Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (2nd Edition)

PRAISE FOR TRAVIS LANGLEY AND

BATMAN

AND PSYCHOLOGY

This man is a genius! –Stan Lee

Marvelous. –Adam West

Thought-provoking. –Kirkus Reviews

Langley cleverly combines his two loves, as evinced by the title, to create a work that will draw the most disinterested psychology students in by using the seemingly universally loved Byronic hero of Batman. –Geekscape.net

Dr. Langley puts this masked vigilante and his admirers on the analyst couch to examine what makes him—and us—tick. A revealing look at Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego. –Barnes & Noble

If you love Batman, you will love this book. If you love psychology, you will love this book! Do not worry about getting lost though, as Langley does an excellent job explaining everything he discusses … A book you shouldn’t pass up, as once you start reading it you simply will not be able to put it down! –International House of Geek

More entertaining than many of the others which populate the ever-growing field of texts about pop culture and the sciences. Rather than just telling us what we should know or think about Batman, the book supplements our own interest in the hero and provokes us to think more about what’s going on in his head. –StarPulse.com

A modern classic. –Mark D. White, author of Batman and Ethics

It is a terrific book. –Dennis O’Neil, Batman comic book writer/editor.

Scholarly and insightful…His professional credentials, mixed with his love for comic books and the character of Batman, create a fascinating, entertaining, and educational read. –Michael Uslan, Bat-Films executive producer

This book is not only an ode to one of pop culture’s most famous mythical figures but an analytical look at an intriguing character… An intriguing read and a fascinating book. –eXpert Comics

If you ever wanted to really know if Bruce Wayne is nuts, then this is the book for you. Perhaps some incarnations of Batman are more crazy than others! Great read and tremendously insightful into the psyche of The Dark Knight. –Batman-on-Film.com

This book — diagnosing or debunking Batman‘s various alleged mental disorders — is the jam. –Craig Calcaterra of HardballTalk at NBC

Langley cleverly combines his two loves –as evinced by the title—to create a work that will draw the most disinterested psychology students in by using the seemingly universally loved Byronic hero of Batman. – Geekscape

Absolutely fascinating and fantastically geektastic. –Book Haul

If you’re interested in Batman, psychology, or even inspirational books, I recommend this book. It’s entertaining as well. –Knight Light

Awesome book, and it’s helping me psychologically prepare myself to wear the cowl. –Batcave Chronicles

A fantastic look into the inner workings of one of comic book’s most compelling, dynamic characters; a masterfully written analysis/love note to the Dark Knight. –FindYourGeek.com

A really great book that I recommend all Batman fans read. –Fansided

If you love Batman, I really recommended this book. –Pannita

A diamond addition to the world of psychology. – New Hope Psychology

You should definitely read or hear this book. –NBU

What makes the book really shine, aside from its great content, is the way that content is presented. Langley’s writing style is very natural and relaxed, and not stiff or stuffy. This allows for the various complex ideas to be expressed clearly and understandably…10/10 –The Stuff of Legend

Batman & Psychology is easily one of my Top 10 favorite books of any genre. Super work! –Chad Ellsworth, author of Building Up without Tearing Down: How to Cultivate Heroic Leadership in Your & Your Organization

"If you are a Batman fan then chances are you have read, or at least heard of, Dr. Travis Langley’s Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight. If not, I would highly recommend it." –Mark Cook, LRM Online

…possibly the most fascinating book I’ve ever read. –Chelsea Campbell, author of the Renegade X series

SECOND EDITION

BATMAN

AND PSYCHOLOGY

A DARK AND STORMY KNIGHT

TRAVIS LANGLEY

Turner Publishing Company

Nashville, Tennessee

www.turnerpublishing.com

Copyright © 2021 Travis Langley

Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight 2nd edition

This book has not been approved, licensed, or sponsored by any entity or person involved in creating or producing Batman, the comics, the films, or the TV series.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to Turner Publishing Company, 4507 Charlotte Avenue, Suite 100, Nashville, Tennessee, 37209, (615) 255-2665, fax (615) 255-5081, E-mail: admin@turnerpublishing.com.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

BATMAN is ™ and ˝ DC Comics. Used with Permission. Illustration credits: pages 9, 12, 44, 61, 63, 75, 87, 95, 109, 128, 149, 159, 169, 175, 195, 219, 245, 264, 279: Marko Head; pages 91, 142: Nick Langley; pages 38, 113, 121, 235: Travis Langley.

