Dudes in Distress Week - The Dynamic Duo get metatexual about deathtraps

[icon_uk]

From Batman Adventures #9 may I present...

Deathtrap-A-Go-Go! (No, seriously again that's the name, honest...)

We open with Batman and Robin as we have seen them so many times....



Batman, then proceeds to relate to Tim about some REAL deathtraps he's been in.... Including Killer Croc's chamber of underfed mutant alligators (unaware that Bruce spent a summer wrestling alligators in Florida during his training years) and the Penguin in his Bye-Bi-Bird-Plane (Which is as good a name as his Aviary of Doom in the classic BTAS episode "Almost Got Him") and of course...



Oh, and The Mad Hatter is (apparently) a good haberdasher, but lousy at rope tying (Which sort of misses the point of BTAS Mad Hatter methinks, but we'll let that slide)

And then of course there was the Scarecrow's House of Horrors...



Awesome! And it looks like a certain Boy Wonder agrees.... and has some observations of his own to share with his mentor.





Good points on both sides there I think... deathtraps are a matter of PRIDE for the villains of Gotham. Crowbars to the head are unthinkable when you can produce something that is over elaborate, over the top, but uniquely your OWN.

It ends with our heroes escaping their chains to face... whoever it is doing the trapping here (It's never made clear) and Robin lists the three points he's learned from Batman's stories;

1) Batman's enemies are, to a fault, arts and crafts NUTS.
2) Batman has a VERY hard head.
3) Don't sweat the deathtraps.

Which seems like a good lesson to learn for a career in Gotham crimefighting.

Though... "They have to lure you into it"? Seriously Robin? Haven't you sussed yet that that's what YOU'RE for? Oh well, if you haven't worked it out about being the "Boy Hostage", I'm not going to spoil it for you.

Comments

[runespoor]

I'm not a fan of the relationships in BTAS, but damn if this isn't a perfect Batman and a very fun story. Batman advising Scarecrow he should design amusement park rides! I'd probably get very annoyed with Batman if he was always written like that, but for one series it's very awesome. (...course the issue with that is that it's not unknown for meds to subdue one's "creative soul".) There was something else I wanted to say but my mind left on the tangent of Bruce knowing about mentally unbalanced (but of course it's not like he's getting help for it either but even then meds might be bad enough for him to forego them) etc so I don't remember what it was.

I disagree about how bad guys have to work at luring Batman in. Any innocent will work just as well. Hell, taking their own henchmen hostages would have the same effect. Getting a child or Robin just works to make Batman angry and hit him right in the blindspot: I'm reminded of the Penguin story by Brubaker where Penguin pointed out that blindspot of his.

[icon_uk]

I'm not a fan of the relationships in BTAS

Really? You'll forgive my surprise, but that's not a common reaction and I'm interested in what didn't appeal.

Batman being mentally unbalanced is a card that has been overplayed. I prefer the interpretation that he's sane, he's VERY sane, he's so incredibly, painfully sane that he's probably closer to knurd.

Using Robin as a lure over a random innocent has the advantage of removing Batman's sidekick and thus the Dynamic Duo synergy is automatically invalidated, and adding guilt to Batman's emotional palette.

[runespoor]

I prefer the interpretation that he's sane, he's VERY sane, he's so incredibly, painfully sane that he's probably closer to knurd.
You'll forgive me, I find that expression, when used in a straight-forward manner, very problematic. Literally, it comes down to the same thing: it's still being mentally unbalanced. To follow your example, knurd is the opposite of drunk. It's not sober. So: unabalanced. (I lack the right words to say the following in a manner that I'm sure won't be offensive. I apologize deeply for that.) Yet at the same time, it denies the nature of its effects. I find it's ableism, at best a fake-out and at worst erasure.

The caveat is that I embrace the parts of canon that have Bruce see Batman and talk to him as though it was a different entity, hearing bats talk to him, and have black-outs concerning things he’s done, all of which happened when he wasn’t wounded or under the influence of substances as far as we know. (I don't embrace it as "thinking it happens regularly" but it's definitely part of my canon-of-choice concerning Bruce.)

I don't want to shut down the discussion of that point, but I wanted to explain why I've come to reject this idea.

As for the relationships in BTAS: mostly I don't like what they've done with Dick and Babs. Nightwing's relationship with Batman in that universe is terribly sad to me, and I was struck, watching the series, how grim Nightwing seemed. The strain between Bruce and Dick never was solved the right way. Then there's the fact that Batgirl is Batman's primary partner (nothing to do with the Bruce/Barbara: I don't care for that in BTAS, but it's not like I see it on screen), which makes Dick's absence all the more conspicuous (why isn't Dick here? because he's hurt and angry). And Dick and Babs' friendship never quite recovers, and that's sad too. There's nothing very tragic or dramatic at all: it's just a kind of brokenness where there used to be none that's depressing to me.

Good point about the guilt.

[icon_uk]

It depends on a number of things I think (and no offence was taken I assure you).

