Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (Wiley Psychology & Pop Culture) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  My Bat-Family

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Beneath the Cowl

  Chapter 2: Which Batman?

  Screen History

  The Source Material: Comic Books!

  Whose Belfry?

  CASE FILE 2–1 King Tut

  CASE FILE 2–2 Mr. Freeze

  Chapter 3: The Trauma

  “Nothing More Traumatic”

  Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

  The Search for Meaning: “Why?”

  Social Superheroes

  Bouncing Back

  The Loss

  Chapter 4: Why the Mask?

  Cognitive Development: Thinking Batty Thoughts

  Moral Development: Growing a Hero’s Conscience

  The Might of a Mask

  Chapter 5: Why the Bat?

  Facing Our Fears

  The Roots of Fear

  The Intimidation Game

  CASE FILE 5–1 Scarecrow

  CASE FILE 5–2 Hugo Strange

  Chapter 6: The “Superstitious, Cowardly Lot”

  The Roots of All Evil: Some Theories on Crime

  Bad Seeds and Early Misdeeds: Juvenile Delinquency

  Evil by Many Names

  Prognosis: Do Psychopaths Get Better?

  Meet Joe Chill

  CASE FILE 6–1 Bane

  Chapter 7: The Halloween Party

  Serial Crime

  Personality Disorders

  Sensation Seeking

  Obsession

  Celebrities of Crime

  CASE FILE 7–1 The Riddler

  CASE FILE 7–2 The Penguin

  CASE FILE 7–3 Poison Ivy

  Chapter 8: The Madhouse

  Insane Places

  Lunatics in Charge

  Treatment Issues

  CASE FILE 8–1 The Mad Hatter

  CASE FILE 8–2 Harley Quinn

  Dependent Personality Disorder

  Folie à Deux

  Coping Strategies

  CASE FILE 8–3 The Joker

  Chapter 9: The Psychodynamic Duo

  Freud’s Psychodynamic Foundations

  Batman vs. Hamlet, Act I: Murder Most Foul

  Batman vs. Hamlet, Act II: The Defense Mechanisms

  Batman vs. Hamlet, Act III: Theatricality and Deception

  Batman vs. Hamlet: Curtains

  The Inner Child: Robin

  Jung’s Archetypes: Shadow of the Bat

  The Hero’s Journey

  CASE FILE 9–1 Two-Face

  Chapter 10: The Kids

  Robin Begins

  Dick Grayson

  Jason Todd #1

  Replacement Robin Rebooted: Jason Todd #2

  Tim Drake

  Stephanie Brown

  Damian Wayne

  Crime-Fighting Value

  Personal Value

  Pederasty?

  Wish Fulfillment

  Identification

  Growing Up Robin

  CASE FILE 10–1 Red Hood

  Diagnoses

  CASE FILE 10–2 Dr. Fredric Wertham

  Chapter 11: The Women

  Sexy Devils

  Blinded by Beauty

  The Bat’s Black Book: Women Who Love Batman

  Birds of a Feather, Bats of a Leather

  Intimacy Issues

  The Love Triangle

  CASE FILE 11–1 Catwoman

  Chapter 12: The Fathers

  Attachment

  The Bad Fathers

  The Good Fathers

  The Mothers

  Batman and Sons: The Legacy

  CASE FILE 12–1 Ra’s al Ghul

  Chapter 13: Why So Serious?

  Dark Knight, Bright Knight

  Chapter 14: The Assessment

  References: Comic Books and Graphic Novels

  References: Not Comic Books or Graphic Novels

  Index

  About the Author

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 2012 by Travis Langley. All rights reserved

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  BATMAN is TM and © DC Comics. Used with Permission. Illustration credits: pages 5, 8, 29, 35, 54, 67, 80, 90, 110, 130, 141, 151, 158, 178, 211, 237, 257, 266: Marko Head; pages 85, 124: Nick Langley; pages 94, 103, 227: Travis Langley.

