The narrative effort that Tom King’s Batman run brings as a healing and growth process
Understanding the whole King’s Batman run, is not a physical effort of your brain, but a psychological effort of how the world is, and it does for you.
When I started reading Tom King’s run, the question that guided all my reading, and I believe that his writing, too, was: Is it possible to be happy, and to be Batman? And finally we are given the answer, not only for the character’s context, but for the reader’s introspective understanding.
For the text, I will rely on my own beliefs and ideologies, with some authors I like to explain the concept and the narrative here dissected. The text is ONE of my many understandings of the run and the character, and the references are the respective # 1 ~ # 85 editions.
Loneliness, conceptually, is an exhibition that we deny, but that should, and is part of our growth as sentient people, regardless of the perspective and notion of the world and navel that guides you, for example, I believe, as an absurdist, that there is no exclusive meaning or universal reason, only perspectives aligned to how we see the same thing, and, for me, nothing does, nor should, make sense if not death, still, even if in my own, almost novelist, concepts and beliefs of death, still understand this as part of the loneliness and self-understanding that the human must pass as the progenitor of his own evolution.
When Bruce was still a child, the death of his parents, the attempted suicide, the following training and the consequent adaptation of Batman’s cloak, weren’t lone a process, but solitary one, which would eventually lead him to loneliness, and this , was the most appealing tourist spot for readers of the character, but how many really understood his purpose?
According to C.S. Lewis, morality is divided into three levels: Ensuring a fair and harmonious relationship; ensuring that we become good people so that we can contribute to society; maintain a good relationship with the Power that created us. Within this conception, we have Bane, who was the perfect supporting villain selected by Tom King to complete Batman’s mission within the run, he already finds a disagreement with the first level. What is fair? What is harmonic? For the character, harmony varies between homogeneity and constant personal balance, and, above all, Bane wants to pass this on to other people. To better analyze this ideation, we have to enter the character phase in Gotham Knights and Secret Six magazines, where Bane detaches from personal and narcissistic issues to enter a personal discovery about life, abdicating the drug, which is when he discovers the identity of his father, Sir. Edmund Dorrance, and accepts the truth that hid the lie about his birth, and in this, he finds harmony, however, this same harmony is disturbed when he returns to Poison again, and this makes him go back to hunting against his own nightmare, in this case, Batman. In this we enter the second explanation of Lewis, where Bane wants to contribute to society, in a partial and dictatorial way, as attributing states of war and arms that provoke a peace to fear. “I do, or did, this evil, by myself, I got hurt, but I kept the whole intact”, Bane relates: “I am free and I will remain free, Batman! Because I am innocent! By the law of my land I was born guilty. But I am innocent! I didn’t commit any crime! I was driven by hate! Driven by poison! Don’t look for me anymore, Batman! Do not look for me anymore! ”(Batman: Vengeance of Bane) Bane, inverts this value previously presented, and blames the whole for the part, which is his villainy, at this moment, it is presented to us, within the run analyzed in question, how Bane dismantles his own identity to recreate a monster, a trauma of his own, in order to not only become more powerful and strong, but to repress his own past, with no chance of remembrance or memory of it, Bane is what we all want to be, do and have, just peace, but at the same time, abdicating all our previous efforts to achieve it.
Bane is not the villain of this story, neither is Thomas (the reincarnated father of a parallel reality, whose dream is to destroy his son’s iterative life and then give him happiness), nor any other, Gotham Girl is the example of this, the great villain of fiction is the effort, questioning, doubt and constant internal struggle that moves the character to always be the best of himself, in order to give others the opportunity to be/give his best as well. It is customary to joke that Batman is always prepared and the like, but what if that preparation is not an impulse? But rather a response to an internal anguish of someone who has always asked himself too much to do the best for others always before himself? All the strategic preparation in the world can deal with other people’s issues, but when the problem is internal, when it comes from your own guts and makes you wonder if, for the first time, can you do something for you? Can you give up everything to achieve something for you? Is it wrong to give that person peace, personal achievement and joy? Or continue to parasitize it with selfish questions, turning you into a psychological slave to your world problems, does the will of others matter so much more that you must neglect your own? If Batman is not the greatest hero, and I say hero in the Greek meaning of the word, I don’t know who he is.
In the midst of so much political, social and cultural chaos, Batman’s role as an exhibitor should not be one of the communions or physical assimilations with the character, but of understanding and guiding difficult choices and moments.
Back in The Button, Bruce finally has the chance to meet his father again and finally say who he should be, but not who he wants to be and his father then gives you the choice to be who the boy wants, regardless of how that will affect his world around him, but is that really correct?
On the other hand, we have Selina, already present in Bruce’s life, representing who the character can be, but urging him to be who he should, with or without her on his side, but is this really necessary?
The trivialization of our human duty as a society weighs more on the character than on any other, since on one side we have the paternal voice (both Alfred and Thomas), while on the other the passionate voice, represented by Selina, placing Batman in the oblivious position, however, is it truly really that bad?
“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” — Charlotte Brontë
The triviality of King’s Batman to build his life, shows that we must be our best, regardless of our yearning to never be enough, and that will not come out of a relationship, or a speech from his parents, that will be an effort of yours for your own memory and remembrance of life, you are not, and you must not honor a promise to be that you made to your parents, but honor the 10 year old boy that you once were, who sacrificed himself so that you could exist.
The emptiness that Bruce creates is about finally meeting and being able to shout who you are, it is not a matter of bipolarity or inconsequence, it is about constantly fighting yourself to do better, and giving others the chance to bring out the best in you, not for inspiration like Clark and Diana cases, but for pain, emptiness, questioning, decision and maturity. To say that Batman is a cold or hopeless character is inevitably to contradict the character’s own understanding, and not allow yourself to be inspired by.
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” — Rudyard Kipling
Adapting to Satre’s concept of (sentimental) loneliness, we should, as people, experience emptiness and understand it as part of who we are, and therefore, never deny its physical-emotional existence in our lives as part of a larger context, as presented by own Tom King to the voice of Batman, just staring loneliness, and deny the participation of the same as training model, it will not make you face the world, or your own memories, stories, shame, memories and experiences as a process , but as an emotional charge.
Batman # 85 ends up indicating that we should have an expectation in ourselves, in our anxieties, in our evolution, in our characterization and we can always be and do, better, the challenge that this imposes on us is external and should never let you change who you are.
