Batman and a Protestant Work Ethic

Batman's origin story is a different kind of origin from Superman's, just as Batman is fundamentally a different sort of hero from Superman.

Superman is the sole survivor of Krypton. When his planet was destroyed, he was sent to earth and raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent. He possesses amazing powers, and uses them to defend Truth, Justice and the American Way. But aspects of his story could be (and have been) changed, and he would still be a hero.

In Mark Miller's Superman Red Son, Kal-El lands in Russia instead of in America, and is as idealistic about communism as the traditional Superman is idealistic about democracy. He makes terrible mistakes along the way, but he remains a hero, doing everything he can to work for the good of all human beings.

Elliot S! Maggin, in The Greatest Green Lantern of All, suggests that had the planet not been destroyed, Kal-El would have been the Green Lantern for Krypton.

In other words, Superman is a hero, in some essential way. He is not the merely product of his circumstances. There is something heroic about his very nature--something ethereal that makes him heroic.

Batman, by contrast, has always been very straightforwardly the product of his circumstances. His parents are murdered in front of him, and he responds by vowing to battle criminals. This is the cornerstone of Batman. As Frank Miller (who for all his faults is probably the writer who best understands Batman) says "no murder, no Bat-Man".

This difference of dependance on circumstance explains why, though both characters have tragic pasts and both have been portrayed as tortured heroes, the tragic history of Batman has always been more palatable and memorable than the tragic history of Superman. Superman, the lone survivor of his race, utterly alone in the universe, somehow doesn't seem to be as tragic or as tortured as Batman, the multi-millionaire philanthopist. It even explains how it is Batman, not Superman, who has a reputation as a loner, even though Batman's Batcave is full of allies (Alfred, Nightwing, Robin, Huntress, Batgirl, Oracle, occasionally Catwoman and more) and Superman's Fortress of Solitude is, well, not.

Batman is not, however, solely a product of his circumstances. Above all, the heroic example of Batman is the ability to better oneself, by hard work and perseverance. Batman is an exemplar of a "protestant work ethic". Batman is not only enabled by grace to turn the evil situation of his parents' murder into good, he is ethically compelled to do so. He works because it is right so to do. Batman's training and work do not constitute a quest for redemption but rather an ethical imperative.

Together these two seminal heroes of the DC Universe encapsulate the paradoxical command of St. Paul: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, to will and to do."

So as Superman is a transcendent figure of divine intervention--salvation we have not earned from we know not where, Batman is a figure of the moral imperative to work out that salvation ourselves.

Superman, Wish Fulfilment, and Eschatalogical hope

Superman's roots are undeniably Jewish.

The co-creators of Superman, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster are both ethnically Jewish, although according to Gerard Jones' excellent history of the origin of superhero comics, The Men of Tomorrow, neither were relegious. Likewise, Harry Donnefield, the founder and first president of DC. Even Donnefield's sometime accountant sometime vice-president Jack Liebowitz was Jewish. All of these people were secular Jews and Siegal and Shuster disavowed or downplayed any influence of relgious Judaism on their works.

Siegal and Shuster's first Superman was in a short story written by Siegal and illustrated by Shuster. This story, titled The Reign of the Superman features a scientifically enhanced Nietzschian superman who reaks havok before being finally overcome. In 1933, as Hitler ascended to power in Germany, calling himself the Nietzschian superman, Siegal and Shuster re-imagined Superman as a hero.

It may be a coincidence that the two Jewish young men's creation of a heroic superman coincided with Hitler's rise, or it may not. Regardless, Shuster and Siegal's creation eventually sold, and in popular consciousness the Superman was forever linked with protecting the weak, instead of with the use of power to dominate and destroy the weak.

Superman is the ultimate immigrant: he comes from some other place, and lands in America. He masquarades as one of them, but at his core he isn't. As Clark Kent he seems meek and weak and easily pushed around, but behind his secret identity he is a powerful warrior for good. He's not an American, but he fights for the American Way.

Even deeper than the political symbolism is the religious symbolism of Superman. Superman is rooted firmly in the talmadic injuction to do good for its own sake. He is, in short, a very Jewish superman, and his strength comes with a moral compass.

