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...NOT Batman.

Let's get this out of the way right now: the old Adam West "Zip! Bow! Bam!" version of Batman isn't the real deal. Never was, never will be. It's about as much Batman as a gay hairdresser with no fighting experience would be acceptable as Rocky Balboa. No offense to gay hairdressers. It's just a comparison.

The character who we call Batman today was created seventy-three years ago by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Bill got the short end of the stick when they created the character, since he didn't have a lawyer representing him. Thus, Bob Kane was credited until his death (and as long as DC publishes the character) as the sole creator of Batman.

Specifically, the sole creator of "The Bat-Man," who made his debut in the spring of 1939 in Detective Comics #27. For those of you want to impress your friends around the water cooler, Detective Comics is the book that gave National Publications its second and eventually final name: DC Comics. I've been asked by many what DC stands for. Now you know.

So, The Batman. My mother has pictures of me (which should be destroyed) in an awful Batman costume, circa 1983 or thereabouts. I loved the character even then. Like The Man of Steel, I'd been exposed to The Dark Knight Detective through my brother's comic collection. Superman and Batman were the coolest of the DC characters, though I also loved Green Lantern and The Flash, two of my other favorite characters to this day.

I also remember putting a blue towel around my neck while dressed in Batman Underoos and interrupting my brother and a girl who was visiting with her parents one day at home. They were talking in his room and listening to tapes (yes, tapes. And that's all they were doing, trust me.) I crept into the room unbeknownst to them and then sprang onto the bed at the foot of which they were sitting. I stood with arms akimbo, declaring nothing in word but everything in poise, posture, and presence (or so I thought at the time, but without those big words.)

And that's the essence of the character. At age eight or so, I got The Batman better than the folks that made that old Batman TV show and director Joel Schumacher. The Batman doesn't need to talk, or threaten, or do anything but just stand there . That's all it takes.

The Batman is distinctly different from just plain old "Batman." Batman is more of the superhero version of the character, the one well-known from that insipid TV show, from the old Super Friends cartoon, from Underoos and Halloween costumes and Scooby Doo Meets Batman and Robin.

But The Batman is something else entirely. He's a shadow come to life, a piece of the inky black that envelops Gotham City. Imagine it. You're in New Orleans, let's say. It's night time. You're leaving a bar after a few brews. You're tipsy, so you don't see the mistake you made going to your car alone in an unlit area. A scumbag with a gun appears from behind your car. He's got the desperate look of the crazed on his face. He demands your money and the keys to your car. You're terrified, and you freeze. He thinks you're trying to play with him. His finger tightens around the trigger. Then...

...a jagged shard of the night itself detaches from somewhere above you. It falls upon your assailant with blinding speed, yet does so with unearthly silence. You can no longer see the gunman; he's engulfed in pitch. The gunman screams as you imagine a pig would in the slaughterhouse when its turn is up. You fall back a few steps, now more sober than you've ever been. The screaming is cut off in such a rapid and final way that you wonder if the guy's dead. Still you can't see a thing. Then, as if being spat out from the maw of darkness itself, the mugger falls to the ground. You can see that he's still alive, though unconscious. You hear a faint mechanical sound. Eyes wide with terror, you look skyward to see a massive, dark form launch into the blackness above you. As far as you could tell, it was a giant bat, six feet high with a wingspan twice that.

That, folks, is The Batman. A dark avenger of the night who metes a swift justice to those who would prey upon the innocent. I rediscovered The Batman when I was in middle school. I kept reading and hearing about the new Batman movie that was going to be released. I was interested, and of course started buying any Batman comics I could get my hands on. Before long, I'd read not only comics starring The Batman, but also, anything else I could about the history of the character. I learned that this new film was going to bring The Batman back to his true roots. He was going to be a dark, intense guy, not some smiling fool in a bat suit.