Cover design by M.S. Corley

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021950023

Paperback 9781684428557

Hardcover 9781684428564

Ebook 9781684428571

Printed in the United States of America

For Spencer, who said at age 3, I need to go save the world, and assured me, Yes, you can help.

Contents

Acknowledgments: Our Bat-Family

Foreword by Michael Uslan, Bat-Films executive producer

Introduction by Dennis O’Neil, comic book writer/editor

Reintroduction to the Second Edition by Michael Uslan

1 Beneath the Cowl: Who Is Batman?

2 Which Batman?

Case File 2–1: King Tut

Case File 2–2: Mr. Freeze

3 The Trauma

4 Why the Mask?

5 Why the Bat?

Case File 5–1: Scarecrow

Case File 5–2: Hugo Strange

6 The Gun: Why Not?

7 The Superstitious, Cowardly Lot: Criminal Nature

Case File 7–1: Bane

8 The Halloween Party: Why All the Costumed Crooks?

Case File 8–1: The Riddler

Case File 8–2: The Penguin

Case File 8–3: Poison Ivy

9 The Madhouse: What Insanity?

Case File 9–1: The Mad Hatter

Case File 9–2: Harley Quinn

Case File 9–3: The Joker

10 The Psychodynamic Duo: Freud and Jung on Batman and Robin

Case File 10–1: Two-Face

11 The Kids: Why Robin?

12 The Women: Why the Cat?

Case File 12–1: Catwoman

13 The Fathers: Why Do We Fall?

Case File 13–1: Ra’s al Ghul

14 The Signal: Who Will Rise?

15 The Assessment: Bats in His Belfry?

Notes

References: Comic Books and Graphic Novels

References: Not Comic Books or Graphic Novels

Index

Acknowledgments

Our Bat-Family

This book began one summer when Batman was packing crowds into theaters; when teaching a psychology in literature class made me realize the power of story to explore real human nature; when reading Danny Fingeroth’s Superman on the Couch made me think, I want to write this kind of book as a psychologist; and when accompanying my son Nicholas to San Diego Comic-Con, where he collected data for Matt Smith’s ethnographic research (no, not the Matt Smith who flew a TARDIS), opened the next chapter in my life. I looked around Comic-Con, watched people bustling about in an environment that celebrated their passions, met scholars writing about comics, and it all came together for me: I needed to study comics fandom, and I needed to write about Batman. Ten years later, I still need to write about Batman.

Because of Turner Publishing acquisitions editor Stephanie Barron, my literary agent Evan Gregory, and the countless readers and listeners who kept the first edition popular all this time, I get to update things I wrote then and to add new notions now. Turner staffers Ezra Fitz, Claire Ong, Lauren Ash, Tim Holtz, Ryan Smernoff, and their whole team have proven friendly and helpful. Marko Head and Nicholas Langley illustrated the chapter openings. Connie Santisteban, who edited the first edition and oversaw the launch of my subsequent Popular Culture Psychology series, joins as copyeditor. Having Connie on board pleases and reassures me beyond words.

One of the highlights of my travels has been taking part in Comic-Con panels where we discuss an array of topics in front of audiences. It’s hard to imagine how we could ever top the time Batman TV star Adam West, modern Bat-Films executive producer Michael Uslan, The Laughing Fish scribe Steve Englehart, and Joker creator Jerry Robinson joined a couple of us psychologists to examine the Joker’s psychopathy. Skipping a Family Guy panel where he could have promoted his then-current work, Adam joined us so he could talk about his show’s Joker, the late Cesar Romero, and because he wanted to meet Michael and Jerry. Later, they each remarked on how enjoyable that historic day turned out to be. While I was finishing this book’s first edition, Jerry left this world, and since then we’ve lost Adam, too, along with our friends Allen Bellman, Irwin Hasen, Stan Lee, Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, and too many others, not only in the industry. I feel diminished by their absence but deeply grateful to have known them.

