If Batman is the best because he makes himself the best, and if the Green Lantern Corps’ special rings are fueled by will power, then how come everyone gets to be a Green Lantern except for Bruce Wayne? He ought to be the greatest Green Lantern of them all.
It bothers me that nobody else has thought of this.
I’m no Mark Evanier, but check out Batman: In Darkest Knight by Mike Barr. It was an Elseworlds book in the early 90’s where Bruce Wayne becomes Green Lantern.
Of all the damn … all right.
Still doesn’t explain why the real Bruce Wayne isn’t a Green Lantern.
Hmmm – in Green Lanter: Rebirth I believe Geoff Johns suggests that it has something to do with fear: it doesn’t take willpower alone, but also conquering your fear, whereas Bruce Wayne’s power is partly fueled by his fear. Or something like that.
>> It bothers me that nobody else has thought of this.>>
It shouldn't bother you, then — many, many people have thought of it.
And whatever in-story answers are offered, the real answer is that Batman works really well as Batman, so he's going to stay Batman. Just like Tony Stark isn't going to build armored suits for all the Avengers as an ongoing thing, and Richie Rich isn't going to hand out millions to his pals even though he'd never miss it.
kdb
Boy, I don’t have a leg to stand on. Ok, now that bothers me.
Is there a superpower that runs on disgruntlement? Sign me up.
“Just like Tony Stark isn’t going to build armored suits for all the Avengers as an ongoing thing, and Richie Rich isn’t going to hand out millions to his pals even though he’d never miss it.”
But that’s because Tony Stark and Richie Rich are both dicks.
I like that you refer to Batman as the “real Batman” Tom. That cracks me up.
You totally have a leg to stand on. It’s a plot hole caused by the super-hero shared world meme. And you know what? The super-hero shared world meme is pretty stupid.
In that vein, Kurt’s claim that Batman works very well as Batman is, in fact, not true. Often, Batman doesn’t work at all as Batman. Crappy Batman stories are a dime a dozen.
So, at least from my perspective, your point (this is dumb) is essentially more valid than his (it isn’t dumb, because it works.) But I’m just a hater….
When are you going to learn to stop hating, and just love the Bat?
Also, the Guardians only give out rings to people who aren’t too bright. If Batman got a ring, he’d probably be running the Corps by lunchtime.
Batman doesn’t wear freebie schwag, don’t matter if it comes from aliens are not.
>> But that's because Tony Stark and Richie Rich are both dicks.>>
To be fair, the Guardians are dicks, too.
And it ain't like there would suddenly be no more crappy stories if Batman had a power ring. I expect there'd be more — if for no other reason than Batman would have a power ring.
And of course there's a super-power that runs on disgruntlement. But do you really want to be Mark Waid?
Hey Kurt. Not to be too fanboyish but…I really have enjoyed a bunch of your Astro City stories. Thanks for stopping by the blog.
I don’t think giving Batman a power ring would make there be better stories, obviously. (Though there’s a Batman with power ring episode of the animated series which seems enjoyable enough.) My point is just that the whole continuity/shared world aspect of the big two’s output has some real downsides; it’s kind of ridiculous and incestuous and can lead to a lot of idiocy. I think Tom’s question gets at that. The real question, for me, at least, isn’t so much — why doens’t Bruce Wayne get a ring? As, why is it a good idea to have this kind of fan-fiction shared world in the first place?
But that’s probably just me….
>> Hey Kurt. Not to be too fanboyish but…I really have enjoyed a bunch of your Astro City stories. >>
Thanks.
>> I don't think giving Batman a power ring would make there be better stories, obviously. (Though there's a Batman with power ring episode of the animated series which seems enjoyable enough.) >>
Yeah, but there are good Batman stories without it, too.
>> My point is just that the whole continuity/shared world aspect of the big two's output has some real downsides; it's kind of ridiculous and incestuous and can lead to a lot of idiocy. I think Tom's question gets at that. The real question, for me, at least, isn't so much — why doens't Bruce Wayne get a ring? As, why is it a good idea to have this kind of fan-fiction shared world in the first place? >>
Because it's fun to have the characters meet.
It's fun to have Batman stories, and it's fun to have Superman stories, but it's fun to have Justice League stories, too. It's not really any more complicated than that. It's entertaining.
The stories are the cake, and the shared-universe stuff is frosting. Things tend to go horribly wrong when people start to think the frosting is more important than the cake, and then get better when they remember that it's about the cake after all.
The real answer to questions like, "Why doesn't the Flash clean up Gotham City, too?" is "It would make Batman's cake lousy. People read BATMAN because they like crimefighter stuff where Batman's cool, and don't really want to see Superman or the Flash or Green Lantern mess with that particular cake." On the other hand, people who like stories where Batman and Superman and Green Lantern work together have the JLA cake, and some people like both kinds of cake.