I've stayed in love ever since. The Batman resonates deeply with me because I can identify with him. We all can. Not because I lost my parents to violent crime at an early age. But because I know what it's like to know loss, period. To know loneliness. To know fear and doubt. And to know powerlessness. Bruce Wayne felt all of these things until he resolved at his parents' graves to rid Gotham City of the crime that took their lives. We can all say that we would want to do something like this if someone we loved was taken from us in a violent way.

So for me, it's the fact that Bruce Wayne is human. He's breakable, he's just a regular guy. But he's the ultimate self-made man. He wasn't born with abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and he didn't fall ass-backwards into powers. He trained his mind and body to the peaks of human perfection and then kept going. I know that same drive and passion when it comes to those things in my life that I'm passionate about. My wife and daughter, my writing, my hobbies and interests. The list goes on.

And I love The Batman because of the darkness of the character. I'm just a dark guy. Always have been. I've always been attracted to Halloween, to vampires, to gothic stuff, to black. My high school friends will attest to this, and the all-black clothing phase I went through.

But at the heart of my love for the character is that The Batman wants to help people. He wants to make a difference in the lives of others. I want to do the same thing. I know that all of us do as well. And so we're drawn to this character, who built himself into something more than just a man, a creature of the night, who goes out and does the things we might wish we could do. Maybe not scaring the crap out of thugs or fighting colorful yet freakish villains. But changing the world around us for the better.

Tomorrow, the third hero of the Spandex Trinity: The Amazing Spider-Man.

Chris

Faster than a speeding bullet...

More powerful than a locomotive!

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

SUPERMAN.

The first superhero. The one just about everyone will mention when you bring up the term "superhero."

He's part of the American experience, but like all true art, was bigger than any one nation, political movement, or era.

He's been around for seventy-four years. Without him, comic books as we know them today would never have come to be. And when you consider that "Superman: The Movie" influenced a generation of filmmakers and film production, you realize that an entire genre of films would have never come to be, either.

This is just one small example of the impact the Superman character has had on the world. According to research, Superman's "\S/" is the second most recognized symbol in the world, right after the cross of Christ.

That's amazing when you think about it.

How did I come to love Superman? Well, let's be clear: what kid doesn't, or at least didn't, at some point? This is especially true for our generation. The Christopher Reeve films took a character that existed only in two dimensions and made him real. Superman was real. There wasn't any doubt to those of us who were kids when those movies debuted.

But even before then, I knew Superman and was a big fan. My brother, who I've mentioned before, had stacks of comics featuring Superman, from The Man of Steel's own solo titles to books that featured Superman regularly, like Justice League of America. And I had Superman pajamas and a huge Superman action figure with glow-in-the-dark kryptonite.

When I became a comic fan on my own, however, I didn't find that I was all that interested in Superman. I read a lot of X-Men related titles, and was a huge fan of dark, sometimes violent characters, like Wolverine, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Morbius The Living Vampire, and so on. I was also a huge fan of The Batman, who was my favorite character during this "dark age" I went through.

Flash forward to 1992. I read an article in the Lafayette newspaper about a shocking event: The Death of Superman. The article said that Superman was going to be killed and the comics featuring him cancelled. Like the ill-informed media at the time, I believed this truly was the end for Superman. I was kind of relieved, since I preferred those darker characters I mentioned and had found Superman a little one-dimensional and "goody two-shoes" for my liking. It seemed to me that Superman was a character out of date and no longer relevant.

One of the two comic shops I frequented at the time had the entire six-issue run of "The Death of Superman," and my mother bought them for me as a Christmas gift. They were first-prints, which is usually only a big deal when a story is important enough to warrant reprints. My shock and fear grew as I read one issue after another, each bringing the clock that much closer to zero hour for The Man of Steel.

Then I read Superman #75. There were two versions: a "newsstand" edition, which is just a regular, mass-market printing of a comic, and a direct edition. The direct edition was packaged in a sealed black bag featuring a bleeding, red \S/ over a black background. I read my newsstand copy and marveled at the first comic I'd ever read that used one big panel for each page. At the end of the issue, the creature called Doomsday, which had beaten every other hero and which was bent on wiping out all life on Earth, was defeated. But at a great cost.

