeric principle of mortal courage (121), but this concept can be taken and applied

to the legacy of the numerous Robins who have died serving in Batman’s war. More Robins have

33
died than retired if counting the five – Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown,

and Damian Wayne – who served in the role in the primary Batman timeline and exclude Carrie

Kelly, Frank Miller’s Robin of the future. Even if Stephanie Brown, who died in the aptly titled

War Games, was later considered to be a temporary Robin and her death was revealed to be faked

(unlike Batman, who experienced real if not momentary death in The Dark Knight Returns; a false

death is no death at all) is excluded, that leaves half of Batman’s partners to have given their life

for him and his cause. After the death of Jason Todd, Batman swears to fight alone (a resolve

which wears thin after a youthful detective figures out his secret identity and begs to take on the

role), and has recently renewed such a pledge after the death of his son Damian in 2013’s Batman

Incorporated. Like his state at the start of The Dark Knight Returns, the vulnerable mourning

Batman (who is always in a state of mourning for his lost parents) fears death and his own

mortality. More than anything else, Batman hates death, but he achieves glory when he overcomes

his greatest fear in the name of the Bat.

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35
 City of Bats: Gotham’s Earthly City and Batman’s Heavenly Republic

With Batman conceived as a classical Homeric god-like hero, and his patron god

designated as the Bat, an inquiry is necessitated into the nature of the Bat and who its worshipers

are in Batman’s world. Augustine’s late antique bifurcation of humanity into two cities - the earthly

city and the city of God – provides a model for Batman’s world, both within the self-contained

Gotham City and beyond. To supplement this model, Plato’s Republic, which explores the question

of justice using an ideal city as a model for a just society, can be applied to Batman’s own pursuit

of justice in the unjust Gotham City and assist in understanding the city’s moral deficiencies.

Batman himself exists simultaneously in both worlds, as the god-like Batman and the human (and

essentially American) Bruce Wayne. The ideal of the Bat is justice, and the justice pursued by

Batman is defined in the terms set out in the Republic, whereas the opposing ideals – embodied in

a demonic Bat consumed by an American Puritan colonist – are similarly set out as those of an

unjust tyrannical society embodied in Gotham City and perpetuated by its simultaneously

oligarchic and democratic ruling class, consisting of both the corrupt Gotham elite and the crazed

criminals born out of Crime Alley.

In the opening chapter of the second volume of The City of God, Augustine of Hippo

declares, “there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities”

(2). These two kinds of human society, if not embodied in two literal cities, can be found occupying

the space of Gotham City in conflict with one another. While applying the city analogy to the

Batman mythology is convenient, given its dark urban setting, it explicates the moral binary

inherent within Gotham. In the overall Batman narrative, there is no moral gray area in the crime-

ridden city; superstitious and cowardly criminals are evil, while the avenger of justice Batman is

good. Evil is narratively determined as a lack of the traits Batman possesses, and perhaps Batman

36
himself is defined by an absence of the traits criminals possess; he himself is neither superstitious

nor cowardly. For Augustine, his two cities are designated thusly: “The one [city] consists of those

who wish to live after the [desires of] the flesh, the other of those who wish to live after the spirit”

(2). He continues, later, “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthy, by

the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt

of self” (47). Assuming the “God” watching over Gotham City is indeed the Bat, and that it thrust

itself upon a grieving Bruce Wayne to carry out its will, then those who inhabit the earthly city –

to say nothing yet defining the heavenly city in terms of Batman’s world – ignore the will of the

Bat for their own selfish desires. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates – posthumously acting as the voice

of Plato rather than as a representation of his own philosophical speaking – designates the virtues

of men: “We divide men into three basic types, according to whether their motive is knowledge,

success, or gain” (320). He positions men motivated by knowledge as the only appropriate rulers

of his Republic, and casts those only concerned with success for its own sake or monetary gain

aside as lesser. Considering these enduring classical texts, one from classical Greece and the other

from late antiquity, the citizens of the earthly city ought to be defined as those not concerned with

the will of God (i.e. the Bat), but their own goals, in this case particularly success and recognition

as well as monetary gain.

Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, a pseudo-sequel to The Dark Knight Returns which

portrays Batman’s birth after Miller’s grim portrayal of his death, depicts a Gotham City in dire

need of a savior. When young detective Jim Gordon - future police commissioner and friend of

the Batman - arrives in Gotham, he is greeted by Detective Flass who gives him the following

introduction to the city: ““Welcome to Gotham, Jimmy. It’s not as bad as it looks. Especially if

you’re a cop. Cops got it made in Gotham” (3). Year One immediately establishes the police as

37
members of the ruling class in Gotham City. Jeph Loeb’s The Long Halloween, similarly set

towards the start of Batman’s storied career, characterizes Jim Gordon as “An honest cop. In

Gotham City, he is unique” (Loeb v11, 10). Gordon provides an outsider’s perspective to the

activities of the Gotham City Police Department, a perspective which excludes him from the

common population of the city. The police do not act in benefit of the city, but in their own self-

interest, most strikingly revealed in Year One’s extravagant banquet scene in which police

commissioner Loeb dines with Gotham’s rich elite. Although Gotham’s top economic class are

rarely depicted, possibly to avoid hypocrisy in criticizing the wealthy in a world whose virtuous

crusader is the richest of all, here Batman is allowed to ruthlessly condemn and attack those whose

goals are strictly gain. “You’ve eaten Gotham’s wealth,” he growls from the darkness, “Its spirit.

Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on--none of you are safe” (38). Batman is attuned to

the will of the city’s spirit, the Bat, and the concept of the Bat’s consumption by evil will later be

made literal by Grant Morrison. The association of the police force with the wealthy (excluding

Bruce Wayne) hints at an oligarchy in Gotham City, one which Batman intends to disrupt and a

ruling class specifically criticized in the Republic as “A society where it is wealth that counts…and

in which political power is in the hands of the rich and the poor have no share of it” (284). This

divide creates an unavoidable conflict between the rich and poor and is subject to dismantling at

the hands of the unhappy impoverished majority. The oligarchs of early Gotham City, as defined

by Frank Miller and others through depictions of the Gotham City Police and the rich elite as well

as fat-walleted mafia crime lords who influence the police force, act in their own self-interest and

against the will of the Bat, placing Gotham’s initial ruling class firmly in the Augustinian earthly

city.

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 According to Plato, “Democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile their

opponents” (292). It is easy to classify later depictions of Gotham City, such as in Frank Miller’s

The Dark Knight Returns or Grant Morrison’s post-Bruce Wayne apocalyptic future, as anarchic,

but to do so is to ignore the true ruling class which assumes power in the later Gotham. In these

more dismal visions of Gotham, the city is overrun by criminals, neither the like of mafia-like

organized crime or demonic super-criminals such as the Joker. These criminals – “Mutants” in

The Dark Knight Returns and hordes of escaped Arkham convicts in Batman #666 and Batman

Incorporated – overrun the streets, gleefully indulging in their criminal desires. Again, these are

people who act solely in their self-interest, a society in which “everyone arrange[s] his life as

pleases him best” (Plato 293). This is the will of Gotham’s criminal majority, existing in versions

of the city which suffers from a heat wave (The Dark Knight Returns) or is literally ablaze (Batman

Incorporated v2 issue 5). The citizens of the earthly city, Augustine writes, “shall burn in

everlasting fire” (450), and the democratic Gothams of the future under unchecked criminal rule

(as these are cities in which Batman has either retired or died without returning) are suffering their

deserved fate. Yet, narratively, it is Batman who must save Gotham City. He does not do so in

pursuit of his own desires, but in the pursuit of justice.