But if you start to tie it together with logic foremost rather than entertainment, then you need to explain why Superman doesn't help all the other heroes almost all the time, and why aren't the crimefighters turned into SF-type heroes to make them more effective, and you end up with everything being JLA cake, and no solo Batman cake left. Or you come to the conclusion that it doesn't work, so Batman shouldn't be in the JLA, which maybe preserves the Batman cake, but it messes up the JLA cake.
So in the end, the answer to all of these questions is: Don't mess with my cake.
Batman cake, when well done, is good. JLA cake, when well done, is good. But if you pay too much attention to the frosting, the cakes all start to taste the same, and that might be logical, but it's boring.
This is also known as the Go 'Way Kid, You Bodda Me school of comics continuity. Shared universes are fun as long as they make reading comics more fun, and not fun when they start to tangle things up and mess with the individual series concepts. When that happens, you can either go with it even though it messes things up, in the name of logic and continuity maintenance, or you can sweep it under the rug and look the other way.
Much as I love continuity, I'm a big fan of sweeping it under the rug and looking the other way. If it serves the X-Men series better to let Kitty Pryde age while it serves FF better to have Franklin age a lot slower, then that's good — that's cake, and both the FF cake and the X-Men cake should be good on their own terms. You just don't have the characters talk about how they're aging at different rates.
And if Batman could solve most of his cases by getting on the JLA communicator and asking Superman or Rip Hunter or someone to use time-travel or super-powers to solve the mystery, then you ignore it, because that's frosting, and the important thing to do is make it a good Batman cake. He can do all that stuff with Superman or Rip Hunter in the other cakes, where those flavors enhance the story rather than messing it up.
>> But that's probably just me…>>
Not really. But just like readers who don't let it bother them that Nero Wolfe was 40 years old for 40 years straight, or that Linus was in kindergarten when Sally Brown was an infant, and later they were in the same class, there gets to be a point where you decide whether you want it to be strictly logical, or you want it to be fun.
Used to be, things sold better when they didn't tie in too much, and nobody asked why the Avengers didn't show up to help out with Galactus or where Spider-Man was that day. Nowadays, it seems like you can't do a big story without it sprawling over most of the other books in the line, and that's selling well…for now. But next year, or five years from now, who knows?
Maybe the individual cakes will be more important. Or maybe it'll be mostly frosting, and Batman _will_ have a power ring.
kdb
The thing is…the individual stories sold better *when comics had a broader audience.* The continuity stuff appeals very strongly to a tiny group of people — middle-aged guys who have been reading comics for more than 20 years, basically.
You’re saying that it’s just a matter of taste. Which is, of course, true. But matters of taste connect up with other issues — demographics, cultural stuff — lots of things. Like the fact that you couldn’t even have these kinds of crossovers if creators hadn’t been systematically screwed out of their rights, as just one for instance.
I don’t honestly care one way or another whether Batman gets a power ring. I do think the amount of energy and resources devoted to fetishizing the more or less banal possibilities of long-played out corporate properties is not a way to make especially good art, either in terms of marketing or aesthetics.
>> The thing is…the individual stories sold better *when comics had a broader audience.* The continuity stuff appeals very strongly to a tiny group of people — middle-aged guys who have been reading comics for more than 20 years, basically.>>
This is true. And I think a part of why they sell to a smaller group of people is that they've been tailored to appeal more and more to that audience — and not to anyone else.
>> You're saying that it's just a matter of taste.>>
No, mostly I'm shrugging at the analysis, because the publishers aren't really interested in what I think is in their long-term health; they're interested in short-term health, and they're going to chase selling more and more comics to a tiny audience and then wonder where everyone went.
I'm very firmly on the cake-over-frosting side, but as long as frosting sells in this market, we'll get frosting. Which is kind of a downer conclusion for a question as essentially fluffy and light-hearted as "Should Batman have a power ring," so I was avoiding going there.
>> Like the fact that you couldn't even have these kinds of crossovers if creators hadn't been systematically screwed out of their rights, as just one for instance.>>
You could, but it'd be more complicated. Which might put the emphasis more on the separate properties.
>> I do think the amount of energy and resources devoted to fetishizing the more or less banal possibilities of long-played out corporate properties is not a way to make especially good art, either in terms of marketing or aesthetics.>>
Some days I share that view, other days I find I want to write stories about the Flash's home town and why it's important to his adult life.
But certainly, if you think of them as banal and long-played out, there's no reason to waste any time over Bat-power-rings at all; there's so much other stuff that isn't corporate-owned to explore.
And if they ever did add a power ring to Batman's arsenal, I'd be happy reading HELLBOY and FABLES and SCALPED and USAGI YOJIMBO and GUNNERKRIGG COURT and such.
Those are good cakes all on their own.
kdb
Fair points all around.
Never mind all that. What I want to know is how come I don’t get to be a Green Lantern? I’m much more virtuous than Bruce Wayne. So is Kurt.
I think Mark Waid should be Green Lantern.
You have to be without fear to be a Green Lantern, Mark.