Batman writers, artists, and editors who’ve shared the stage with us include Neal Adams, Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Capullo, Jo Duffy, Devin Grayson, Steve Englehart, Mike Gold, Adam Glass, Dean Haspiel, Joe Illidge, Arie Kaplan, Paul Levitz, Ron Marz, Bryan Q. Miller, Christopher Priest, Bob Schreck, Gail Simone, Alex Simmons, Louise Simonson, Scott Snyder, Gabe Soria, Joe Staton, Jim Steranko, Peter J. Tomasi, Marv Wolfman, and, more often than anyone else, Danny Fingeroth. Thanks also go to actors Dino Andrade, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Kevin Conroy, Will Friedle, Anthony Michael Hall, Katrina Law, Maurice LaMarche, Loren Lester, Tiny Lister, Jason Marsden, Lee Meriwether, Sean Pertwee, Drew Powell, Tara Strong, and Burt Ward. (My childhood Batman introduced me to Robin.) Hundreds of scholars, journalists, bloggers, cosplayers, and other expert fans joined the fun along the way. Pros who helped in other ways, such as by patiently answering my questions, include Scott Beatty, Jonathan Butler, Jack C. Harris, Paul Dini, Robert Greenberger, Sam Hamm, Russell Lissau, Graham Nolan, John Ostrander, Mayday Trippe, Renee Witterstaetter, and Bob Kane’s last remaining Batman ghost artist, Joe Giella, who with his family welcomed us into their home.

These books would not exist without opportunities the comic cons create. Peter Coogan and Randy Duncan founded the Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con’s conference-within-the-convention, which Kate McClancy chairs and I help them organize now, and this all begins with CAC. I owe great debts to organizers at Comic-Con International (Eddie Ibrahim, Gary Sassaman, Cathy Dalton, Jackie Estrada, Sue Lord, Karen Mayugba, Adam Neese, Amy Ramirez, Chris Sturhann), Wizard World events (Mike Gregorek, Christopher Jansen, Peter Katz, Jaz Bielby, Jerry Milani), and more.

Fellow psych pros who have taken part in the adventure, whether by contributing to the Popular Culture Psychology series or by joining us for our Comic Con-Fusion conversations on YouTube, include Travis Adams, Colt Blunt, Erin Currie, Jim Davies, William Blake Erickson, Larisa Garski, Wind Goodfriend, Scott Jordan, Andrea Letamendi, Martin Lloyd, Harpreet Malla, Justine Mastin, Patrick O’Connor, Brittany Oliver, Sillas Navarro, Craig Pohlman, Robin Rosenberg, Billy San Juan, Janina Scarlet, Yoni Sobin, Ben Stover, Lara Taylor Kester, Tracy Vozar, Eric Wesselmann, and more. Billy and Scott critiqued portions of this manuscript, as have Jenna Busch, Asher Johnson, Alex Langley, and our faculty writers group (Angela Boswell, Maryjane Dunn, Ruth M. Eyres, Steve Listopad, Trudy Sabaj, Michael Taylor).

Documentarians Don Argott and Sheena Joyce (Batman & Bill), Brett Culp (Legends of the Knight), Scott Devine and J. M. Kenny (Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics), Josh Levine and Rick Ramirez (Morgan Spurlock’s Superheroes Decoded), Andrew Lopez and Jeff Desmarais (Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics), and many other interviewers let me talk to the world about these characters. For reasons diverse and sometimes hard to explain, I thank Eric Bailey, Lawrence Brenner, Peter L. Brown, Stanford Carpenter, Michał Chudoliński, Shelly Clevenger, Michael Dahl, Abby Darkstar, Joel DiPippa, Casey Harris, Grant Imahara, Alan Kistler, Jay Kogan, Sharon Manning, Greg Novak, J. J. Sedelmaier, James and Nina (West) Tooley, Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson, Mark White, Kyle Williamson, E. Paul Zehr, and all the students who have collected research data and taken my special topics courses through the years. Endless thanks to my family: parents Lynda and Travis Sr., sons Nicholas and Alex, Katrina, Spencer, and especially Rebecca as my sounding board, proofreader, best friend, wife, and the person who keeps up with so many things when I need to drive into Gotham.

