Excellent review!  Good for you to bring up the Jewish aspect of Superman.  Batman, on
the other hand, has been written as either a lapsed Catholic or maybe an Episcopalian:

http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/Batman.html

In this article, Frank Miller explicitly says that Batman is Catholic:

“On the other hand, Frank Miller has stated that the Bruce Wayne/Batman is Catholic. Miller’s writing about Batman has been more widely read and far more influential on how the character is handled anything written by Maggin. (Maggin is known for his important work on Superman, who is focal character in Kingdom Come.) Frank Miller is the author of such character-defining modern Batman stories as Batman: Year One (largely the basis for the movie Batman Returns) and The Dark Knight Returns. Miller has said that Batman and Daredevil were so obviously Catholic that to write them any other way would be completely nonsensical.

DC Comics writer Chuck Dixon and artist Graham Nolan had a memorable collaboration producing Batman comics. On his official website Dixon discussed Christianity in comics (http://www.dixonverse.net/NEWSITE/ARTICLES/christ.html) and describes their view of Batman: ‘Graham Nolan and I had an ongoing argument about whether Bruce was raised Catholic or Protestant. I recently conceded to Graham than he must be Catholic. No Protestant ever suffered guilt the way Bruce does.’”

Catholicism is a logical religious profession for the McCarthyite right-wing populist you
describe, don’t you think?

“Catholicism is a logical religious profession for the McCarthyite right-wing populist you
describe, don’t you think?”

I’m not so sure which Catholic social teaching Batman is following by taking to the street and beating up bad guys with his bare hands. I also don’t sense that Batman has a really sense of redemption for his enemies--although his No Kill rule perhaps lends some credence to your idea.

No, I didn’t mean that Batman supported Catholic social teaching; neither I nor the writers in the
interview I cited mention social teaching vis-a-vis Batman’s religion or lack thereof.  Here’s my
point:  both in your article and its title, you mention that most comic book superheroes began in a Jewish cultural
matrix.  You note that some people explain the genesis of the superhero as a fantasy of Jewish
assimilationism.  Well, the recent authors of Batman admit that they no longer write within that
vein.  For them Batman is a Christian Gentile.  Hence, the assimilationist model of which you
spoke is no longer applicable to recent incarnations of the character, which I think is part of
your thesis, at least as I understood it.  I should have made this explicit above.

And I do think that Catholicism is relevant to Batman’s style of vigilante justice.  He is called
the Caped Crusader because he is on a crusade.  I think of Batman (as opposed to Bruce Wayne) as
a sort of renegade warrior-monk, one stuck in a dark (k)night of the soul.  The Crusaders in the
Holy Land and in the Reconquista of Spain were primarily interested in defeating the enemy on the
battlefield, not in pursuing his redemption.  The point made by Frank Miller, etc., isn’t that
Batman preaches to his enemies, etc., but that he himself is plagued with guilt and has issues with
his own redemption broadly construed, such as redemption from cowardice.  He isn’t a superhero because he was born
to an alien species that naturally has super-human powers, but because he has grappled with inner
demons and his own past.

I thought the Dark Knight was a much more entertaining and thought provoking movie than I expected, and I thought a really interesting aspect of the movie was the comparison (in the beginning of the movie) of Batman to the temporary dictators of the Roman Republic, and the danger of him becoming a Caesar.  Put in that context, that makes his rule against killing make more sense.  It explores the question of how much power for an unelected vigilante is too much.

Also, I should have pointed out explicitly that McCarthyite right-wing populism (to which you linked
Batman’s type of heroism) was widespread among a certain type of Catholic during the 1950s.  These
were the guys who had rooted for Franco and later read the early National Review, in which William
F. Buckley skewered liberals who valued procedural justice (of the ACLU/Miranda warnings type) over
apprehension and punishment of criminals.

@Tobias, Interesting comments… although Catholics certainly don’t have a monopoly on the preoccupation with guilt and crusading spirit you describe. I’m not convinced, but your comments are making me think more about Batman’s potential Catholicism.

“When Joel Schumacher took over, the series became a bad joke, little more than a vehicle for stars to make a one-off as a colorful villain.”