The primary issue (to me) is that Batman is, of course, fictional, and his mental state is composed of any number of quite possibly incompatible elements (Well, to the extent that he is all of them at one and the same time to the extent that he is); brooding loner, loving father, abandoned child, vigilante, obsessive, analysing detective, capitalist heir, actor, control freak, philanthropist, etc etc. and yet still remain a fully functional empathetic person to the extent that he clearly is.

So any attempt at serious discussion of Batman/Bruce's mental state is (again, to me) invalidated by the fact that he has no actual existence, nor do I know of any real-world examples who have the same profile for comparison.

Consider another fictional character; the new "Sherlock" series has said from the outset that Sherlock is a self-recognised high-functioning sociopath, and has socialising issues because of that, and he's not as varied a character as Batman needs to be. One feels that in Sherlock's case, they made the diagnosis based on certain facets of the original texts, and constructed the new take on character around that framework, as opposed to Batman who came into being in 1939 and has had new character frameworks bolted onto him since then.

And with no intent to diminish a topic which has serious real-world implications for many people, "unbalanced" I think depends on where you start and end your spectrum and where you consider the "balance" point to actually be. Are we, who are most likely in the majority, with out little delusions and coping mechanisms, in the right in doing so? Or would Batman, with his inability to comfort himself with such things and see things as they empirically are, be the real "balanced" individual?

Oh, and and as for relationships, I see what you mean, I tend to differentiate between BTAS and the later NSBA which introduced Tim and Nightwing/Dick and the Bruce/Barbara relationship, which I never liked either (And Batgirl being the primary partner made me wonder where Tim was, rather than Dick)

[runespoor]

To be honest, I was afraid of being ableist and so was also apologizing to people more aware than I am who'd read our discussion.

Yes, it's fiction. And yes, there's probably not a diagnosis that'd fit all the ways Batman's been written in the real world. But that's true for his villains, as well, and I don't see many people disagreeing on calling Joker, Harvey or Scarecrow "crazy" even when people agree they don't fit a real-life definition. (Except for the Joker being saner-than-sane, as well.)

I think it'd be stretching the boundaries of "balance" a bit to make it cover PTSD.

And Batgirl being the primary partner made me wonder where Tim was, rather than Dick
I thought those were school nights. Though that still doesn't explain why Batgirl would be working so much with Batman, I don't think of Batgirl as Batman's sidekick the way Robin is. You're right about BTAS, but I thought they were commonly used in a more general way in fandom to cover all the non-future, Bat-centric series. I still don't like the BTAS relationships proper as much as the comics one, though. I like complicated.

[icon_uk]

I was actually accepting the apology on behalf of the first sentence you quoted which you said you found problematic. :)

One of the more common discussions about the Joker is whether he's classifiable as insane or just evil. He certainly doesn't qualify as legally insane, which requires the person to be unable to comprehend the outcome of their actions. The Joker is more than aware of the consequences of his actions, he just doesn't care, which is a very different problem.

And cases only happen on school nights because they say they happen on schoolnights. They could easily have set stories during vacation times, or just happened to have stories happening on weekends. I can sort of imagine Batman taking on Batgirl because he has no more to teach Dick (who disappears off for over a year anyway) and because, simply put, he was lonely, and wanted a partner.

[runespoor]

Oops. Sorry.

I'll rescind my objection about the Joker but the rest of my point stands.
(Tangent: though I do think a case can be made about how sanity and absence of mental disorder aren't synonymous. Law.com's definition of "insanity" includes this: mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior., emphasis mine. Is Joker currently considered legally sane in comics? Because if he's not, that's not helping the ableism.)

I don't know the Doylist reason for not having Tim in more episodes (maybe he was the Replacement Scrappy?), but at least the Watsonian one makes sense. Oh, I can certainly see Batman do that. But it does strange things to what it means about Babs, imo, it makes her very different from the character in comics canon. Yes, I remember it's an adaptation, but it seems to me like there was more thinking done on Timmy Todd than on how DCAU!Babs is different from comics!Babs. It changes the dynamic of Babs' character a lot. For one, she doesn't get bored or frustrated with Batgirl.

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The Joker is currently considered to be insane, but because comic-lawyers say so, rather than because he fits an accurate assessment of what legal insanity is.

[whitesycamore]

Oh man, comics labouring the point of how insane the Joker is is one of my biggest pet peeves. Because he's not. Most of the time he's not written as even mildly psychotic.

If writers really wanted to give him some sort of realistic diagnosis, they should go for Antisocial personality disorder. And really, even that is more an uneasily medicalised description of a particularly baffling and objectionable type of person rather than a clear cut 'condition.'

[icon_uk]

Indeed, the Joker going to an Asylum instead of jail only dates as far back as the 1970's. Prior to that he was a criminal who happened to look like a clown and was always treated as being sane enough to face criminal charges.

There's even a Golden Age story about the Joker having to convince the authorities that he was mad so he WOULD be sent to an asylum, as part of a criminal scheme.

[omnipotent]

Batgirl worked more with Batman in TNBA, I think, because Tim was so much younger and Batman was used to working with a young adult. Also, Babs put the moves on Bruce in TNBA--she made it VERY clear that she wanted a relationship with him. He rebuffed her for a bit, but by Batman Beyond, it's clear that he gave in at some point.