Batman's Symbolic Role in the DC Universe
The Dark Knight's Role as an Icon of Heroic American Individualism
Oct 21, 2009
The incredible financial and popular success of Superman led National (DC) Comics to search for characters who could match the popularity of the Man of Steel. According to Mark Cotta Vaz in Tales of the Dark Knight: Batman's FIrst Fifty Years 1939-1989, National editor Vincent Sullivan hired the 22 year-old writer and artist Bob Kane to come up with that "new" superhero. Kane's creation: The Batman, debuted in the pages of Detective Comics #27on May of 1939.
Kane's new hero was nothing like Superman, instead, The Batman was a darker brooding force who operated from the twilight shadows of Gotham City where Superman fought evil in the blinding sunshine of Metropolis. Superman was a superhero where Batman was a mere mortal driven to obsession. As a symbol, Batman stood for something completely different than did the Man of Steel.
The Dark Knight as Vigilante
Batman, is simply a mortal man who takes the law into his own hands. Outside of the world of the comic book narrative, such an individual would be called a "vigilante." As a vigilante, Batman reinforces the belief that, even though aspects of society may be unjust, it is still within the power of individuals to achieve justice.
Comic creator Frank Miller explained in a 1989 Comics Interview: "...with Batman we're talking about someone who is the epitome of the symbolic character -- the will to resist ... I don't think it's necessarily a simple violent power fantasy .... I think there is a desire right now that the intelligentsia aren't aware of and can't relate to -- the desire to take back the power that we've given away as human beings, to say no to criminals and to the less overt evils we're surrounded by."
The Times Were Right For Vigilante Justice
By today's standards, such a simple plot about a young boy who becomes an obsessive-compulsive vigilante because his parents were gunned down before his eyes, might seem too simplistic to be believable. In 1939, however, with a world war looming, as Vaz explains, "it was the perfect reaction to a dangerous, complex world that was closing in. To survive, the times demanded a righteous sense of Us versus Them. In Batman's world as well, the demarcation line between good and evil was clearly drawn."
Bob Kane seemed to foreshadow this need for a clear line between good and evil in the first panel of the first Batman story in Detective #27 where he wrote: "The 'Bat-Man,' a mysterious and adventurous figure, fighting for righteousness and apprehending the wrong-doer, in his lone battle against the evil forces of society ... his identity unknown."
Readers Identify With the Batman
This simple division of the outside world into those who are good and those who are evil resonated with Batman's readers in those early days as did the vigilante notion that one person can make a difference against the forces of darkness.
Readers, according to Mike Gold in the foreword of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, could see themselves behind Batman's cowl because, "At a very early age, each and every one of us realized that we were probably not born on Krypton, we were unlikely to get bitten by a radioactive spider, and we were not the spawn of mud touched by the gods. We knew, however, that if given the proper motivations, we could become the Batman."
As an icon, Batman came to symbolize the darker, more human side of "heroism." As Bruce Wayne, Batman represented the humanity in each of the readers and Batman showed them that each were capable of heroic acts. As a mere mortal motivated by revenge and powered by obsession, Batman became the vigilante that the country needed as it steeled itself for the coming storm of World War II. In those simplistic line drawings and economical stories, Bob Kane was able to tap into the shared American unconsciousness and produce an enduring archetype.
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