  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 Section 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) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Langley, Travis (date)

  Batman and psychology: a dark and stormy knight / by Travis Langley; foreword by Michael Uslan; introduction by Dennis O’Neil.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-118-16765-6 (pbk.: acid-free paper); ISBN 978-1-118-22636-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23951-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-26425-6 (ebk)

  1. Batman (Fictitious character). 2. Psychology and literature. I. Title.

  PN6728.B36L36 2012

  741.5′973–dc23

  2011053474

  For Rebecca, Alex, and Nicholas from everything I am today.

  For my parents, Lynda and Travis Sr., from the kid who never goes away.

  Acknowledgments

  My Bat-Family

  If I start naming everybody who ever helped me love Batman, I’ll never stop. How far back do I go? To my mom who read me comic books when I was small? To Neal Adams whose art, by making Batman stories look so much more eerie than TV had led me to expect, motivated my pr
eschool self to learn to read? To editor Bob Schreck and writer Kevin Smith, whose work reignited my habit of subscribing to monthly comics? Then how about more artists—Jim Aparo, Dick Giordano, Sheldon Moldoff, Irv Novick, Marshall Rogers, George Roussos—and writers, editors, actors, directors, still more artists … ? The long line of creative individuals who have kept our hero patrolling Gotham in print and on screen never stops, and I do thank them all.

  This book begins one summer when The Dark Knight was packing audiences into movie theaters; when I read the book Superman on the Couch, in which Danny Fingeroth observed1 that mental health professionals had written nearly nothing about comics in the fifty years since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham attacked the comic book industry; and when my son Nicholas went to San Diego Comic-Con to collect data for Matt Smith’s ethological research2 (no, not the Matt Smith who flies a TARDIS). Accompanying Nick there because I wanted to see their group’s research presentation, I looked around Comic-Con, I watched thousands of people bustling about in an environment that celebrated their passions, I met scholars writing on many comics-related topics, and it all came together for me: I needed to study comic book fans, and I needed to write about Batman.

  Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency brought me to Wiley, Connie Santisteban, John Simko, Rebecca Yeager, and the whole Wiley team. When you’re writing a book about Batman, you take it as a good sign when you learn your literary agent named his dog Bruce Wayne. My wife, Rebecca, a licensed therapist, helped me think through the therapeutic issues. My older son, Alex, thought I should organize my chapters around the villains—hence my compromise, my Case Files’ featured foes. Artists Marko Head and Nick Langley created illustrations, including those at the beginning of every chapter, and I can’t thank DC Comics V.P. Jay Kogan and Rights & Permissions Manager Thomas King strongly enough for the images from DC Comics/Warner Bros. publications. I must thank my first readers (Rebecca and Alex), second readers (Action Flick Chick Katrina Hill, Christopher Daley, Marissa Nolan-Layman, David Manning), supportive friends like Bruce and Kathy Smith and GeekNation.com’s Clare Kramer and Brian Keathley, and a twitpal legion. Chris Spatz and Ralph McKenna at Hendrix College and then Terry Christenson, Arnold Gerall, Barbara Moely, my great mentor Ed O’Neal, and others taught me all kinds of psychology at Tulane University so I could misrepresent it here for you.

  I’ve been fortunate to teach at a university that respects and supports comics scholarship. Communication professor Randy Duncan paved the way before me through his years of teaching Comics as Communication, guiding Henderson State University’s comic book club, and building our library’s Stephen R. Bissette Archives and graphic novel collection, which houses plenty of Batman titles thanks to librarians like Lea Ann Alexander. English instructor Eric Bailey helped me access key television episodes from decades-old master prints. Dean Maralyn Sommer, Undergraduate Research Chair Martin Campbell, John Hardee, Millie Bowden, Lecia Franklin, Carolyn Hatley, Linda Mooney, and Erma Johnson have helped our students and myself travel to conventions where we’ve collected interview and survey data for our ongoing ERIICA Project (Empirical Research on the Interpretation and Influence of the Comic Arts).3 Those students impress me all the time: Erica Ash, Tommy Cash, Carly Cate, Summer Delezen, Robert O’Nale, Ashley Pitcock, Justin Poole, Nikki Robertson, Thomas Sepe, Jarod Shurtleff, Nicole Smith … they keep coming. Working in a department full of people I both respect and like—supportive and dedicated colleagues Aneeq Ahmad, Rafael Bejarano, and Paul Williamson—is truly a blessing, and words cannot convey the depths of my gratitude to our department chair, Todd Wiebers, for many reasons, not the least of which has been letting me teach courses like Comics & Psychology, Psychology in Film, and one titled Batman.