While I have additional reasons for thanking every individual mentioned here, I must again thank two important and gracious humans in particular: Michael Uslan, who contributed the foreword to the first edition and now a reintroduction for the second, and Denny O’Neil, who wrote the original introduction. Both have helped me with other books since then and, more personally, shared many discussions, dinners, and other good times. It has been my honor.

I’ll never get to meet the late Bob Kane or Bill Finger. We can’t chat about their creations. I can’t watch them greet fans, hear them recount anecdotes from their amazing lives, or thank them for everything they set in motion and all their legacy has meant—not face to face anyway. The climate that helped the world outside fandom discover Bill Finger’s importance was cultivated by Kane’s biographer Thomas Andrae, Bill the Boy Wonder author Marc Tyler Nobleman, illustrator Ty Templeton, scholar Arlen Schumer (whose Bat-Man drawing is often mistakenly reported as Kane’s original sketch), playwrights Leonard Schwartz and Roberto Williams, Bill Finger Awards chair Mark Evanier, bloggers such as Bill Jett Ramey and Chris Sims, Fatman on Batman host Kevin Smith. However, it was Bill’s granddaughter Athena Finger who, with her sister/copyright attorney Alethia Mariotta, made the request that finally landed her grandfather his official credit as Batman’s co-creator. I thank Athena for letting me assist where I could and for making me feel like some extended part of the Finger family. What’s next in that arena? Bob Kane has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as does nearly every actor who played Batman in live action. Shouldn’t Bill Finger…?

Batman creator Bob Kane’s headstone. Photo by Lynda M. Lagley.

This book is more than my answer to a question the man who played my childhood hero once asked me, as you’ll soon see. It’s my heartfelt thank you to Bill and Bob. Jerry, too.

Author Travis Langley and Batman: The Animated Series star Kevin Conroy celebratethe Bill Finger Way street dedication with Bill’s family: Athena Finger and Benjamin Zaido Cruz.Photo by Alethia Mariotta.

Foreword

BY MICHAEL USLAN

Batman movie franchise originator, executive producer

Recently, The New York Times took DC Comics, the comic book industry generally, and Batman specifically over the coals for what they claimed might be an insensitivity toward all the supervillains like the Joker, Two-Face, the Scarecrow, and Catwoman, whom they apparently saw less as villains and more as mere victims of assorted types and degrees of mental illness.¹ Concerned psychiatrists and psychologists, it seems, feel that comic books denigrate these poor souls as dangerous, evil, and even lunatics, mix-matching in the process such clinical appellations as psychotics and schizophrenics with costumed crazies and homicidal maniacs. Some psychiatrists and psychologists argue that the comic book supervillain stereotypes promote shameful generalizations that continue to cause every new generation of comic book readers to fear or mock these afflicted and misunderstood antagonists.

Particularly targeted by these critics is the comic book institution known as Arkham Asylum (the word asylum no longer being a politically correct term of art) and the references to its patients as inmates (the latter word also no longer politically correct). The panels of the stories visually depict scenes of these afflicted victims sitting in barred cells (the word cells no longer politically correct in this context), wearing straitjackets or shackles (the word straitjacket no longer politically correct). Comic books are accused of ratcheting up bias, prejudice, and fear against the Joker and his compadres. Indeed, these psychiatrists and psychologists now see Batman as more of the bad guy than the so-called supervillains he opposes. They give no credit to the Dark Knight for his decades-long non-use of butterfly nets (while not specifically mentioned in the article, I’ll venture to guess that the term butterfly nets is also no longer politically correct) to corral his opponents who break out of Arkham seemingly every Wednesday the new comic books go on sale.

The bipolar opposite of this rather sensationalistic approach to Batman and the comics with all the trumped-up charges against the Caped Crusader is the scholarly and insightful book you now hold in your hands. Superherologist Travis Langley is a university professor and an eminent scholar on the psychology of comic book superheroes and their real-life fans. Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight represents the culmination of his professional journal articles, chapters, blogs, many convention panels, and lifetime of contemplating the nature of heroes both factual and fictional, especially the one who guards Gotham. His professional credentials, mixed with his love for comic books and the character of Batman, create a fascinating, entertaining, and educational read. What makes Batman tick? Are superheroes with secret identities schizophrenic? Is Batman neurotic? Psychotic? And are Batman’s rogues gallery of supervillains truly not rogues or supervillains, but rather victims of a heartless society who are in need of better understanding and far more compassion than shown to date by the Gotham City Police Department, Batman, Robin, Superman, and even the entire Justice League of America? Find your nearest couch, lie down, and let Dr. Langley explain it all.