Yes, the TIm Burton ones were some of the best mindless entertainment of their era, but the Joel Schumacher ones were too mindless even to be entertaining.  “Batman Begins” was good but it wasn’t inspired enough to be as interesting as it sought to be, while its new sequel definitely is.  I’d say the new one is the best of the Batman movies actually, but the Tim Burton ones have great sets that call to mind the interwar era (which almost all Batman comics do too, no matter when they were published).

My last words on the subject:  First, I am not saying, “Batman is a guilt-ridden crusader,
therefore he’s a Catholic.” Rather, I’m saying that the writers most responsible for the modern
Batman character, including Frank Miller, whose work you cite, say that they write him as a
Catholic, or imagine him this way. That’s not my private speculation, that’s the authors’ own
testimony, which I think is as relevant as the speculations about the Jewishness of Superman. 
From there, you can see how guilt or crusading vigilante-ism, do or do not fit with this religious
profession. 

Secondly, they do not write him as a practicing or self-identifying Catholic, but as a lapsed one.
So it is not a question of whether every thing that he does can be justified in the Catechism, but
rather what religious tradition in his background best accounts for his problematic approach to life.

In any case, I’ll say again that your review is excellent.

There’s a heavy War-on-Terror aspect to Batman Begins.  The villain has an Arabic name, Ra’s al Ghul, as well as a French one.  He has a training camp in remote mountains in Asia, with poppy flowers all around (sort of like opium poppys).  He is trying to destroy Western Civilization for quasi-religious reasons.

That Batman is inextricably wrapped up in the saga of al Ghul’s League of Shadows might trouble your thesis.  Both of these men want to rid Gotham of crime, acting above the law to do so.  If anything, Batman acts under abstract, liberal theories of justice—impersonal interactions between individuals and the State.  It is not just a passing exclamation when, as a common criminal says to “I swear to God” to Batman, Batman responds, “Swear to me instead!” The whole movie is about the anarcho-tyranny of the good guys, who are little different from the bad guys, except the good guys (like Bruce Wayne) want to preserve the corporate state.

As a life long comic fan, you guys need to stop trying to ‘find’ things in the comics.  Sometimes, they are just what they appear to be.

Oddly enough, the SS newspaper “Das Schwarze Korps” printed an attack on Superman’s creators as early as April 1940:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/superman.htm

We must remember though the fundamental difference between Rah’s Al Ghul’s Islamic views of destroying the West(Gotham) completely and utterly and Batman’s seemingly Catholic ideal of fixing Gotham’s “broken System” without destroying it.

Ostensibly Batman seeks only to uproot evil, but beyond that he must strive to fix Gotham and work with commissioner Gordon(the government/law)to raise Gotham’s level of morality to the point where Batman, the anarcho-facist is no longer needed and all that remains is the morally fixed exemplary Bruce Wayne.

Personally I thought Batman in the Dark Knight was something akin to a neocon. He utilizes all the tactics of the Bush administration extraordinary rendition, torture, spying, the Noble Lie, etc. And the Joker seemed to be a reflection of the neocon-portrayal of bin Ladin.

Very enlightening article.

One two three stretch

Four five six stretch

Why Batman was none other than Grampa of the Meunster family.

Or was it Dracula?

I wont be seeing the movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bat_(1926_film)

If in the plot of The Dark Knight Returns Joker tries to prove the “utter depravity” of the average person, you must perforce assay Joker as a Protestant evangelist.  Joker character is a mocking grotesque because he represents the grotesquerie of the faith that is Calvinism, which mocks the Incarnation.  (Jesus Christ was even cast as a non-sinister clown in Godspell and also in the more-theologically serious 1964 short film “Parable"*)

Even a non-mass attending Catholic like Batman recognizes that fighting Joker (Calvinism) is “job one.” When Batman finds that the corrupt establishment are adopting a laissez-faire attitude toward Joker, or worse – ruling in accordance with Joker’s doctrines, Batman goes nuts. Batman’s crusade, then is counter-revolutionary, and yes, counter-reformatory. 