According to Socrates in the Republic, when the three parts of the soul – those concerned

with knowledge, success, and gain – come together, justice can be achieved. With that, Plato gives

his best nonrigid definition of justice: “Its real concern is not with external actions, but with a

man’s inward self, his true concern and interest” (152). Here, a problem may be encountered: The

Bat’s ideal is justice, and justice is Platonically defined as one’s own true concern and interest

when the soul acts in unity. At the same time, the heavenly attribute designated by Augustine is

acting in the interest of God (the Bat) rather than one’s own interest. These viewpoints must be

39
reconciled before entering a discussion of Batman’s heavenly city and how it is to be achieved

with specific focus on justice, Batman’s stated ideal. As has already been established, Bruce

Wayne encountered the Bat as a young boy in the cave beneath his house and once again after his

parents’ death and the completion of his physical and mental training. Bruce declares his sense of

justice following this initial encounter, as a sobbing boy at his bedside by candlelight, pledging to

eliminate all criminals in order to prevent situations which led to the death of his parents from ever

happening again. At the point of the second encounter with the Bat, in which human Bruce Wayne

transforms into the god-like Batman, Bruce has already converged the three parts of his soul: he

has expressed concern for knowledge in his mental training, for wealth as returning CEO of Wayne

Industries, and success in venturing onto the street to fight crime. It is then, only after his own

concern and interest has been stated and the soul’s three desires intersected, that the Bat imprints

onto Wayne. In doing so, the Bat takes on meaning specific to Wayne; by choosing him to carry

its symbol, the Bat’s ideal of justice reflects that of Bruce Wayne: in Gotham City, justice is the

elimination of crime in order to prevent dishonorable death.

The heavenly city in the world of Batman is one which follows the ideals of its God; it is

thusly a just city. The justice desired by Batman and his ideal city can be modeled after the city

similarly conceived as Plato’s just Republic. Most urgently, following both The City of God and

the Republic, the heavenly city would not consist of any citizens acting against the Bat’s will; i.e.

any who may think or behave unjustly. This city must be small, since as Augustine writes, “many

more are left under punishment than are delivered from it” (438). Gotham City itself, therefore, is

doomed to its fiery fate as the lesser, earthly city. However, Batman, as the god-like hero acting in

the patron God’s interest, can deliver some of Gotham’s deserving citizens to a better fate. The

heavenly city – a City of Bats, perhaps – is one populated by a class of people Plato distinguishes

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as the “Guardian,” protecting justice from those who question its ideals. The qualities of the

Guardians are as follows: ““Keen perceptions and speed,” “courage, if he is to fight well,” “in

character they must be high-spirited,” with “a philosophic and a love of learning (64-66). Batman,

of course, fits all of these (Plato’s use of “high-spirited” does not necessarily designate a positive

attitude, as the ensuing conversation reveals, but a tenacity of spirit), and according to the Republic,

it is for the good of the city to educate the Guardians in these qualities. Enter Batman’s closest

associates: the Robins who train under him and fight alongside him. The guidelines for education

of the Guardians are set out by Socrates in the Republic, and they are based on “the time-honoured

distinction between the physical training we give to the body and the education we give to the

mind” (68). Bruce Wayne is seen in Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s original origin panels training

himself in mind and body in order to become a hero, and he frequently tests the wit and strength

of his Robins in order to impart his own values and human ideals upon them. However, just as

Batman and Robin are not equals in the war on criminality, the Guardian class itself is divided.

Within the ideal Republic, Socrates says, “It is obvious that the elder must govern, and the younger

be governed” (113). Obvious indeed within the Dynamic Duo, as it would be difficult to imagine

the Boy Wonder giving orders to his old chum Batman. Further requirements for the Guardians

are set out in the Republic, which can align for the requirements to access and live within the

heavenly city of the Bat: “Men who, besides being intelligent and capable, really care for the

community;” “those who appear…most likely to devote their lives to doing what they judge to be

in the interest of the community,” “who will most firmly stick to the principle that they must always

do what they think best for the community” (113-114). Although Batman and Robin’s surrounding

community is composed of citizens of the damned earthly Gotham City, it is their duty to protect

the Gotham population before acting for their own safety or benefit. The class distinction between

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Guardians is determined by a series of trials throughout their lives; “We must introduce our

Guardians when they are young to fear…and any Guardian who survives these continuous trials

in childhood, youth, and manhood unscathed, shall be given authority in our state” (115). Bruce

Wayne himself faced fear as a child, both in facing the Bat under his own home and in the criminal

encounter which led to his parents’ death. Fear is Batman’s weapon, and his Robins must be trained

both in how to face fear and how to use it against criminals. Those Guardians who survive the

lifelong trials are to be Rulers, while the younger Guardians “should more strictly be called

Auxiliaries, their function being to assist the Rulers” (115). In training his Auxiliary Robins,

Batman is preparing his associates for a turn as Ruler, and is laying the foundation for the heavenly

city of the Bat.

