Tag Archives: dc

Best Tone for Batman

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Well, it’s certainly not that.

The thing with comic book characters is that their interpretation switches from author to author. What one person thinks can cause others define them in a certain way down the line. They bring their ideals and concepts to them.

So, what tone do I think is best for the Batman? Well, for me it’s a man that’s deeply hurt and wanting to do his best to help people. He can get angry but he’s not angry all the time. He’s done work on himself to deal with things throughout the years. He can crack jokes and smile.

The mask is off and the truth is that I think that the best tone for Batman is the one from the DCAU. From the picture above, this is his reaction to the Joker hanging from a catwalk over an inferno. The Joker is screaming for help and Bats is just casually looking down at him. Bemused above all things.

When he gets angry though, it’s chilling to see and that’s of course part of the wonder of the late and great Kevin Conroy. There’s one episode where Batman encounters this cruel man that uses children as his slaves to steal for him. When he eventually captures the man, Batman says that he took an oath to never become judge, jury and executioner but he sorely wishes that he was.

How does he handle his villains? He constantly seeks their rehabilitation and to help them. There’s an episode where the Ventriloquist gets released and tries to go straight. Batman spends a great number of nights hanging outside of his apartment to make sure that he doesn’t get dragged back into the underworld. As Bruce Wayne, he gives him a job working as a mail clerk in Wayne Enterprises.

It’s been said that if you can’t write a scene with Batman comforting a child, then you’re just writing the Punisher in a cape. And that brings us to the greatest scene with this Batman.

A dying psychic child has caused damage to a city and when she goes it becomes permanent and will essentially become a nuke affecting a huge swath of the city. Amanda Waller, who I’ll eventually give an entire post to, has a device that will kill her. Batman states that he’ll be the one to use it on her.

Ace has had encounters with him before and lets him into her hiding place. He finds her swinging on a swing set. She tells him that she read his mind and knows two things: that she will soon die and that he isn’t going to use the device on her.

She asks him to sit with her and he sits down on the swing with her and offers her his hand. She dies peacefully and the damage is reversed.

Perfection.

You have to keep the main things intact with Batman, the sorrow at the loss of his parents. The anger at the world for it but he should never be a monster. He should always be someone who is trying his best in an unstoppable war on crime.

At least that’s how I’ve always seen him.

The Spider-Man Factor: Make Your Hero Suck(a little bit)

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Batman prepares. Batman is always prepared. Superman can do anything. These are the reasons that these characters are loved and people think they’re boring. They’ve lasted for so long. But it’s also been said they’re hard to write for.

There is a problem in DC where super powers can become so godlike that it becomes hard to think of challenges for them. The great cry in every MCU movie is “Why don’t you just call the Avengers?” well, in DC it becomes “Why does anyone try anything when Superman is around? Or Shazam? Or the Green Lanterns?”. There are so many massive threats that it’s ridiculous that anything other than God coming down to throw down with the heroes of Earth.

Marvel understands this and has kept most of their heroes “street level”. They are only able to do so much. It’s why people can become fearful of mutants. Some mutants are known as Omega level and that means that they can destroy the world if they so want. In my eyes, that just means that they’re on the same level as Superman.

When Spider-man fucks up, you can say, well that’s just who Spider-man is. He’s powerful, super strong and fast. But you could probably kill him with a small army and some air support. There’s a reason that his villains to bring him down didn’t need to ascend to god level, they just had to come at him all at once.

You can see this in Supernatural, the boys hunt monsters and all these things for near two decades during the run of the show. However, they’re still idiots and that makes them compelling. Because even the best fuck up.

That’s how you should be able to write Batman and Superman but people think of them being too perfect. Too powerful. That’s why one of the most loved versions of Batman is the one from the animated series. He’s a human. He’s smarter and stronger than the average human but he can still get stabbed by the Joker.

We don’t want Gods. We want good people doing good things. A hero shouldn’t stand above you but with you. They should be selfless and kind and inspire you to do the same. There is of course some variation to keep them interesting but that’s what a hero does.

It’s something that I try and put in my writing. I write the person first and then figure out what their power would do to them. Would it make them good? Bad? Corrupt? That’s up to what happens when I put finger to key and pen to paper.