*See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870914,00.html?promoid=googlep

You know, paleoconservatives (=Takimag readers) are such a grab-bag of Quixotic dogmatists of any and all
stripes that it is virtually impossible to tell precisely when someone is being ironic.  No matter how
over the top the post is, even if on any other blog I’d know with certainty that the comment was ironic,
here . . . here I would not place any money on it.  No wonder paleoconservatism could not possibly be a
successful political movement.

Notice also that these “alter-egos” of their Jewish creators are, err, how shall I say, “physically Aryan”.

Let me see if I have this straight.

Batman is a Catholic representing the right-wing populist McCarthyite wing of the Conservative movement who uses his fists and concentrates on domestic enemies.

Superman is an assimilated Jew preaching propositional identity for Americans ("truth, justice and the American Way") and concentrating on battling foreign enemies through the use of otherworldly (i.e. atomic, nuclear) power.

From 1941 (Pearl Harbor?) on, Batman and Superman work together to fight common enemies, in a comic book series called “World’s Finest”.  1986 is the year that World’s Finest comics ends* and is also the year Frankie Miller writes the graphic novel “The Dark Knight Returns”.  In this novel, Batman now comes to view Superman as the “ultimate villain” and “whom America’s folksy, patriotic president [GWB!] sends off to fight ["those who hate our values"] , deflect a nuclear weapon [real or feigned], and finally bring down the ungovernable Dark Knight [the political banishment of the paleos once and for all].”

Can this not be seen as what Rothbard called “the conservative crackup”, i.e. the splitting into paleo and neo camps?  I know Miller was not thinking about this when he wrote it, but all good literature is prophetic.  And the seeds were there already in 1986 (the Bradford-Bennett affair of 1981; the loss of the “common enemy” because of a bankrupted and splintering Soviet bloc).  Also, these kinds of crack-ups have happened throughout the history of ideas, so it was not a stretch for Miller to imagine an ideological feud between Batman and Superman. 

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_Finest_Comics

...here I would not place any money on it.  No wonder paleoconservatism could not possibly be a
successful political movement. -Tobias

I would concur, not because of the irony, but because of the lack of discussion on current legislation working its way thru congress which is ignored because of the constant debating of revisionist history I find here. While new facts that change our rote trained history are interesting if the conservatives are serious they should be keeping up with current bills moving up thru congress. The media certainly isnt going to keep you informed. My thought.

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/schedules.html

Notice also that these “alter-egos” of their Jewish creators are, err, how shall I say, “physically Aryan”.
Posted by Captainchaos

Ever notice how much Ireland sounds like Aryan? Heh.

Good point, Jet, good point.  My problem isn’t with irony, it’s with the sheer number of hobby horses and
the vehemence given to them.  It can get so farcical that actual irony can go unrecognized.  I’m sure
that some people here think the same about my own hobby horses.

@Tobias
if your problem is not with irony, why did you write, “it is virtually impossible to tell precisely when someone is being ironic.”

@Jet
Why are you on this thread?  You can tell by the title it doesn’t deal with pending legislation.  Just here to find dragons to slay?  (BTW, your post to Captainchaos was a complete non-sequitur.  Tobias, were you responding, “good point, Jet” to *that*?.)

I, too, can play the game, I suppose.

Batman is a pseudo-Christ who becomes sin for the fallen D.A. The name of the D.A. is “redeemed” and the city has a “hero.” His becoming sin, if one wishes to play, is, however, unlike the historical act of the Christ, based on a lie - a lie for a “noble cause,” quite dangerous, disingenuous and evil!

Quote: “I also don’t sense that Batman has a really sense of redemption for his enemies--although his No Kill rule perhaps lends some credence to your idea.”

Can you say Arkham Asylum? I remember some insane neocon site saying Batman was a weak liberal because he keeps sending people back there hoping they get reformed or something.

What I find interesting is that Batman is an elite who believes the State is broken (in Batman Begins he tells Rachel “your system is broken") but nevertheless believes like father that his fellow elites can be awakened to to save the city. So because of this belief he places trust his in Harvey Dent and is willing to work with the State but the Joker proves the state system of social planning will fail and in counting on that failure creates Two-Face but Batman acting once again outside of State system stops the Joker but fails to save Dent.