Michael Uslan

Gotham City

Introduction

BY DENNIS O’NEIL COMIC BOOK WRITER, EDITOR, LEGEND

Let us agree, here at the beginning, that Batman does not exist—not, anyway, as you and I exist. You can’t filch his Social Security number, you won’t meet his third cousin at a party, you’ll never follow him into a polling place, and you’ll never press his flesh, even if you spend your midnights lurking on rooftops.

So no present-tense, living-and-breathing, genome-bearing reality for the Dark Knight. But although he is not real, he does have a reality, a kind of reality he shares with mythology, folklore, legends, imaginary friends, and (let us lower our voices) maybe even a deity or two. What I’m suggesting is that Batman is not just a fictional character. Oh, he is that, and once he was nothing more. But not now.

I learned of this somewhat disconcerting reality years ago when, as the editor of Batman comics, I presided over what became known, in the Batman office of DC Comics, as the telephone stunt. What happened was, we had a character—Batman’s second sidekick and the second junior hero to be called Robin—whom we didn’t much like. We suspected that a lot of readers shared our feelings. What to do? Overhaul his personality? Send him to some distant clime? Kill him? Ah. Kill him. We conjured up the telephone stunt. Our writer, Jim Starlin, put the kid into a situation that could do him in. We then gave the readers three days to decide Robin’s fate: call one phone number and he lives to fight another day; call another and requiescat in pace.

Three days and over ten thousand calls later, the nays had it. R.I.P. Boy Wonder.

Then the aftermath: big reaction; lots of reporters and interviews and broadcasters and journalistic fuss. And I realized that I had been thinking of my job as producing fiction for a publishing backwater—comic books—and that I was wrong; my job was being in charge of postindustrial folklore. Batman (and Superman and Wonder Woman and maybe a few others) had been around so long, in so many media, that they were embedded in our collective psyches. Even folk who hadn’t read a comic in years—even those who wouldn’t read comics—knew, at least dimly, who these characters were and had some amorphous feeling for them.

None of which changed my workday: plots and cover copy and manuscript editing and long, long meetings.… you know, publishing stuff. Nor did it change what Batman was to me: a great vehicle for storytelling. But I now knew that he had something of the mythic in him. Like mythic heroes of old, he reflected the values of his time, though those values weren’t constant, and that was good—that allowed him to retain popularity for, as I write this, seventy-two years and counting. He evolved. The essence of what his creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, brought to the party in 1939 hadn’t changed much: the nocturnal vigilante endlessly and symbolically avenging his parents’ murders; an origin tale stark and simple and primal and, I submit, perfect. But virtually everything else did change over the decades: costumes and supporting cast and crime-fighting gadgetry and the kinds of crime fought and the kinds of villains who perpetrated the crimes.… The range of stories appearing under the Batman logo went from farcical to macabre, while always being a Batman. Not the Batman—there is no the Batman—but a Batman, one appropriate to whatever was contemporary.

This plasticity not only kept Batman commercially viable, it allowed different writers and artists to interpret him according to the dictates of their own experiences—the world outside their windows. It also allowed him to be more than a mirror; he could be a receptacle, too. Writers could pour into him a lot that was happening in their consciousness and maybe even more that was happening in their subconscious: what they learned, what they knew, what they didn’t know they knew.

Not deliberately, of course. No comic book writer sits down and creates a psychological profile of a character before writing a line of dialogue. But our characters are human—what else could they be? Granted, these are not real humans—I gently remind you that Batman does not exist—but depictions of humans: greatly simplified, exaggerated, caricatured versions of we mortals. They represent what hundreds of writers and artists over a half century thought and felt and believed about who and what we are, and it’s a safe guess that most of that thinking and feeling and believing occurred subconsciously. But it did filter into the fiction.

