The Heroes and Villains of DC are arguably some of the most well-known characters throughout fiction. In their roster, the general audience might recognize Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Lex Luthor, Joker, and The Reverse Flash. All of these characters are written with depth, each character has a story, a motive and internal/external conflicts.
One of the best well written characters in comic book history is Batman. At first glance people only see Batman as a guy with dead parents, dresses as a bat, has high tech gadgets, fights crime in spandex at night, adopts orphaned children to fight crime, has a butler, is secretly a playboy philanthropist that resides in Gotham City, and has a gallery of villains that all hate him.
What makes Batman truly a work of art is the many comics that portray his fears, limitations, and his humanity whether it’s directly or indirectly. His fears, limitations and humanity would come in forms of The Darkest Knights three examples being The Devastator, The Red Death, and The Batman Who Laughs who appear in Dark Nights: Metal a comic book series in which versions of Batman turned evil or strayed from his moral code.
The Devastator is a version of Batman where the fear of Superman turning on humanity becomes a reality. This Batman had to make a choice on how to protect the world from a rogue Superman and the result ended with Batman injecting a virus into himself turning into a Kryptonian Monster with the ability to kill Superman. He was able to kill Superman however, he is forever stuck as this monster, infecting other people with the virus turning them into monsters, and killing his best friend who was a symbol of hope and inspiration to others.
Batman has a lot of death attached to him, so he will always try to protect those he can no matter what and in a certain universe one Batman tries to achieve that. This version of Batman is known as The Red Death who is a Batman who stole the powers of the Flash in order to save his friends. In the end he was unsuccessful but this version of him shows how far he would go to save the people he cares about.
There is one thing people know about Batman and that is his number one rule, No Killing. However, in another universe there is a Batman who crosses that line and ends the infamous Clown Prince of Crime Joker once and for all? Well not really, this version of Batman is titled The Batman Who Laughs. Essentially, this is The Joker possessing Batman’s body and bringing into fruition his deepest fears, showing Batman’s limitations as a Human being and his Humanity. He pushed Batman (pre-jokered) into breaking his no killing rule by mocking Bruce via SKADOOSHING parents of children, killing Batman’s other villains and then Turning Thousands of people into mini Jokers. Then Bruce eventually became the Batman Who Laughed when Joker released a infective chemical towards Batman when he perished by the hands of the caped Crusader.
All of these evil reincarnations of Batman bring forth all of Batman’s fears, limitations even when the man himself says “I FEAR NOTHING” or “ALL MEN HAVE LIMITS, I IGNORE MIND ”. Whether it’s his fear of his bestie going rogue and being limited to a fragile human body resorting to an outside source, limited by his speed to not be fast enough to stay the people dearest to him plus his fear of old age and most importantly his fear of his limits being pushed SOO FAR he broke his rule. But truly, it’s becoming the one thing that is the complete opposite which is THE JOKER.
Other than just comics and characters DC has a lot of other great sources of media to take in. Their video games and animated movies are a really good example of this. Back in August 25th 2009 the world was introduced to the very first Arkham game which was called Batman: Arkham Asylum which was a video game that ended up winning GAME OF THE YEAR. This game follows a Batman who has been wearing the mask for about twelve years and it is about Batman trying to defeat every single member of his rogues gallery before they escape Arkham Asylum.
One of the many reasons so many people love these games is the combat. The reason people love the combat in these games is because of how the game presents it, never leaving the player alone in a room with less than five enemies. Always keeping you alert since they are able to surround the player very easily. So the player’s main way of fighting back is by countering and watching as Batman SINGLE HANDEDLY 1V25 dudes. It also helps that most current superhero games just have the player push one singular button for combat unlike The Arkham games which don’t have you just mash the square button the entire time, looking at you Spiderman Video Games.
People also love this game because of its stealth missions being very different from most modern day games. There are a lot of current day games that revolve around stealth some examples being The Spider Man video games. In all three games there are a few sections where the player has to be stealthy whilst looking cool as you EXPLODE A WHOLE WALL INTO THEM, or you can just do it the normal way.. During most of these sections all the player has to do is sit on a high vantage point or sit under/in a vent and wait for enemies to move to a certain spot so the player can BRUTALLY SLAMMED THEM or EXPLODE ANOTHER WALL. The only way the player can be caught is if they walk right up to the enemy. In the Arkham games the enemies are very aware of their surroundings even catching a small glimpse of Batman will cause the mission to be a failure but when a player ends up beating a stealth segment it feels very rewarding especially in the later games where Stealth is required during a whole boss fight.
Beside Arkham Asylum, there’s Arkham City, Origins and Knight. Each Game after Asylum gets progressively better, minus Origins but no one really talks about that one anyways. In Arkham city, ITS BIGGER, HAS MORE GADGETS,including Robin, HAS MORE INTRIGUING BOSSES, and Batman grapplers turn him into an ANGRY BIRD. Origins…Um yeah there’s not much to say except the Boss Fights are cool. Now Finally Arkam Knight, this beauty of a game is if you took all the previous games put them together and CRANKED IT TO 500%. The things you can do in this game is Endless, you can RIDE THE BATMOBILE, play as NightWing, SLINGSHOT YOURSELF EVEN FURTHER, fight every single villain, Take OUT 5 FULLY GROWN MEN IN UNDER 3 SECONDS and the possibilities of what you can do as Batman is out of this world.