Superman was dead.

Of course, no one stays dead in comics. I added the Superman titles to my folder, surprised that there were going to be future issues in light of Big Blue's demise. One year later, after the debut of four mysterious beings who each claimed to be Superman, the one, true Superman returned from the dead.

I'd been hooked with the first issue in the "The Death of Superman" series. Granted, this guy didn't have blades coming out of his hands, he didn't have a flaming skull for a head and a demonic motorcycle that could streak up the sides of buildings, he didn't wear black and gun down bad guys with an unbeatable arsenal. That's what I found some refreshing and inspiring about him. Instead, he came to the aid of people who needed him, even if they didn't seem to respect him or care for him. And he fought Doomsday, the first villain who could actually give him a run for his money, knowing full well he might have to lay his life down to save others.

I was "converted," I guess you could say. And I still love Big Blue to this day. Some say Superman is appealing because of the power fantasy. We all wish we could fly and were invulnerable, that we had the strength to change the course of mighty rivers, that nothing could stop us. And there are those who say that Superman is a popular character because of his relationship with Lois Lane and because he's a symbol of American immigrants who moved here to start a new life.

That's all fine and good. But I'll tell you the real appeal: we wish we could be like Superman. I don't mean have his powers. I mean we wish we could make a difference and be the good people we know we really are at heart.We wish pettiness, bigotry, hatred, fear, arrogance, and bloodlust would bounce off of us like those bullets bounce off Superman. We wish we could soar, not above cityscapes or into space, but above those failings that keep us from being better than we are.

We wish that we could be heroes ourselves.

I know I certainly do. Superman is one of my three favorite characters for these reasons, and of course, because he's a great character. The sci-fi stuff is fun and exciting. There's truth to the wish fulfillment, power fantasy stuff. And who doesn't like a story where the guy gets the girl and vice versa?

Tomorrow, I'll tell you a tale of my love for a certain Dark Knight Detective, who you know better as Batman. And I'll even explain why I refer to him as "The Batman." Chris

The Holy Trinity of Spandex

Greetings, kids. It's Tuesday night. Ali's watching Big Brother 44.5 or whatever number the show's on, Ava's making gurgling sounds and nibbling on a picture book about numbers, and I'm writing, as you probably already figured out.

All of you know that I'm a huge comics nut, and have been for decades. But many people ask me: "So Chris, Superman's your favorite character, right?" Others have inquired, "Ah, so you have a Batman beer coozie. Surely The Batman is your favorite comic book hero?" And then there are those who query, "I guess Spider-Man is your favorite?," after seeing a Spider-Man figural keychain hanging from my car's rear-view mirror.

So...who is my favorite character? Which of these three characters takes the top spot? Well, I'm not going to tell you just yet. I've set up a poll here, where you can go and vote. I'll share the results with you after I've gotten some results.

In the meantime, I thought I'd spend some time discussing what most comic fans consider to be "The Holy Trinity" of superheroes, Superman, The Batman, and Spider-Man. Why are these such a big deal? Let's start with the most obvious reason. Be honest. If I were to ask you to name three superheroes you've either heard about, read about, or have seen in some form of media in your lifetime, these three are most likely to be listed first. Oh sure, some of you out there will say "Captain America" or "Green Lantern" or "Aquaman." Maybe even "Wonder Woman." But in general, the first heroes listed are one of these three.

Why is this? And why are these very different characters with very different origins and backgrounds, the ones that have resonated most in popular culture? What about an alien with great powers beyond those of mere humans, a rich orphan who dresses up like a rodent, and a nerdy teenager who can stick to walls and swing around on a homemade web remains so appealing after seventy-four years in the case of Superman, seventy-three years in the case of The Batman, and forty-four years, in the case of Spider-Man? Why have they entered what our German buddies called the "zeitgeist," or the collective consciousness of a culture or society?