At the end of movie Batman once again tries to prop up the his faith in elitism in embracing the “Big Lie” and the blame for Dent’s crimes.

Unfortunately, because Batman exits having Gotham believing in a lie so another super-villain will arise to shatter the lie because true social order must be based in truth and the truth is something Batman can show to the world or face himself.  Batman is a tragic hero and one must never forget that when considering the character.

The writer who first shaped the darker, post-sixties Batman was Dennis O’Neill, a Roman Catholic.  The next major writer I’d say was Steve Englehart, about whom I don’t know much, and then Frank Miller, who was raised Catholic and might even have been devout or something like it when he was doing his ‘80s Batman work.

Before Batman, Miller worked on Daredevil, giving that book its modern style and prominence.  Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) is explicitly Catholic.  I forget if Miller invented that or not but he certainly amped it up.

Miller’s Daredevil stuff was like his Batman: Year One (and the Nolan movies)--the shadow of a father’s murder by gangsters, and defending an urban home he is attached to against powerful organized crime and corruption.  And lots of guilt and angst.

Not having read comics since the 60s, I would gather from the above that even deracinated comic book authors find it difficult to sustain a comic book hero without figuring out first what religion he is.  And a nihilist/secularist as a hero just doesn’t seem to work.  And among religions (Catholicism, Calvinism, Judaism, Americanism, to name some prominent ones that have been used) the one that seems to yield the less-trite comic fiction is Catholicism. It is interesting ....

I would recommend reading three books.

The Dark Knight Returns
The new book Batman and Philosophy

and..

Watchmen.

Richard,

A good article. I would recommend you read the classic novel, “The Dark Knight Returns,” to get a glimpse at the true Dark Knight.

Then, read Watchmen.

Yikes—when I went in to correct a minor error, I accidently erased half the essay--it was left up like this for about an hour .  Anyway, you read it recently and felt that something was missing, I suggest trying it again.

I’ve heard on good authority that Bob Kane wasn’t the main architect of The Batman, but that honor belonging to Bill Finger, a white, gentile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Finger

Samuel:  I was responding to Jet’s point that paleocons do not talk all that much about pending
legislation, not to any of his non sequiturs.  And, by the way, he was responding to my comment to the
effect that paleocons will never be successful politically.  He misunderstood my reasoning (there are too
many nutjobs), and supplied another one.  So his comment was relevant to something I said. 

Secondly, I have no problem with irony.  I have problems with a movement so crammed full of whackos and
trolls and riders of hobby-horses that irony is no longer possible—if someone says something so over the
top that you think he’s kidding, here at Takimag there’s still a good chance he meant it earnestly.  I
took your first post as ironic.  In any other context, that’s how I’d take it.  I’m not saying I find it
ridiculous or wrong, just that I picked up what I usually think of as ironic cues (like “perforce assay").
But here at Takimag, I’ve read posts that anywhere else would have been satire without doubt, but the other
guy meant (or seemed to mean) every word.

Vigilante Justice is the mirror, or dark if not evil twin, of Catholic charity.  Both seek to fix egregious wrongs.  The former uses violence - the crusaders.  The latter are more like St. Francis or the Hospatilers.

The church/state split of old is perhaps a better context to see this in.  The church thought it necessary (the correctness of their thought is debatable) to do many severe things in times past.

But the debate is that of an amputation to save the patient as the normal medicines and the patient’s own strength having not proven sufficient - when science has not produced a cure nor faith a miracle.

The evil is grave, immediate, and advancing (see the Catechism on “just war").  How much new evil can we be permitted to do to annihilate or mitigate the original evil?

There are no “dark knights” fighting abortion.  There are many fighting “islamofascism”.  Are these good or bad things?

The final turn of events is interesting, but doesn’t explain this:  Could they not have preseved order and Dent’s ideals by framing the Joker instead of Batman?  Why was it necessary to become “The Dark Knight” and be hunted as a rogue vigilante?

