It took Batman his whole life to become Batman. That’s the point of his story: to do what he does, you have to spend your whole life getting ready. But Kathy Kane became Batwoman because she felt like it. She used to be a circus performer and that was pretty much all the prep she needed. Maybe she had some refresher trampoline sessions and bouts of microscope study (“criminology”). But it wasn’t a lifetime’s training. The same with the new Kathy Kane-Batwoman. From what I saw, she chose the career on a lark and maybe took some kickboxing lessons.
Batgirl was a librarian who just decided she’d be a superhero. Catwoman at least was a jewel thief and trained to sneak in and out of buildings, but then Frank Miller made her a dominatrix. Wikipedia says Catwoman’s latest version has some gymnastics in her background and a sensei who teaches her martial arts; make him a hell of a sensei and maybe you’ve got something. But it took a while for her to reach this point. In Batman Returns a secretary gets to become Catwoman just because she goes crazy. She’s able to jump from roof to roof, and this is right away, as a given of her new status.
Robins always get trained pretty hard. It isn’t enough that they have a circus background; they also get put thru the mill by Batman. The point of being Robin is that you’re trained this way, trained by the one fellow whose life is crimefighting. But then there’s a girl Robin and she doesn’t get trained so hard. I mean Carrie Kelly in The Dark Knight Returns. How much prep does she get before her first battle? Stephanie Brown, per Wikipedia, is another just-decides-to character.
This pattern — boys, hard training vs. girls, no training — continues from decade to decade in the franchise, from comics to movies. Girls are always stuck into the Batman series as a gimmick. The first Kathy Kane was a beard, the new one is a hot-chick lesbian, but either way you get the idea.
I guess what surprises me is how the same rule keeps getting broken year after year. Setting aside all that Batman training is a pretty big gimme, bigger than deciding this person and that person also happened to survive Krypton. It’s more like deciding that superness had nothing to do with Krypton, that Supergirl could fly because she was perky. (To me, the equivalent to the lone-survivor tampering would be to decide that the Waynes’ murder wasn’t just a random act of criminality, that it involved some larger machination. Probably the Batman people have done this at some point or other.)
I guess the main exception there would be the Cassandra Cain Batgirl, who was subjected to rather grueling, specialised training that was also quite abusive throughout her childhood.
The training-as-abuse thing seems to happen to women disproportionately too….
Hmmm… There’s more than a little to this, although orphan male kids from the circus or the wrong side of the tracks or just an amateur acrobat boy detective like Tim do seem to require only about six months of grueling bat-training before becoming full-fledged red-breasted boy-birds.
And while Joker may have been anything from gangster to comedian to… Oh, let’s say floor sweeper before he found himself in that red hood for whatever reason, he became the menace he was after that chemical bath, and if he WAS an ordinary man, as he sometimes remembers, that’s quite a feat.
There is, of course, his Harley Quinn who combined Gymnastics and Psych training, but you could argue rather quickly and easily became the real force she was after he drove her mad. Though a little edge from Poison Ivy in the form of enhanced strength and agility (Mainstream Comics wise) didn’t hurt.
And there is, as a main exception, Cassandra Cain, raised from birth to be an assassin. Also Helena Bertinelli, with various training for her mission of mob vengeance. Lady Shiva, greatest martial artist in the world…
And Talia Al Ghul, a character I find myself defending against being too vapid a creature quite often, was not indeed raised by her father, world’s oldest chauvinist that he is, to be his true heir, but was raised to know everything from business to languages to assassination to medicine.
And, Selina, my Selina… Oh, hmm. Well… The original story behind Catwoman, after all, WAS that a mere bump on the head and a case of amnesia was sufficient to turn her from mild-mannered stewardess to Princess of Plunder.
However, it really didn’t take long for people to fill in the gaps around Frank Miller’s portrayal with other training from respected individuals. Wildcat, who also trained batman in boxing, has consistently been one of her mentors. Along with, yes, the Armless Master of Gotham, which would be the sensei Wikipedia refers to. The current version of Selina Kyle, at any rate, (according to several maddeningly contradictory accounts) left home soon after her mother’s suicide, spent a while in a Dickensian Juvenile Hall, and then a while in a Dickensian pickpockets school, plus, according to various writers, a while training and travelling with a master carnie, a stint with a hitman/jewel thief… The point is, she really has had more than a heck of a Sensei at this point. ;) In fact, there’s so many people she’s remembered training/helping her, that… Well, rather like Batman, you’d be hard pressed to actually make sense of it all! Though let me tell you, getting into the post-crisis history of Catwoman through miriad retcons is a task even I sometimes blanch at. Suffice to say that in her own way, it’s been pretty much established since about the Zero Hour reboot that in one way or another, she has indeed been spending a life that grants her the skills she now possesses. Did it indeed take a while for her to get to this point? Sure, but other than the golden age origin, and then Brennert’s retcon of it in a later Earth 2 story, we knew virtually nothing about Catwoman’s background at all. Once she was given one after the golden age, it did become a series of trainers and misfortunes that forms a sort of parallel to Bruce’s.
I really should stop now. I really, really should.
She’s able to jump from roof to roof, and this is right away, as a given of her new status.
Along with an actual literal nine lives after being brought back from the dead by magic cats, Burton was going more for spirit of vengeance in that take, so it WAS a little more than just going crazy.
And Burton Penguin was apparently literally raised by penguins, too…
I said I’d stop. I’ll stop now, I promise.
In reference to your last paragraph: some earlier Batman origins (starting in 1956) did have Thomas and Martha Wayne killed as a mob hit specifically directed at Thomas Wayne. And, of course, Tim Burton decided that the petty thief who killed the Waynes would eventually become the Joker after Batman shoves him into the vat o’ strange chemicals, so that the Joker creates Batman and Batman creates the Joker.
None of that really sticks, though. For most people, readers and writers, Batman is about the random tragedy of petty crime, in counterpoint to the cosmic-level problems Superman faces.
Actually Stephanie Brown decided to become a vigilante to stop her father (the Cluemaster) and get him sent back to jail. And they give her pretty consistant skill levels given the experience she has.
She starts off pretty sucky, gets off and on training from both Batman and Robin through the years, presumably spends a lot of time on her own and with the Birds of Prey, then gets a couple of months of serious training from Batman when she becomes Robin.
As of now she’s still not up to the skill levels of most of Gotham’s vigilantes, but she keeps getting better with time. I’d say she’s the most realistic of any character in the Bat-verse.
Didn’t know that about Brown. It sounds encouraging.
Re Stephanie, I’d like to add to Anonymous’ comments.
I think Batman’s view of her for a long time was that she ‘just decided’ to do it and that she wasn’t ready to be a vigilante. He discouraged (threatened?) her at every opportunity but she refused to listen to him, hanging out with TimRobin for assistance and pestering Black Canary for Martial Arts training. She also got trained by the Birds of Prey for a short while.
When Bruce accepted Steph as Robin he did so partly because (in my view) she’d been so bloody perseverant for so long, and so proved herself, and also because TimRobin had quit so there was a vacancy.
She then disobeyed his orders, got fired, thens tarted War Games and was (seemingly) killed. But that’s a tangent.
I guess my point is Steph ahs tried to damned hard to get where she is.