Panel Vision - World Without Batman

Merry Christmas everyone, even to those of you like me who might not observe the holiday.  Christmas has always been a weird time for me as a result of that little wrinkle.  It’s become sort of a known joke at this point that most Jews like me spend Christmas at the movies and enjoying all the Chinese food we can put our hands to but that’s just a small part of a broader phenomena.  Because this time of year is so centralized around traditions a lot of us who don’t celebrate Christmas work to craft our own traditions, so as to still be included in the overall emphasis on traditional celebration while making it our own and preserving a certain sense of identity. 

Me, being a nerd with an aesthetic preference for the trappings of Christmas, I usually spend the holidays hunting down holiday superhero adventures and boy do I have one to share here.  It may not be specifically Christmas oriented but given it’s the same basic plot as It’s A Wonderful Life I think we’ll all count it, this is “World Without Batman.”

‘World Without Batman’ comes to us courtesy of the peculiar Batman anomaly known as Batman – Gotham Adventures.  Gotham Adventures was the third series in a line of what were essentially expanded universe comics for the Batman animated series.  Despite the series concluding its 4^th run in 1996 the comics actually continued on for quite some time as this one, issue #33, was published in 2000.  The book were drawn in the style of the show and were meant to take place in canon with the TV adventures, which means there are quite a few differences between it and the version of some characters everyone knows.  

For instance, in this universe there’s no Jason Todd, Tim Drake is the son of a low level criminal who was killed by Two-Face, and aside from a handful of other heroes like Flash and Etrigan there’s no Justice League or anyone else.  This particular story also has the added plus of being written by Ed Brubaker.  Brubaker’s something of a modern marvel in the comics world, completely reinvigorating the Captain America comics and doing more than anyone else to help propel Captain America to the powerhouse it was for 5 years, specifically through his creation; the Winter Soldier. 

It was rare to see such big names on Gotham Adventures but despite that the comic always maintained a high standard of quality and this issue is no exception.  The basic plot is that on the anniversary of his parents’ death Batman is questioning his purpose and the life he might’ve had.  Apparently, his sorrow is so deep it summons the enigmatic quasi-hero the Phantom Stranger, who offers to show him a world where his parents never died and Batman never existed.  

I don’t have the time to delve into the vat of awesomeness that is the Phantom Stranger but this is the kind of story he was basically made to convey.  He’s a character of vast yet not really explained powers and unknown origin, often drawn to situations that require a supernatural and ironic handling, which is the case here.  Using his vast cosmic powers, Stranger takes Batman and the audience on a walking tour of what Gotham would be like had his parents survived. 

From the outside the Batmanless world looks both perfect and kind of expected.  There’s an interesting thread with Bruce’s parents eventually moving the family to Europe because they feel America is unsafe as well as the fact Bruce still managed to end up with Catwoman but by in large he’s living a comfortable and pretty idyllic life.  There is a nice bit of nerd reference in Bruce’s two sons, Thomas and Bruce Jr., an inversion of the names from a forgotten World’s Finest comic where Batman had a brother named Thomas Wayne Jr., though nowadays most folks will recognize that as the common alias of Owlman from both Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls and Grant Morrison’s Earth 2.  Where the book really gets brilliant and bizarre however is when it shows us the rest of Batman’s supporting characters, all of whom are now so much worse.

Dick Grayson, now forced to grow up an orphan in the circus, has become hired muscle for the very man who ordered his parents killed.  Dick’s story is the most well told, especially given its brevity.  The Batman tie-in comics had sort of a rule about 1-issue long storylines so all of this is compressed into 24 pages but Dick’s story is excellently conveyed through the artwork, including a heartbreaking flashback scene to his parents death done without any dialogue.  Meanwhile, Tim Drake is a street tough in the employ of the Joker. 

The Joker being around at all is a majorly bizarre element as we’ve spent more or less the last 30 years of comics, cartoons, movies, and games cementing the idea that without Batman there can be no Joker, making this story a major anomaly.  What’s even weirder, though, is that Joker has become some kind of Fagin type character, running a gang of misfit street kids.  This is actually one of the much cleverer elements of the comic as the implication is that without Batman to work off of as a prime time super villain a lot of the major bad guys have ended up underworld curiosities.  The real brilliance of the comic comes near the end with Harvey Dent, Two-Face.