You almost made it, but the pathological fear of cole slaw did you in.
kdb
Great. My first time posting a comment on this blog, and I’m disagreeing (however slightly) with Kurt Busiek, who is notably made of win. Well …
It seems to me that Tom’s original question is a good one — for somebody writing Batman, or Green Lantern, or JLA. Good because there might be a story in it, if you assume Batman and Green Lantern and their backstories as givens. In trying to answer the question, you might end up saying something about Batman, or about Green Lantern, or about willpower. In other words, you get something about the characters, or something about a theme relevant to the characters, out of it.
Jon Hastings’ comment about that Geoff Johns story is the kind of thing I mean. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if it was well or poorly executed, but it sounds like Johns was thinking about what willpower is and how it works, which in turn is key to what Green Lantern is and how he works. So it seems to me a good notion, a thematically resonant notion, to throw into a Green Lantern story.
Another way to put it is that, if you as a writer have it clear in your mind what you want out of a character, what’s cool about them and how they work, then you can come up with in-story work-arounds for potentially troubling logic. And the stories may become richer as a result, because the settings and characters become realer.
(Or possibly they may not; I have a vague recollection somebody tried to deal with the Stark-armoured Avengers notion, and came up with something about how the different Avengers were so untrained with the use of powered armour that they’d actually be hampered by using the suits. Which seems a bit weak.)
(My girlfriend just pointed out that this whole issue is similar to replacing an actor on a TV show who leaves between seasons. You can let it go unnoticed, but it’s probably better to address it in-story because in the long run even in a sitcom some kind of rationale will help make the show seem realer. If you’ve got an arc-based show like Babylon 5, you almost have to address it. So: sure, the real reason the space station has a different telepath is a contract dispute, and the real reason Batman doesn’t have a power ring is so you can tell a certain kind of story with him. But in both cases, if you don’t have an in-story reason, coherence begins to break down.)
My point of partial disagreement with Kurt Busiek is that I don’t think the shared-universe aspect is necessarily frosting; I don’t know that it’s either as inessential or as easily separable as all that. It starts out that way. But in talking about the (in this case, shared) universe a story takes place in, we’re talking about setting. If you establish something about the setting, you have to follow through, or the story is weakened. To say that you want the benefits of having a shared universe without putting in the thought needed to make the universe coherent is … well … it’s like having your cake and eating it, too. However much frosting there may be.
So, yeah, if you establish Batman and Green Lantern in the same universe, then you have to explain why Batman doesn’t have a ring, or both characters get a bit harder to accept. The entertainment factor gets a bit less. The suspension of disbelief becomes that much harder.
To some extent, the nature of comics readership does work against the need for that kind of explanation. If you’re a long-time fan, you don’t think about the reason why Batman doesn’t have a power ring; you just accept that he doesn’t, and that there’s a reason why. You don’t wonder why, when Peter Parker is contacting everybody in the Marvel Universe to get somebody to heal his fatally-injured aunt, he doesn’t go to that one X-Men character whose mutant ability is the power to heal people. You just figure that guy was out of town that day, or Spider-man once flipped him off and he still bears a grudge, or that there’s some other logical reason he didn’t come through for ol’ web-head. That is, if you know enough about the universe to know that X-Man character exists, you have enough invested in it that you’re likely to assume that a reason he doesn’t help Spidey also exists.
That doesn’t much help new readers dealing with more basic issues, though. And it doesn’t help long-time readers who’d like more coherence on the page, rather than in their heads.
I don’t think this applies to Peanuts, which paid far less lip service to realism than super-hero books do. That is, when things deviated from the real, there was no explanation provided for it; it was just part of the nature of the strip. Sally and Linus being different ages and then the same age is, to me, of a piece with Snoopy having a Van Gogh in his dog house, or serving as a helicopter to rescue Linus from a barn roof. By contrast, super-hero books provide explanations for why things are the way they are: this guy can do special things because he’s the last survivor of an alien world, this guy because he trained for it all his life, that guy over there because he got bit by a radioactive bug.
And I don’t think it necessarily applies to Nero Wolfe, for two reasons. Firstly, my recollection is that the changing settings of those stories weren’t explicitly key to many of them, if to any at all. You didn’t have Nero and Archie uncovering Nazi plots in one book and solving mysteries involving Viet Cong in another, say. Secondly, I think the books were meant more to be read as individual works than as installments in an ongoing story. Super-hero stories, at least over the past forty or so years, tend to act differently; part of the structure of them seems to derive from the fact that any given issue, any given story, is only one element in a larger tissue of stories.
This to me is a question of storytelling, not of super-heroes. Which is why I’ve gone on about it so long. Apologies for the length of the post; there seemed to be some interesting things going on here.
Hey gents – just wanted to say thanks for the intelligent and fun conversation. It makes me feel that comics can be discussed on the Internet without hurt feelings and dropping f-bombs. Well done.
By the way, here's another thought: Batman wouldn't accept the ring because then he would have to do what the Guardians told him to do, and wouldn't be able to devote all of his time to kicking criminals to the curb. The Guardians would send him off to rescue gelatin creatures on other planets from time to time, etc.
Hey Jay. Well, never fear, we can be nasty as well. But I'm glad you didn't have to see that….