Kal-El's arrival in a basket is strongly reminiscent of Moses' appearance in a basket in Exodus. The Exodus is the central story of the Torah, and its most significant instance of salvation. As such, Moses is the most important saviour in the story of Israel. Superman is a Moses figure in more than his appearance as a baby in a basket, but also in that he is a saviour, whether that means in his very person symbolically saving Krypton from complete extinction, or saving an man from being wrongfully executed for a crime he didn't commit, as he did in his very first appearance. For much of his history, and especially in his original incarnation, Superman spent more of his time protecting the innocent than fighting supervillains.

Yet since Moses is a prophetic precurser of the Messiah, Superman is also a Messiah figure. He is a Messiah figure even before he is a Christ figure. This distinction requires some clarification.

Though as most Christians and Jews already know, "Christ" (Greek) and "Messiah" (Hebrew) both mean "Annointed One", the terms are, especially for Jews, not synonomous. I use "Christ" to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, but "Messiah" to refer to the promised savour of the Jews. As a Christian myself, I believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but a distinction is still helpful.

But Superman is a Messiah figure even before he is a Christ figure. He represents the Jewish eschatological hope of salvation, the hope of God's intervention, the hope that things will not always be as they are now. Superman symbolises the Jewish conviction that the world can be better than this.

Superman is often accused of being adolescent wish-fulfillment in action: a super-strong hyper-masculine muscleman created by two geeks, a bullet-proof man created by Jerry Siegal, whose father was shot dead by a petty thief. He is all of this. But even more than this, Superman, despite Siegal and Shuster's supposed secularism, is a Jewish messiah figure--a personification of the hope of Judaism. He is a protector of the weak and champion of good in a world with too much evil.

Secret origins II

It's important for a hero to have an origin story. You know, like if your parents were killed by an ancient Norse radioactive spider with an admantium proboscis, and you swore "By Great Hera's Ghost! I'll strive to ensure that this fate ne'er befalls another," dedicating your life to:

A) fighting crime
B) protecting Earth from alien threats
C) making sure that neither God nor the Devil win their long-standing bet
D) protecting the seas from pollution and arrogant land-dwellers
E) madcap tomfoolery

Some of these origin stories are foundational, iconic, and must never be tampered with: Kal-El slumbering in his little space-boat, Bruce Wayne crying in the alleyway, or Peter Parker slapping at his forearm. Others get over-hauled every few years. And there are some heroes whose appeal comes partly from their mysteriousness - pinning down the details of their origin strips them of a great deal of their power. It's important that Wolverine never find out exactly what was going with the Weapon X project, or where he was born. Hey, with his healing power, he could be thousands of years old! Finding out that he was originally a 19th century farmhand, or maybe a caveman, is anticlimatic and really, really lame. We can always imagine something better than that. We need some blank spaces on our maps.

I think my favorite biblical example is that mysterious man Melchizedek. A priest and a king, he shows up out of the blue to bestow God's blessing on the victorious Abram, giving him bread and wine. After that he quickly and quietly vanishes away. Nobody's really sure where he comes from, or where he goes: no origin, and no death. Thus in the Psalms he becomes immortal: "Thou art a priest for ever after the manner of Melchizedek." And in the Christian tradition he is held up as a type, or symbol, of Jesus Christ: "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." Scholars, of course, can give you all sorts of textual and historical explanations for him, but they're not very interesting from a literary point of view (and are remarkably reminiscent of the nitpickings of serious comic book geeks). Melchizedek's mysteriousness leads to his becoming a name to conjure with in assorted apocryphal works (or as I like to call them, 'fanfic'), a powerful character in Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and Mormonism, not to mention Hermetic magic and modern bank fraud schemes.

Of course, Melchizedek's power is not just bound up in his origin, but in his deathlessness. As in comics and soap operas, if you don't see a body, you know they're not dead. If you do see a body, they might be dead, but don't count on it. So he's still on the loose, having escaped the bonds of space and time, like Elijah or Christ himself, evading capture and moving undetected behind enemy lines. In fact... is that him standing right behind you?!?