While Augustine’s earthly city can easily be embodied in Gotham City, comparable to the

Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah if not Hell itself, the heavenly city of justice Batman aspires to

create does not have such a readily apparent analogue in Bruce Wayne’s world. Although he fights

his war on the streets of Gotham City, it is criminals who rule that domain, where Batman is the

fearsome mythological hero who strikes back against them. As Bruce himself thinks, moments

before the Bat crashes into his window in Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, “…God…fear of

God…fear…I have to make them afraid…” (17). Fear is not his style of ruling, but his style of

warfare. His rule is over his own domain: as Bruce Wayne, the quintessential American

businessman, he rules Wayne Enterprises through which he funds the efforts of Batman, who

wages his war out of the caves beneath Wayne Manor. The house itself is fallible, as shown after

its destruction by an earthquake in Batman: Cataclysm and its detonation at the moment of

Batman’s death in The Dark Knight Returns. The caves underneath, in which Bruce first

encounters the Bat and claims for his own as the “Batcave,” endure through these catastrophes

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even when the human construction above falls. In The Dark Knight Returns, even without Wayne

Manor, Robin and the Mutants – saved members of Gotham’s criminal class – gather to honor

Batman and continue his work alongside him, newly risen from the grave. The presence of the

Ruler meeting with his Auxiliary and the new citizens saved from damnation would suggest that

the Batcave is the physical location of Batman’s city, but it is the mere foundation. Just as his death

in the far-off future The Dark Knight Returns allows Batman to invite the citizens of Gotham to

his own just republic, his narratively present-day death in Grant Morrison’s Batman RIP and the

ensuing events in Morrison’s subsequent Batman and Robin series set off the expansion of

Batman’s war in order to construct his ideal world society.

In Batman RIP, Batman comes under attack by the Black Glove, an organization run by a

man named Thomas Hurt, who claims he is Batman’s own father Thomas Wayne. In the first stage

of Hurt’s attack, Batman is implanted with a trigger phrase – “Zur En Arrh,” a reference to Batman

#113’s story “Batman - The Superman of Planet-X” – and when it is activated, Batman’s entire

consciousness is stripped away and he is dumped in Crime Alley, where Hurt now claims he staged

his own death as Thomas Wayne and organized the death of Bruce’s mother Martha. In slandering

the Wayne family name and attacking Bruce’s Auxiliaries Nightwing – former Robin Dick

Grayson – and Robin – now Batman’s adopted son Tim Drake – Thomas Hurt breaks Batman

down in both his personas as the American status symbol and the classical god-like hero. In the

Republic, Socrates is challenged by Glaucon to show that justice is worth pursuing on its own

merit, rather than for the recognition which comes with performing just actions. Socrates then

proposes how to test a truly just man: “Our just man must have the worst of reputations…even

though he has done no wrong, so that we can test his justice and see if it weakens in the face of

unpopularity and all that goes with it” (45). Yet the lost and drugged former Bruce Wayne - with

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the help of the unsubtly named “Honor Jackson,” a hallucinated black homeless man far from the

idealized American – is able to recall his duty despite being reduced to a street roamer with nothing

left but his last wad of cash. Jackson, a manifestation of the amnesiac Wayne’s mind, tells him the

forgotten history of where he stands: “Something…happened here a long time ago. Call it a

miracle on Crime Alley. From the sad graveyard, ashes of a little boy’s worst nightmare,

something unforeseen arose, didn’t it” (Batman RIP 89)? Although the primary Batman has been

eliminated, these words – coupled with Honor’s disappearance and the revelation that he died a

day earlier – inspire the drug-addled homeless shell of Bruce Wayne to nonetheless strike back as

“the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh.” Despite having nothing left, Bruce Wayne remains Batman, fighting

for justice on its own merit.

