Holy Terror, Batman
It looks like Batman is slated to take part in the War on Terror:
At the WonderCon 2006 comic-book convention in San Francisco last weekend, legendary comics writer and artist Frank Miller revealed that Batman would hunt down bin Laden and al Qaeda in his next DC Comics graphic novel. In “Holy Terror, Batman!” the Caped Crusader goes after the terror leader and his organization after Gotham City is attacked by terrorists. Though the graphic novel’s title is a take on Robin the Boy Wonder’s catchphrase, Miller said there was nothing campy about the story.
As Miller noted, comics have a long history of serving as patriotic propaganda, dating back to Captain America’s run-in with Hitler. Maybe this is fitting, in comparison: a morally ambiguous hero to befit a morally ambigous cause.
On a side note, this was the first time I’d heard about the Captain America thing. While reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (a fantastic novel about the creators of the modern comic book hero), there was a passage in which the artists express their anguish over loved ones lost in WWII by depicting their character, the Escapist, punching out Hitler. I hadn’t realized that this part of the story was based on Captain America #1:
It had taken Joe only a few minutes to get the Escapist’s pose right — legs spread, big right fist arcing across the page to deliver an immortal haymaker — and hours to paint in the highlights and shadows that made the image seem so real. . . the veins of his arm rippled with the strain of the blow. As for Hitler, he came flying at you backward, right-crossed clean out of the painting, head thrown back, head thrown back, forelock a-splash, arms flailing, jaw trailing a long red streamer of teeth. The violence of the image was startling, beautiful, strange. It stirred mysterious feelings in the viewer, of hatred gratified, of cringing fear transmuted into smashing retribution, which few artists working in America, in the fall of 1939, could have tapped so easily and effectively as Josef Kavalier.
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:48 am
nagu, before there were super-villains, all the heros fought the fascists and commies. oh, and sometimes the apprehended regualr robbers and thieves too.