The history of comic book superheroes encapsulates, in brief, easily digestible form, the history of storytelling. The first tales our hunter-gatherer forebears told were apparently simple reactions to that bad noise in the sky and the other ugly events that tormented the clan and, after tens of thousands of years and enormous evolution, resulted in the metafictional productions of the postmodernists. Similarly, the first comics presented simple good-guy-versus-bad-guy melodramas. We knew the good guy was good because he—almost always a he—conquered the bad guy, who was bad because his actions incurred the good guy’s disapproval. It was all plot-driven, with characterization either ignored or expressed by the occasional foible, speech pattern, or—yes!—even a funny hat or two. Then, gradually but pretty darn briskly, creative people learned how to tell stories in this odd medium and publishing requirements altered to allow longer stories, and those things resulted in greater sophistication on the parts of both writer and reader. Writers could put a lot into Batman and his ilk, consciously and subconsciously, and they were still allowed the occasional funny hat, too.

Suddenly, while some of us were looking the other way, comics, like jazz and movies before them, had attained full parity. They were respectable—they were An Art Form.

And a well-credentialed professor with a gratifyingly lucid prose style and a sense of humor wrote a book about the psychology of Batman. (You may have noticed it in your hands.) It is a terrific book. It explores the psychological implications of Batman’s various incarnations, in print and on screens both large and small, and in the process gives us a pretty thorough biography of Batman, his friends, and his enemies, and demonstrates the kind of reality Batman enjoys. Not a literal reality (we agreed that Batman does not exist, remember?), but a way of existing in people’s heads that extends past fiction into the realm of postindustrial mythology. I know of no word that exactly defines this kind of myth, but when somebody gets around to creating one, they may very well use Travis Langley’s book as a reference.

Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight performs another task and performs it better than anything I’ve encountered before. It serves as a witty and absolutely clear introduction to psychology, especially clinical psychology.

Batman-who-does-not-exist (we do have to keep reminding ourselves of that!), in the incarnation I’m most familiar with, is, like his predecessor Sherlock Holmes, fairly disdainful of the liberal arts and soft science sections of the library. But he’d read this book. He’d have to, wouldn’t he?

Dennis O’Neil

Crime Alley

since 1939

* * *

Writer and editor Dennis O’Neil, in addition to his award-winning work weaving humanity and social consciousness into the adventures of heroes such as Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Iron Man, was one of the most prominent custodians of the legacy Bob Kane and Bill Finger began. With artist Neal Adams, he restored Batman to his darker roots after the campier stories of then-recent years. Denny’s work with the Dark Knight included creating characters such as Ra’s and Talia al Ghul, overseeing the editing of all Batman titles, and novelizing the motion pictures Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Before the publication of this book’s second edition, Dennis O’Neil left for his next adventure at age eighty-one. I remain forever grateful to Denny for his time, expertise, encouragement, and friendship. If I could have just one more of our long conversations, I would want to tell him again, Thank you, Denny.

Reintroduction

BY MICHAEL USLAN

Batman Movie franchise originator, executive producer

It took ten years from the time I acquired the rights to Batman from DC Comics to turn it into a dark and serious movie finally in 1989. That led to our opening the door to The Dark Knight trilogy, Batman: The Animated Series, The Lego Batman Movie, Joker, The Batman, the return of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne, and beyond! In retrospect, those ten long years trapped in a human endurance contest were worth it.

And it has been ten years since the first publication of Dr. Travis Langley’s ground-breaking book, Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight. Finally, to read his revised second edition, it too was well worth the wait. And a revised book demands a revised introduction, as well.

Think of how extremely America, the culture, the technologies, and the entire world have changed over the past decade. Pause for a moment, close your eyes, and picture where you were and who you were ten years ago. It’s staggering! And tempus fugit when you’re having fun.… In the past ten years, how has the portrayal of the Batman changed in the comic books and graphic novels? In movies? In animation? On streaming? In gaming? How has the portrayal of the Joker and the other disturbed members of Batman’s rogues gallery evolved? Again, it’s staggering!

Dr. Langley, the only one with not only the academic qualifications but also the fanboy qualifications, is to my mind’s eye the only person who could write this opus. He was born to do so … even if such did not necessitate a secret origin. His fresh insights infuse this updated edition with his knowledge and wisdom not only in its added new chapters but at every turn along the way.