Of course, while the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh admired “the view from rock bottom,”

Thomas Hurt further brought the descent of the earthly Gotham City into its damned fate. When

Batman finally returns to full consciousness to fight Hurt after being buried alive, he is already in

control of Gotham, and boasts, “This ugly city you love is ours, Bruce” (Batman RIP 151)! Hurt’s

presence once again changes the rule of Gotham City, this time from a criminally controlled

democracy to the tyranny of a single evil ruler. To Socrates in the Republic, “It’s obvious…that

[tyranny] arises out of democracy” (298), and is described as a “poor” state wherein its citizens

are in “complete slavery” and “both state and individual…must by haunted by fear” (316). If

Batman truly ruled Gotham City with fear, he too would be a tyrant of this type, but it is Hurt who

declares rule. The only way to defeat Hurt is to die with him, and so seemingly Batman goes down

with Hurt in a helicopter explosion. At this point, left without a Batman, the fall of Gotham seems

imminent as it descends into criminal madness once more. Dick Grayson, Batman’s first Robin,

realizes there must still be a Batman to fight for the ideal heavenly city of justice, and assumes the

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role out of duty to Bruce Wayne, saying “I promised I’d finish what he started” (Batman Reborn

19). In the Republic, Guardians are trained to assume the role of Ruler once they have endured

their trials, but Rulers must be of a philosophical mind and resist taking on the role: “What we

need is that the only men to get power should be men who do not love it” (248). Dick Grayson

reluctantly adopts the cape and tights in anticipation of Bruce Wayne’s return to the dead – in

actuality an odyssey through time from prehistoric humanity, another form of stripping Batman of

his resources and status – but Hurt emerges once more in Gotham before Bruce Wayne returns, to

reveal his true nature. He is Thomas Wayne; not Batman’s father, but a Puritan ancestor, who feast

upon a bat in a transformational ritual just as Gotham’s richest were accused of feeding on its

spirit. Rather than transforming him into a god-like hero of justice, this Bat took on the negative

intentions of Thomas – lust for power and status – and made its worshiper into an immortal

demonic tyrant. The tyrannical intentions of Hurt, who constantly calls himself “the Hole in

things,” are made clear once again in the final chapters of Batman and Robin, when he declares,

“Wayne Manor is mine. Gotham City is mine” (Batman and Robin Must Die! 13). The city and

the mansion, two American symbols of economic success and representations of the respective

earthly and heavenly cities, are both to be ruled by Hurt. When Bruce Wayne finally returns as

Batman, to his former Auxiliary Dick Grayson serving as the Ruler Batman alongside his son

Damian as Robin, Damian only has one thing to say to Hurt, setting the stakes of the ensuing battle:

“Devil…meet Bat-God” (81).

Bruce Wayne’s Batman and Thomas Wayne/Hurt’s Hole in Things do not transcend their

role as earthly vessels for metaphysical forces of justice and tyranny, but Robin’s declaration

affirms their roles and allegiances: Thomas’ Bat is the “Devil,” the force often associated with

earthly temptations which compose the sin of Augustine’s earthly city, while Bruce’s is “God,” a

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force for good presiding over the heavenly city. This time, Batman wins the battle, with the

assistance of the Ruler and Auxiliary acting as Guardians in his place, and after the success of two

Batmen fighting alongside each other, Bruce Wayne has the true vision of his great Bat Republic.

The answer to the classical god-like Batman’s problems came from ignoring the American tycoon

Bruce Wayne’s area of success; to spread justice and create a heavenly city with a greater power

of salvation, “Batman” expands from an identity to an ideal. Bruce Wayne, as the original witness

to the Bat, will serve as CEO of Batman Incorporated.

