I believe in Batman

A lot of the 20th century pop culture revolves around vigilantism. To sharpen the focus, almost all of - at least the early - comics deal with the subject. I don't mean the newspaper strip comics, but the "real deal": (more-often-than-not) superhero comics and other such that come with the titular character's name usually printed on the front.

About like this.

Of course, the naming policy only became as it is somewhere around what's now known as "the Golden Age of Comics", going on from about the 1930's to the beginning of the 1950's. During this time, the world first met most of the comic book heroes (and a lot of the villains) that are still the most well known of the lot today, such as Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman.

Back then, most of the comics weren't named after their main characters: Batman first showed his cowl in Detective Comics, while Superman began his career in Action Comics. The idea to name comics after the characters came during the later half of the Golden Age, when it was felt that characters such as Superman had grown bigger than the Detective Comics. Of course, there was the other thing, too.

As the Golden Age enveloped the second world war, most - if not all - comic book characters made their way into the happy world of propaganda (heck, even Donald Duck made fun of the japs and Hitler). Captain America was even born for this purpose only, and has had a bit of an uphill struggle to lose that mark ever since. While the original series of Action Comics kept it's boyish charms and direction, Superman flew off to embrace the stars, stripes and bald eagles to punch in the face of evil everywhere.

It made sense to make the super heroes fight the war: they were immensely popular among young boys, and if the boys thought it was cool to fight in the war like Superman, the homefront battle was halfway won. It also fit the vigilante status of the stiff-collared heroes like Superman to take the fight to the enemy if it was needed. It was, indeed, usual for the early age superheroes to be unquestionably good - to uphold the virtues everywhere. Superman, for one, is the ultimate boy scout and has kind of held on to that status all the way to today, despite some a bit grittier takes on him.

This is kind of why I like Batman better. Batman began as almost the same kind of moral absolute as the Man of Steel, but he's come a long way. Batman still doesn't kill, but he does what he needs to to uphold what he feels is right. The title of this post derives from the last Batman movie, the Dark Knight Rises, wherein Batman becomes the symbol of a Gotham that might be able to free itself yet from the ire of opressors, murderers and lunatics.

Seeing the movie again made me think about what Batman actually stands for, and here's my take. Do what you think is right, if you can unquestionably say that it is right, no matter the cost. This is what vigilantism as a thought is about, isn't it - the law is flawed, and thus there must be a force above the law, able to do what must be done.

This holds some very deep inherent flaws, pondered upon in Alan Moore's Watchmen (to give a comic book example, thus staying in only one source material). While the philosophical question of ultimate moral actor above the law is interesting, I don't find it plausible - human beings are not fully rational, and therefore are unable of ultimates. But, on a more everyday level, I find Batman a good thing to stand by. I believe in doing what I think is right, if I can hold it to the light. I don't believe in vigilantism, nor holding one's self above the law.

But I do believe in Batman.