Left to right: Comic-Con panelists Robin Rosenberg, Michael Uslan, Travis Langley, Adam West, Jerry Robinson. Photo by Alex Langley.

In a society held back today by too many people possessing a deluded sense of entitlement, Batman symbolizes the power of commitment, perseverance, and persistence—traits that can be defined as the superpower of a superhero who, unlike Superman, has no superpowers. This issue is an important part of this tome.

The issue of violence and, specifically, gun violence permeates everything Batman, no matter which medium is being viewed under the public microscope. These issues have now become a bigger topic of national and international concern. Every version of the Dark Knight since Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Tim Burton’s Batman through Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy to Todd Phillips’s Joker and Matt Reeves’s The Batman have stimulated endless fan arguments and socio/political commentary as to whether or not Batman and members of his Batman family should kill or even carry a gun. Again, from the perspective of today, Dr. Langley boldly examines and re-examines this hot topic. Just wait till you get to chapter 6, The Gun.

A critically important new chapter, The Signal, explores in depth Batman’s ability to inspire people, both within his fictional world and in ours, which, in recent years, seems almost fictional in its own topsy-turvy way.

As a final note, the ten years leading to this new edition have also brought loss. I know personally that during this time, Dr. Langley lost some friends and legendary comic book creators who were true fans of his work, including Adam West, Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Jerry Robinson, and Stan Lee. Not coincidentally, each one also had a creative association with Batman as well. (Yes, even Marvel’s Stan Lee wrote comic books starring his own versions of Catwoman, a Latino Robin, and introduced to the world a Black man as Batman.)

So step into this edition which is the equivalent of Dr. Langley’s office. Lie down on his comfortable, professional couch. Relax. Let all your anxieties go. This bat-session is about to begin.

Michael Uslan, Lying on Bruce Wayne’s couch in Thomas Wayne’s study, by an open window on a dark and stormy night in 2022.

* * *

Michael Uslan is a comics scholar, writer, and filmmaker experienced in taking on one Goliath after another. To get approval to teach the first course on comic book folklore at any accredited university, he asked a university dean to recount Superman’s famous origin and then pointed out that the dean had just described the story of Moses. Michael has written some of our most enduring heroes’ comic book adventures (Batman, The Shadow, The Spirit, Archie) but is best known for bringing our hero to the big screen as executive producer of every Batman movie since the 1980s—originally another giant battle because studio executives at the time had trouble believing audiences would want a serious Batman. Michael shares his experiences in the books The Boy Who Loved Batman and Batman’s Batman: A Memoir from Hollywood, Land of Bilk and Money.

1

Beneath the Cowl

Who Is Batman?

Adam West once asked me if I thought Batman was crazy. Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight is my answer.¹

Since his debut in 1939’s Detective Comics #27, Batman has thrilled billions across the globe, over time, and through a multitude of media. Of the world’s three best-known comic book heroes—the bat, the spider, and the man from another planet, a trio of orphaned boys—he’s the one who works by night, needs a car to get him into town, and is the most mortal. He’s the superhero with no superpowers, the one we can most easily believe might inhabit our world. While his secret identity is the most fantastic of the three, one charmingly handsome billionaire living in a grand mansion on top of a vast cave versus two nebbishy newspaper employees, that fantastic wealth helps us accept his masked identity as something that feels real. Someone has to pay for those wonderful toys. The real world has more people known to be superrich than superpowered. Batman is the hero even adults can envision existing in real life, with less suspension of disbelief. Even though he has opportunities few people enjoy, Bruce Wayne hails from a city, not a mythical island or distant world, and he builds himself into a hero through training and hard work—no radiation, secret formula, or magic ring required. His origin is tragic and brutally believable. It taps the most primal of our childhood fears: A family outing twists into tragedy when a mugger guns his parents down before his eyes.²

His films among the highest grossing in history, this character has starred in more movies and television series, both animated and live-action, than any other comic book hero. Why does this brooding vigilante, this tormented soul who stalks the streets looking for trouble, dressed like a vampire, fascinate us so? Duality and obsession, his enemies’ and his own, fill his stories. His enemies reflect and distort facets of himself. He’s smug, he’s sly, he’s so intimidating that he can enter a room full of people who can fly, read minds, cast spells, or run faster than light and yet they’re the ones daunted by him—and that’s what we love. Strong and smart, unfettered by fiscal limitations or anybody else’s rules, he brings a deep wish of ours to life. Batman’s the part of us that wants to scare all of life’s bullies away.