Huh? Somewhere after 3 paragraphs this article turns into something else entirely and unrelated to the title.

Not sure all these superheroes are supposed to be jews. Except for the fact that no superhero is blond, they look rather Caucasian.

But it is noteworthy that all these jewish comic writers are enthralled by the idea of solving the world’s problems through brutal violence. One just wishes that those in power would read the ramblings of the neo-cons as fantastic fiction and not non-fiction.

@Tobias
Thanks for your clarifications.  I realize now that “perforce assay” was too frilly a word-choice.  But my post was totally serious.  If you say that a character in a story is trying to show the “utter depravity” of man, since that is a direct quote from Calvin, you have to look at the character in terms of Calvinism. My (non-sectarian) college Hawthorne teacher would wring my neck if I didn’t!

@Jack Rich
Not sure how brutal the violence is - or was back in the day when Jewish writers were writing most of them.  But I think everybody in US society saw the violence as justified police-action and not excessive. We never saw Penguin’s blood in a comic in the 60s, that’s for sure....  It was not until the 60s that you would have any liberal criminologists and psychologists crying that comic book violence was excessive.  But wait .. there were magazine codes instituted in the 40s and 50s due to parents’ groups complaining… well, that’s a separate issue from your point…

Thanks, Samuel.  No one is more vulnerable to contempt than the person who is forced to ask
someone else if they’re being ironic or not.  I’m glad we’re on the same page now, and I’ll
look at your post again.

http://age-of-treason.blogspot.com/

Monday, July 28, 2008

UK Thought Criminals Sheppard and Whittle Jailed in LA

That was a great review I don’t know where religion entered the Batman mythos but I didn’t know anything about the anarcho-fascist or assimilationist jew angle to Batman before you explained it. Batman definitely straddles a lot of different worlds, it should be interesting to find out how far into the darkness he goes and whether a new form of the cell phone sonar device will resurface.

Trying to read a lot in comic book characters that have existed in various media for decades is quite problematic.  For instance, Batman seems to be defined as Frank Miller’s version, which definitely has been one of the better interpretations.  That said, he was not a regular writer for the series, or for Daredevil that matter.

Back in high school I would buy anything that Frank Miller or Alan Moore worked on, but when they were finished, the stories could become quite retarded.  Batman chasing after Vulture man for instance.  The Daredevil series where the Kingpin found out his secret ID was also quite good only because it was written by Frank Miller. Most of the other writers didn’t put such depth into the characters’ psychology or story.

Batman and in fact all costumed superheroes are imitations of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (Hungarian Christian). Her character inspired Zorro who inspired Batman, etc.

Thus the archetype of the costumed hero with a secret identity in the comic books and pulps is actually monarchists fighting against the evils of the French Revolutional ideals and the Baroness stated as much.

That Superman would embody the subconscious wishes of the first generation Jewish Americans who created him is not surprising. But while many (but not all) comic book creators were Jewish many of the genres creations were based on pre existing archetypes like “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and “Zorro” and even “Robin Hood”. So this anlysis on the “Jewishness” of Superheroes only applies to Superman and not so much Batman or the Flash, etc.

While Stan Lee is Jewish I can find little Jewish cultural sensibilities in his creations like Spider-Man. Maybe the bickering family life of the “Fantastic Four” was inspired by the stereotypical Jewish familial relations but to be honest all families bicker amongst themselves so that is a stretch.

PS: The Batman no killing rule (and the no killing rule for superheroes in general) had more to do with complying with the Comics Code Authority rules more than anything else. “The Scarlet Pimpernel"inion if there had been no Comics Code Authority Batman would had killed and carried a gun as he had done in his first adventures.

Batman and in fact all costumed superheroes are imitations of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (Hungarian Christian). Her character inspired Zorro who inspired Batman, etc.

Thus the archetype of the costumed hero with a secret identity in the comic books and pulps is actually monarchists fighting against the evils of the French Revolutional ideals and the Baroness stated as much.