The answer is simple, though it requires that I use another five-dollars and a little change word like "zeitgeist." Superman, The Batman, and Spider-Man are
archetypes. I'm going to provide you with a three-fold definition for archetype, which will suit my purposes well.

Zeitgeist:

1. An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype: “‘Frankenstein’ . . . ‘Dracula’ . . . ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ . . . the archetypes that have influenced all subsequent horror stories” (New York Times).
2. An ideal example of a type; quintessence: an archetype of the successful entrepreneur.
3. In Jungian psychology, an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience and present in the individual unconscious.

In all three senses of the term, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are archetypes. All three are models after which other superheroes and characters have been patterned. Superman is, of course, the archetype of superheroes; when Siegel and Shuster created Superman, they created the superhero genre with him. Batman was only created by Bob Kane because of Superman's success. Batman's success inspired numerous other dark, grim, and mysterious characters. And Spider-Man was created as an answer to both Superman and Batman in a way. Stan Lee wanted to create a hero who wasn't going to have a teenage sidekick; he was going to be the teenager himself. Hence, fifteen-year old high school student and nerd Peter Parker becomes the first teenaged superhero, The Amazing Spider-Man. We can't count Superboy, who was a teen hero, but was essentially Superman as a boy.

As for the second sense, Superman, Batman, and Spidey are ideal examples of superheroes. They have perfect origins, in that it only takes maybe three lines at most to explain who they are and how they came to be super. They are paragons of nobility, virtue, and heroic humanity, albeit in differing degrees and expressions. All the other heroes either want to be these guys, or in the case of Spidey, wish they were as good at what they do as he is. In the third and more psychological sense, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man tap into a subconscious and indeed iherited, consciousness. They represent certain human qualities, attributes, and emotions that all people can identify with. Their origins and their struggles tap into the very fiber of human experience.

First of all, and perhaps most interestingly, all three of these heroes are orphans. Superman was rocketed to Earth as his planet exploded, leaving him as The Last Son of Krypton. Bruce Wayne watched both parents murdered in cold blood. He had no siblings or other close relatives, just a paternal figure in his butler. Like Batman, Spider-Man was also an orphan. His parents were secret agents working for the U.S. government. They often left young Peter in the care of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben when they were off on secret missions. When they were murdered in the course of a mission, Peter is left only with Ben and May. And while all three of these characters had surrogate parents or parental figures, they were still marked by the fact that their parents were gone.

We can all understand the feelings that attend loss on this level, even if we've never lost our parents or any loved ones in violent ways. We all have an acute awareness of the cold pain of loneliness. Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man also embody other emotional responses we all know: they love, they lose in love, they keep on loving. What most people love about superheroes is the fact that they fight and win, whereas we fight but sometimes don't win. There's something liberating in the escapist fantasy of a hero who overcomes because of the extraordinary that lies beneath the veneer of the ordinary, whether it's an extraordinary power, will, or determination.

These characters are heroes. Scholars of philosophy, literature, psychology, and religion tell us that the heroic ideal resonates with us because it's been with us since the beginning of us. We've always had heroes. The Greeks and the Norse had their colorful and sometimes fearful gods, the British had King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and just about every other culture has had folk heroes and characters. These heroes may not always be larger-than-life or superhuman, but they did overcome. They did succeed in the face of adversity and past failure. They were the best and the brightest, the likeness of which we hoped to find in ourselves.

As for Americans, we have our superheroes. They've been around for seventy-four years. There's no indication they're going anywhere, blatant exploitation and commercialism be damned. They will overcome even our present society's predilection for fads and fickle attention spans. They are our mythology, gods in tights who fight battles that represent our own.

Over the course of the next three entries, I'll share with you my feelings about each of The Big Three, in the order I've discussed them here. Afterwards, I'll give you the results of the poll and tell you which answer was the right one. Some of you will be surprised, while others already know the answer. Keep it real and take it light, Chris