  With Peter Coogan, once upon a time, Randy Duncan co-founded the Comics Arts Conference: San Diego Comic-Con’s scholarly conference-within-the-con. Helping them and current CAC chair Kate McClancy organize the conference has been a privilege, and we all owe a huge debt to Eddie Ibrahim, Sue Lord, Gary Sassaman, and others who run SDCC and WonderCon. Mark Walters (Dallas Comic Con), Ben Stevens (Sci-Fi Expo), Lance Fensterman (New York Comic Con), and more con organizers created valuable opportunities for me.

  One of the highlights of my year every summer lately has been conducting Comic-Con panels on the psychology of Batman together with fellow psychologist Robin Rosenberg and The Dark Knight Rises executive producer Michael Uslan. Great people have joined us along the way—like writer Len Wein (creator of Lucius Fox, Swamp Thing, and Wolverine), psychologist Andrea Letamendi, actress Lee Meriwether (Batman: The Movie’s Catwoman), journalist Nerdy Bird Jill Pantozzi, neuroscientist E. Paul Zehr (author of Becoming Batman), and comic book legend Denny O’Neil (the man who wrote the first comic books I ever read).4 It’s hard to imagine how we’ll top that first time when Batman TV star Adam West, “The Laughing Fish” scribe Steve Englehart, and artist Jerry Robinson, whose achievements include creating the Joker with Kane and Finger, helped us discuss the Joker’s psychopathy.5 Nina West Tooley, James Tooley, Fred Westbrook, and Jens Robinson helped tremendously with that. Adam had never previously met Michael or Jerry in person. Since then, they’ve each commented on how enjoyable that historic day turned out to be; Michael covers it in his autobiography, The Boy Who Loved Batman. While I have additional reasons for thanking every individual mentioned above, I must again thank two important and gracious human beings in particular: Michael Uslan for contributing this book’s foreword and Denny O’Neil for the introduction. It is an honor, sirs.

  Jerry Robinson’s gone now, but I remain forever grateful to him. Hired in his teens to work on the art a few months after Kane and Finger created their masked avenger, Jerry contributed much to their mythos and brought those early days to life for me. He was always a warm and considerate man who spent as much time asking about me, my work, and my opinions as he spent answering my questions. 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 that their legacy has meant—not face-to-face anyway. 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 Bob and Bill. Jerry too.

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

  Notes

  1 Fingeroth (2004), 22–23.

  2. Smith, Pustz, Langley, Andrada, Catalfu, Combs, Geranios, Moran, & Stover (2007).

  3. Duncan, Langley, Langley, Smith, Poole, Head, O’Nale, Ash, Sepe, Cash, Hill, Cate, Langley, & Fingeroth (2008); Langley, Duncan, Langley, Poole, Sepe, Head, Langley, Hill, Cate, Shurtleff, & O’Nale (2008); Langley (in press).

  4. Langley, Rosenberg, Meriwether, Pantozzi, & Uslan (2011); Letamendi, Rosenberg, Langley, & Wein (2011); O’Neil, Uslan, Cash, Langley, Rosenberg, & Zehr (2010); O’Neil, Zehr, Langley, Letamendi, Rosenberg, & Bruen (2011).

  5. Rosenberg, Langley, Robinson, Englehart, Uslan, & West (2009).

  Foreword