Batman is a Horror Comic

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

     Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum, Scott Snyder's The Court of the Owls, all stories featuring an iconic character that is one step behind Dracula, Batman. Bruce Wayne, a gallant attraction that plays down his alter ego as an entity entirely detached from himself, is two fangs away from giving into the vices of the classic monster. But he is much more than just a variation of the vampire character. He is something else entirely. Batman is another type of monster, a creature that fights crime with something much worse than it, madness (the very thing that leads to it). This makes Batman a horror comic.

        When Doug Moench and Kelly Jones turned Batman into a bloodsucker, in Batman & Dracula: Red Rain (1991), the vampire metaphor seemed to hit too close to the chest. In fact, Moench and Jones played exactly into what we expected from a vampire Batman: Bruce Wayne finally becomes the Bat. He submits his last bits of humanity to it, letting the costume become the new skin. But he remains a crusader. The lust for blood only adds to the challenge of keeping justice and order under his control. There is no letting loose on Gotham’s innocent bystanders, his rules are never tested, and he remains a superhero, just with added powers. What he does do is embrace the death of Bruce Wayne, telling Alfred he has truly become the Batman. Gotham’s nights are now entirely his, regardless of him becoming a slave to them in the process. The character truly reveals himself as a weary knight in black armor, shedding any trace of the identity that could lead him back to his human form.

      And yet, his dark knighthood holds itself truer to horror when we realize his becoming a bat was no accident. It was a choice. The murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents was quite simply the waking up of a demon, willed into existence. It plays into the origin story of a man that could either embrace a Superman-like light or a darkness-induced decent into something worse. He chose the latter. And the terror that comes with that darkness is even more frightening when Bruce is accepted as the real mask, the actual suit.

     There is no batsuit. There is only a monster over a man. Bruce is secondary to the Batman, a walking alibi that enables Gotham’s monster crusader. Villains like the Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, and the Riddler stop being darker reflections of the Batman once we accept this. Instead they are the keepers of the bat faith. Their terrorizing the city can be seen as an act of adoration, a penance to be paid to be granted presence with the bat-lord. Alternately, these villains turn Batman into an aspiration, the standard for the horror they can impart. Again, their villainy becomes an act of worship, a pledge of allegiance to the Bat King, the night stalker, the victim the city spewed out as the hero it deserved. A monster built in its own image. 

      Gotham City adds to the horror by playing to the hero’s bleakness. Its buildings are more protrusions than man-made structures. They reach for the sky as if a gun is pointed at them. But it is Batman who holds the gun, the virus that creates the lesser monsters that terrorize it. Gotham may have created the monster, but the monster brought with it its admirers. It is a cycle that keeps the city under siege. Every new villain must be blessed by the Bat King as worthy of being one of his monsters. And to be blessed is to be admitted into Arkham Asylum, the temple of the bat-faith.

      But the Bat King is a complicated creature. He needs to submit one of his identities to the other in order to truly transform into the bat. In order to accomplish this, Batman turns Bruce Wayne in a protective shell, a cave, if you will, that serves the purpose of sheltering the monster during the daytime. In other words, Bruce Wayne becomes Batman's lair.

   Now, the fact Wayne surrendered himself to the bat to root out evil might keep the bat-monster in check, but it is in the darkness that surrounds his concept of justice that we find the true horror of Batman. For Batman, justice is horror (out of fear) turned into a weapon, a thing that plays to the strengths of its nature. Fear becomes a voice, terror a trap, horror the purpose. Batman’s history never falters on these principles. They turn the bat into a hero that demands the city remain dark, like a price to be paid for its safety.

     Fear becomes Gotham, it keeps it alive. Batman’s idea of justice means keeping the city hostage, his hostage. It is of no wonder, then, that so many worshipers, Batman’s rogues gallery, gravitate towards it. It is their home, a place that accepts them for who they really are. It has to. It would be unbecoming to reject those that so faithfully follow in the footsteps of the bat. They become acolytes, servants to the Bat King that pay their respects in pain. One must consider that every one of the Joker’s transgressions to Batman’s rule of law is done in the hopes of receiving the bat-monster’s blessings, manifested in the form of bruises and broken bones. And that is why Batman is a horror comic. Because its hero wants us to be afraid of him.