One of the most important DC essayists today reviews the code of honor by which Batman does not kill.
By Alex Jaffe
Why doesn’t Batman kill?
Batman doesn’t kill. That’s pretty much his bet. Paradoxically, while Gotham City is home to the most dangerous urban criminals in all of fiction, the man who stands between them and the dawn is one who adamantly refuses to take a life.
You know… except when he does. As in the first appearances of him in 1939. And the most popular representations of the character in the cinema. So when, if ever, is it okay for Batman to take a life, or allow one to be lost? How did this rule come about? And what reasons does he give to justify it?
With the release of The Batman, it’s a question worth examining again. Previous Batman directors Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, and Zack Snyder have all given us their own answers, which can be seen as stemming from the Batman being written at a different time in its history. Also The Batman wears his influences proudly. Since the debut of the first trailer at DC FanDome 2020, director Matt Reeves has cited Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego as one of the most important pieces of work for his film, a story that almost entirely deals with the question of the lethality of Batman.
“There is a rule,” Robert Pattinson has said about his character. “Batman doesn’t kill. It can be interpreted in two ways. Either he just wants to inflict the proper punishment, or he wants to kill and his self-control stops him.”
This second idea, of Batman as a violence addict who must restrain himself or succumb to his darkness, is intriguing, and is the story that is at the heart of Ego. But it’s not the only reason Batman’s history has provided for his Golden Rule – let’s take a closer look.
In his origin, Batman does kill
The question of whether or not Batman should kill his enemies was, in fact, a point of contention between Batman’s own parents. Not Thomas and Martha Wayne, but creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger.
The first villain Batman faced was a man named Stryker. Despite that legacy, there’s a good reason you don’t see it around here. In 1939 Detective Comics #27, he was knocked over a railing by Batman into a vat of acid. His immediate feelings on the matter: “A fitting ending for his class.”
In his first year, the character of Batman was still being defined, and he was quite intense. He killed his enemies almost as often and had few reservations when it came to the use of weapons.
The vote
“As much as I hate to take a human life,” Batman says from the gunner’s seat of his Batplane in 1940’s Batman “1,” I’m afraid it’s necessary this time!
That’s when publisher Whitney Ellsworth put his foot down. Children read this magazine by the millions, and parents found cause for concern. With the moral panic against the values represented in comics already on the rise in those nascent years, the pressure was on to soften the image of their second most popular hero.
Bob Kane, by his account, was furious. In his personal memoirs, Kane wrote years later that he always regretted taking deadly force away from Batman, as it separated his character from the more brazen pulp heroes who inspired him. This nonchalant attitude toward the death of his enemies and its roots in pulp fiction would find its way to the screen in Tim Burton’s Batman movies fifty years later.
But Bill Finger had other regrets. He allowed Batman to kill in the first place. As friends who knew him well later said, Bill was never comfortable with the lethality of his hero, and was relieved to take it in a different direction. As the author of the legendary origin of Batman, Finger made the definitive statement as to why Batman doesn’t kill in the first place: because his parents were killed in front of him. Batman would never kill because, in the tragedy that gave rise to the character himself, Bruce determined that the worst thing to do is take a life.
Journey to the Ego
Darwyn Cooke was one of the greatest comic book artists. His elemental style routinely revealed what DC characters were like at their most basic, in a way that permanently redefined them. In 2000’s Batman: Ego, Cooke presented a confrontation between Batman and his most persistent enemy, not the Joker, not Ra’s al Ghul, but his own psychological self.
Alone in the Batcave, after letting a man and his family die in fear of the Joker, Batman must answer to himself why he allows Gotham’s monsters to escape justice time and time again.
The truth he finds is ugly: that, in his heart, Batman could easily become a monster. The night his parents were killed, a beast awoke in him. One that, if he sets her free, will never stop. The only way to keep his inner killer at bay, like a recovering alcoholic who refuses a single glass of wine, is to never take a life, even when he could save many more. Because if Batman’s darkest heart is unleashed, who will save Gotham from him?
under the hood
Cooke’s interpretation of it is one of his most creative, turning Batman’s very existence into a psychological horror. It’s something Jason Todd, his murdered son brought back to life, directly challenges in Judd Winick’s Under the Hood. “If I do that,” Batman tries to explain, “if I let myself go down there… I’ll never go back.”
What if Batman walked into that place, and his worst fears about himself came true? That’s the same thesis that Scott Snyder advances in his creation of The Batman Who Laughs, of a Batman finally pushed beyond his rule. In doing so, he is literally no different from the villain he killed. When the world’s greatest hero kills, Snyder proposes, what you’re left with at the end of the night is the world’s greatest killer.
The sensational discovery of the character
With eighty-three years of stories from hundreds of writers, each with their own take on Batman, even the most important rules can be broken. When the undead resurface from their former bloodthirsty selves, does killing them count as a kill? Not in DC vs. Vampires. If an artificial intelligence can think and feel, can it really be killed? Maybe not in “Silicone Soul”, one of the most disturbing episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.
Is letting a man die, not intervening to save his life, but intentionally consigning him to his fate, a form of murder? Depends on how angry you made him, really. The history of Batman can be classified as before Robin, and after Robin. It’s no coincidence, after all, that Batman’s firm policy against killing only took shape after Robin was introduced in the comics.
The beginning of Batman’s career is usually brutal. In Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Batman willingly allows Ra’s al Ghul to be killed by the elevated trains that represent his parents’ vision of the future of Gotham. And in his later years, on the occasions when Robin is unceremoniously taken from him – like in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns – we find ourselves with a tired and vengeful Batman, with a light that could only be rekindled with a new dawn of justice.
So Batman doesn’t kill?
The common denominator is that when Batman works alone – as he so often, and so falsely, professes to be at his best – is when we are left with a Dark Knight at his darkest. It is for the sake of those he inspires, teaches and loves that Batman resists the lure of the easy, permanent fix.
Batman: Ego may have just given us a glimpse into what Batman fears is the real reason he doesn’t kill. But the real reason is that Batman has to lead by example. For the future of Gotham to outlive him, he has to take responsibility for the decisions he would want the next generation of heroes to make. Bruce Wayne’s feelings about who deserves to die can be complicated, and often are. But for the sake of the Robins, the Batgirls, and the people he has inspired, both in the comics and in reality, to fight evil… Batman doesn’t kill.
It is more or less what it does.
Via DCComics.com
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