Setting aside the gadgets, bosses, riddler trophies, playable characters, missions and open world exploration there is one key aspect of these games that make them feel like a true Batman game. Batman is known as the World Greatest Detective and these games bring that aspect into reality. You can play detective and figure out the events of a crime that took place by looking for clues around the room, then once you find all the clues it will show you a projection of the scene that took place. Like imagine someone got sniped from 200 meters and as Batman you tracked the trajectory of that bullet to find where it was originally shot from then you tracked the person who did it. AND IT TURNED OUT TO BE DEADSHOT, which is actually one of the cool side missions to get to do as Batman in Arkham City.
Without a doubt the Arkham games are truly amazing works within the gaming community. Especially when you realize these games are REALLY OLD, like Batman Arkham Knight is 9 YEARS OLD and arguably looks better than most current single player games. Each iteration of the game continues to build upon what the previous game set as a base, whether it’s adding more intriguing boss fights, more cool gadgets, ways of exploration, missions, playable characters and giving the younger generation/audience a good impression of Batman.
Well within the DC community it is known that DC does not have very good Live Action movies. Justice League, The Flash Movie, Wonder Woman 1984, THE GREEN LANTERN, Shazam Fury of the Gods and Batman v Superman being a very good example of that. But instead of having very good Live Action Films, DC has animated films that destroy a good amount of Marvel Films, a few examples being Justice League: Dark Apokolips War, Justice League: The FlashPoint Paradox, and Batman Under the Red Hood. As of now all three films are watchable on Amazon Prime and Justice League Dark Apokolips War and The Flashpoint Paradox are both streamable on Max. In case you feel like watching them after this paper to form your own opinions.
In the Marvel universe one of the greatest threats the Avengers can face is Thanos the Mad Titan who is best known for collecting the infinity stones to erase half of the population in every single world. But unfortunately for the DC universe they have Darkside who sometimes is considered a god but is at least powerful enough to have an entire planet to himself. In the movie Justice League: Dark Apokolips War the Justice League has to fight Darkseid and it takes only a few minutes for the League to be overwhelmed by not Darkseid but by his army. This movie is also rated R and it earns that title since it ends up killing 32 DC characters in the run time of 1 hour and 30 Minutes. Since most of the Characters are already dead before the movie really begins it follows a ragtag team of heroes set out to defeat Darkseid or die trying since they have nothing left to lose since their world is basically destroyed.
The movies main characters are John Constantine who is a powerful magician, Etrigan the Demon who is the Demon Prince of Hell, Raven the daughter of the Demon Trigon and human Arella, Damian Wayne the Son of Batman and current Robin, and a depowered Superman. Throughout the movie the team encounters surviving heroes on their journey to regroup and form a team strong enough to beat Darkseid and as the movie continues some of the heroes they meet do sacrifice themselves just to get a chance of giving the world freedom from Darkseid. This movie also shows how strong these characters are. They will never give up even if everything is stacked up against them. If you also have any attachment to the characters in this movie or seen the previous 15 movies that built up to this finale it will be very crushing.
The first movie that started the DC Animated Movie Universe was Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox which follows Barry Allen’s flash as he decides to travel back in time and save his mother from being killed in doing so he rewrote the timeline and messed everything up this story is taken from the comics called Flashpoint and it is mostly the same story as the comics. In this 1 hour and 21 minute film it follows the Flash in an alternate universe he created from saving his mother. In this universe Bruce Wayne is dead and his dad became Batman and his Mom became Joker, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are at war with each other, and Superman does not exist. The Flash teams up with this world’s version of Batman and Cyborg and sets out to fix what the Flash messed up. This movie shows a side of Barry Allen that not most pieces of media show. By letting the audience see the temptation of changing something small for your own selfish gains can snowball into something greater and create chaos that no one can stop.
Batman has had a lot of animated variants which started with The Adventures of Batman which came out in 1968 and a neww animated Batman series coming out this year in August. On July 27th 2010 the movie Batman Under the Red Hood was released which adapts A Death in the Family where Jason Todd the second Robin is brutally killed by the Joker. This movie uses its short 1 hour and 15 minute run time to tell a sad and depressing story about a mentor fighting their former mentee and how a certain event changed everything for one of them. This movie has very well done combat which would have anyone at the edge of their seat. With a final fight that shows the desperation of all the characters and incredible voice acting from Bruce Greenwood (Batman), Jensen Ackles (Red Hood), and John DiMaggio (Joker). With the movie ending on a note that just leaves you wanting more and leaving the characters in a worse place then they were at the beginning of the beginning movie.
Through this appreciation piece for DC we hope that you decide to open up to this universe or if you already love this universe and it mythos as much as us it can give you another reason to either read, watch, or play these types of media again if you haven’t tried any of it you should since it could open up your world more an introduce you to characters that you could relate to but if not then oh well. Everyone can have their own opinions about this stuff as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody. But if you’re interested in this stuff try it out it could help you meet lifelong friends who have the same opinions. It can give you a family where you can just be yourselves without having people judge. A place where you can be yourself.