In “Planet Gotham,” the prologue to Batman Incorporated, Grant Morrison’s final

statement on Batman, Batman’s many Auxiliaries – all current or former Robins and Batgirls –

gather in the Batcave to lay the foundation for a worldwide Batman franchise. By marrying

Batman’s classical war tactics with Bruce Wayne’s American business strategies, Batman

Incorporated is able to establish Guardians – Rulers and Auxiliaries in Batman and Robin-like

pairings – around the world. The heavenly city is not to be confined beneath the earth, but above

it. Again, Batman’s desires are just, as he declares, “I feel it’s the responsibility of people in my

position to more actively fight for a better, safer world” (“Nyktomorph” 4). As Batman’s war on

criminals extends worldwide, he establishes Batmen of many countries, including keeping Dick

Grayson and Damian Wayne as the Ruler and Auxiliary of the Batcave in Gotham City. Two

events in Batman Incorporated establish that Batman has finally, in the present day, achieved the

heavenly power to save from the earthly damnation of Gotham which the opening title argues has

now spread worldwide. Just prior to the events of Batman RIP, in Grant Morrison’s Batman #664,

Batman gives a young prostitute dressed in the clown makeup of the Joker’s associates a business

card and offers her a “straight job.” When Batman Incorporated begins its operations, this girl,

named Ellie, can be seen working as a desk receptionist for Bruce Wayne. Like the Mutants in The

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Dark Knight Returns, Ellie’s salvation from living on the Gotham streets and serving the Joker

brings her to Batman’s domain. More significantly, Jim Gordon – the “unique,” “honest cop”

(Loeb v11, 10) of Gotham City – is given a special Bat-imprinted badge to signify his working

relationship with Batman Incorporated. When Gotham’s two Batmen, Dick Grayson finally

working alongside Bruce Wayne as an equal, consult with Gordon, he quips, “Two Batmen, huh?

Who’d believe it? Does the secret badge make me Batman, too?” Bruce Wayne’s Batman, without

hesitation in the next panel, responds, “Pretty much” (“Nyktomorph” 7). Despite living among the

city of earth, Gordon’s concern for justice allows him to escape Gotham’s clutches and become a

recognized Guardian in Batman’s new worldwide Republic. Batman Incorporated represents the

beginning of the realization of Batman’s lifelong ideal: a just society wherein crime can be

combatted and the oppressed are capable of salvation. Planet Gotham, the city of earth, faces the

no longer caved-in opposing city, named in the title of Batman Incorporated’s second volume and

composed of heavenly Guardians of justice: Planet Batman.

Over the seventy five years of his existence, Batman has assumed many roles in almost

any imaginable form of contemporary media, often changing his appearance, mannerisms, and

status quo to fit the media outlet and cultural values of the day. This alone makes Batman a

valuable and enduring character in American culture, but focusing on the iconography of the entire

Batman intellectual property ignores the few elements which have remained unchanged for the

length of the character’s existence. The foundational aspects of the Batman character are what

define the hero and his mythology: the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents by the bullets of a mugger’s

gun; the grieving boy’s resolve to eliminate all criminals; and his divinely inspired yet self-attained

transformation into Batman, who fights criminals without killing them or using a gun. Obviously

the former and lattermost elements of Batman’s origins are interconnected, but Batman’s fixation

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with death evokes classical Homeric themes, even in his refusal to kill others. The transformation

of Bruce Wayne into Batman is the moment in which the American and classical collide: Batman

is an entirely self-made hero, personifying the American Dream, his “superpowers” the mental and

physical abilities he himself perfected, skills which would make him an ideal Guardian of Plato’s

constructed Republic. The Batman mythology culturally reflects much more than what has been

discussed here, and perhaps an alternately sourced and equally strong argument could be made for

Batman as a medieval hero. That itself is the beauty of the Batman mythology; the character can

take on any and all forms as long as the core is preserved. Batman, in essence, is and must always

be the small boy at his bedside, grieving his unjustly murdered parents and dedicating his life to

the pursuit of justice. The hero who forms around that core will reflect the norms and ideas of the

society which spawns him, but he will always be Batman.

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Gallery: The Many Depictions of the Batman

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Bob Kane, 1930s-40s

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Jerry Robinson, 1940s

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Dick Sprang, 1940s-50s

52
Carmine Infantino, 1960s

53
Jim Aparo, 1970s

54
David Mazzucchelli, Year One, 1980s

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Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns, 1980s

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Bruce Timm, 1990s

57
Jim Lee, 2000s

58
Jim Lee, present day

59
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