People tend to forget this but a lot of the key elements of Two-Face’s character only developed quite recently, over the 10 year period from Frank Miller’s take over of Batman in 1986 to Jeph Loeb’s smash comic Batman: Long Halloween.  Over that time, Batman the animated series contributed a major element in the idea that Two-Face had split personality disorder and that Harvey Dent was a good man trapped with a much worse one inside himself, advancing on the emphasis on Dent suffering from early onset bipolar disorder and paranoia during Miller’s run. 

Brubaker takes that core tragedy and runs with it in an incredible way here, having Harvey now succumbed to the personality schism in a major way, suffering lost time and control as his other side takes over as the corrupt and criminal DA.  It’s also briefly mentioned that he killed the Penguin as part of his mob doings as well, making this one of the only times someone has ever argued that most if not all of Batman’s primary antagonists would still exist regardless of his presence. 

The whole idea that “Batman draws in the violently psychotic” narrative has gotten a lot of pushing lately so it’s possible this is just a product of a less Batman-saturated time but at the same time there’s no real reason to disagree with any of the suppositions here.  Harvey Dent was mentally ill regardless of Batman’s involvement, Oswald Cobblepot would become the Penguin even without the death of the Waynes.  Ironically, the strangest guy to be present is the Joker, as he’s origin of being pushed into a vat of chemicals is canon in the DC animated universe.  It’s never explained how Joker ended up in the chemical vat in this continuity but the fact that he still ended up skin bleached and green haired is meaningful even without explanation.   The point of having the Joker still running around is that the tragedies of Gotham and Batman’s universe are, essentially, inevitable. 

Most of the time, a story about Batman not existing is meant to emphasize the good Batman does or the good Bruce Wayne and his money could be doing but I’d argue “World Without Batman” does neither.  The world without Batman is still mired in tragedy, most of them the same tragedies; the big difference is how people react in the wake of that tragedy.  Dick and Tim still lose their parents, they just don’t put on colorful costumes to punch crime in the face, instead they just succumb to their own grief and lack of life options. 

This even extends to the villains, the Joker is still a criminal but he’s just a sort of crazier gang leader, Harvey Dent is just a mentally unbalanced DA rather than the half-scarred half-mad Two-Face.  It’s not necessarily that everyone’s lives are worse here, they’re all just more average, ordinary, and drab.  The story ends up not being about how Bruce Wayne had to suffer so everyone’s life could be better, that’s not how suffering works even in fiction, the point is that Bruce Wayne suffers for our benefit. 

This is admittedly a very meta critique but it’s also one that feels decidedly apt given the recent shift in attitudes towards Batman.  

One of the most common claims about Batman in recent years is that he shouldn’t be Batman, that if he really wanted to stop suffering he should just use his money and influence to help people rather than dressing as a human rodent and beating up the poor and insane.  Though there are a lot of critiques to this claim, especially when you consider Batman’s place in the broader DC universe and the breadth of his rogues gallery, the most common one I hear is that “Bruce Wayne, charitable donor” wouldn’t be an interesting comic.  I think Brubaker’s “World Without Batman” is the comic embodiment of that argument, running of the theory that Batman’s whole point isn’t to lessen suffering, but to make it palatable and meaningful.  That’s the real thing that’s been robbed from the world without Batman: meaning. 

All the people who died like Dick Grayson and Tim Drake’s parents are still dead, it’s just that their deaths don’t mean anything in this world.  The world without Batman is one filled with random chaos where death and life are these almost meaningless concepts, it’s a world with no answers and no structure.  The final scenes of the story feature Commissioner Gordon dying in a car crash, essentially being cut down without meaning or even notice from the world and Bruce Wayne witnessing this and saying that someone should do something.  

The ending might be intended to be uplifting but it feels so decidedly impotent and defeated, like a desperate cry for someone, anyone to give this world direction and import and agency.  That’s the world without Batman according to Brubaker, not a better world, or a worse world, just a chaotic world where the “status quo” is that people live and die without meaning and the really scary part is how much the world without Batman looks just like the one we live in every day.  Merry Christmas!  


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