That Superman would embody the subconscious wishes of the first generation Jewish Americans who created him is not surprising. But while many (but not all) comic book creators were Jewish many of the genres creations were based on pre existing archetypes like “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and “Zorro” and even “Robin Hood”. So this anlysis on the “Jewishness” of Superheroes only applies to Superman and not so much Batman or the Flash, etc.

While Stan Lee is Jewish I can find little Jewish cultural sensibilities in his creations like Spider-Man. Maybe the bickering family life of the “Fantastic Four” was inspired by the stereotypical Jewish familial relations but to be honest all families bicker amongst themselves so that is a stretch.

PS: The Batman no killing rule (and the no killing rule for superheroes in general) had more to do with complying with the Comics Code Authority rules more than anything else. In my opinion, if there had been no Comics Code Authority Batman would had killed and carried a gun as he had done in his first adventures. (posted again to correct a typo)

Destro- Baroness Orczy was a great writer and I think there is something to your theory that what’s admirable about comic book characters like Batman originates from her work.  (I have seen the opening page of one Batman story from the 1940s called “The Case Batman Failed to Solve” which shows Batman and Robin with several famous fictional detectives, and I’m pretty sure the pretty young woman is supposed to be Lady Molly.)

Even before the Comics Code they got rid of Batman’s gun.  I read it in a friend’s pre-code reprint that explained he does not carry a gun or kill with one, but will disarm or stop a criminal with his own gun.  But I have a collection of the badly drawn but enjoyable first Detective Comics stories where he kills a lot, sometimes with a gun.  Before the Code he didn’t usually go out of his way to kill people, but he didn’t make much of an effort not to if it seemed like a logical decision under the circumstances.

A. MacGarr, thanks for your comments. If not for the Comics Code I think comic heroes would operate under the rules police do where deadly force is avoided but do kill if they have to.

To sum everything up - the author wonders if Batman as well as Superman were products of Jewish-American culture.

My answer is that the background origins for Superman clearly are inspired by the Jewish culture of his creators. But Batman and most other comic book heroes are not inspired by Jewish culture even when in many cases (but not all) their creators were Jewish.

Batman comes from Zorro who came from The Scarlet Pimpernel and Spider-man is unique in terms of his motivations. The closest I can find to Spider-man’s origins in classical works both Jewish and not Jewish is the Greek story of Hercules who feels shame in being tricked into killing his family embarks on his famous labors in order to make up for his crime/error.

Why was my comment yesterday not published?

I tend to believe there’s a god or gods & a top god. I also notice that we human beings given
our present level of evolution need the platonic and/or semitic Facades - sort of = Hollywood or
the movies or comic book heroes as well, and like to confuse them at the same time with our
notion of gods and/or top God. Because life itself (under God or not) can sometimes get so
nasty or also banal we can’t still ‘believe’ there’s a god of a world like this, unless we
do the Facade thing in our thinking (we air brush it.) Only the very mature retain their belief in the gods and/
or a top god while at the same time also accepting that conversely the Facade is really only another form of
a false god or idol, another as it were moses story or another metaphysical contsruct of
christ. When the reality is say there was really only king cyrus and later there really was
only say Essenes (& Greeks.) There’s no such thing as a judeo-christian ‘ethic’… they’re mutally
exclusive one being almost exclusively tribal supremacy and the other having become a
universalist usually too liberal sort of brotherhood of man ideal. But in both cultures what
does remain in common is the Platonic/Semitic Facades. People still need it. It’s the only way
the immature can get those necessary endorphins or dopamine the brain’s natural painkillers
happening. Don’t take that away from them (not that you can) or earth may explode? P.S. the
atheists may be saying ah, yes but the most mature of us get those endorphins going by reading
and creating and sports, etc., etc. and yet we don’t believe in any gods. Good, but it does
not automatically require them to be *more mature. You see the brain works this way - a
transcendant god neither can be proved nor disproved speculatively or in any way so it’s *not
that atheists don’t believe in God - rather they ‘believe’ there is no God. That belief releases
endorphins like reading, writing, creating etc., etc. The human brain itself makes us all believers
of one stripe or another. It’s just that atheists or the less mature of them don’t realize
that and mistakenly ‘believe’ they *know something, and aren’t merely believers. Funny.