In creating bright, shining Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster caught lightning in a bottle. One sleepless night, Jerry conceived of a character like Samson, Hercules, and all the strong men I ever heard of rolled into one—only more so.³ Jerry and his artist friend Joe drew inspiration from divine heroes throughout the ages to create not just Superman himself but the very concept of the costumed superhero. They made the meme. They launched modern mythology.⁴ Superman became an immediate hit. On the heels of that first caped hero’s success, publishers scrambled to concoct more. For Superman’s publisher, young cartoonist Bob Kane generated a mortal costumed do-gooder.⁵ Ahead of all the upcoming Superman imitations, Kane and his collaborator, Bill Finger, pulled not from the superhuman figures who’d inspired Jerry and Joe but instead from the dark mystery-men of silent movies and pulp fiction, most notably Zorro and the Shadow, extraordinary men but men nonetheless. Where Superman drew his might from Earth’s sun, Batman found his in a city’s darkness.* Jerry and Joe played with the bright and impossible; Bob and Bill expanded that meme by adding the coin’s other side, the dark and improbably possible.

Nobody today gets to read that first Batman story without already knowing that the vigilante puzzling authorities will turn out to be the bored rich boy who spends his time, up until the final panel, as Commissioner Gordon’s literary foil, a sounding board to whom Gordon can voice his thoughts—no more than we might scratch our heads over a classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel because we can’t figure out mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll’s connection to that lout Mr. Hyde. We know the name and face of the man behind the mask, but what lurks behind the face? The question Who is Batman? strikes deeper than Batman’s cowl, Bruce Wayne’s façade, or any name he chooses to use. It’s a who question packed with why: Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with bad girls he ought to lock up? And why won’t he kill that homicidal, green-haired clown?

Does Batman have bats in his belfry?

Left to right: Bat-Films executive producer Michael Uslan, Batman television actor Adam West, and psychologist/superherologist Travis Langley discuss Batman and the Joker at San Diego Comic-Con International. Photo by Alex Langley.

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*The first light had cast the first shadow.—Grant Morrison (2011), p. 26.

2

Which Batman?

I am a little concerned. I have seen you go through similar phases in 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and 2005, 1997, 1995, 1992, 1989, and that weird one in 1966. Do you want to talk about it?

—Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) in The LEGO Batman Movie (2017 motion picture)

Before we can analyze the character, we must define our parameters. Before we can explore the question of who along with all its whys, we first must consider which Batman we mean.

Even though Batman originated and endures as a comic book character, most of us first met him on TV. From the time I was a toddler, Adam West was the live Batman. I also watched the Caped Crusader in Saturday morning cartoons, pitted Batman and Robin toys against the Joker in his green plastic van, and, wearing a towel cape and black gloves, played like I was Batman. Voiced by Olan Soule, a more serious (though still upbeat) Batman teamed with Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman to form an undersized Justice League, the original Super Friends, on Saturday mornings. Those television versions set me up for some big surprises when I finally got to read the comic books’ darker stories for myself.

A generation later, my sons knew Batman best through Batman: The Animated Series. My older son, age eight when he first saw the show, had known Batman from other media, but memory is a funny thing, and the cartoon burned its way backward through time as if it had retroactively gotten there first. He remembers that as his earliest Batman even though he knows this cannot be right. My younger son discovered Batman more like I did, as a preschooler unbothered by details like the fact that Batman didn’t really exist, which may be why, of the two boys, he became the bigger Bat-fan. His enthrallment started with Batman toys; however, the most powerful impression seared into his young mind—for him, where Batman begins—was the edited-for-TV Batman Returns Batmobile breaking away parts of itself so it could speed through a narrow alley. His previous passion for toy cars locked onto that vehicle. Batman amazed him, and so did his toys.

Knowing that the man in the costume is a Six Flags performer doesn’t reduce the child’s awe over meeting Batman in person. Photo by