Do not distract me with questions about one's eating preferences! I'm going to see The Dark Knight!

P.S.

Behold! The Bat-ducky!

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

By now, the first wave of excited movie-goers and Batman fans should be leaving myriad movie theatres, having seen the first showing of The Dark Knight. Hopefully, they're raving. In any case, I was thinking about Batman tonight, and the question occured to me: why exactly is Batman so popular? And on a personal level, why do I prefer Batman to Superman?

I suppose I could say that Batman has no powers whereas the Man of Steel has powers out the proverbial wazoo, meaning that Batman is so awesome and such a superhero that he doesn't even need laser vision or the ability to lift a semitruck to fight the Forces of Evil. I might also note that Batman is a bit more realistic; after all, it is entirely possible that some real-world millionaire might learn martial arts skills, buy or make weapons and a costume, and start creeping around city streets. Supes, on the other hand, is essentially an alien being come to help us. If Independence Day is any guide, most aliens would rather blow us to bits.

But it occurred to me that there's another reason I like Batman, which is that Batman is vastly more human than Superman, or most other superheroes for that matter. I don't mean "human" as in "not immortal" or, in the case of Peter Parker (Spider-Man), "socially-awkward-and-romantically-inept-yet-with-a-heart-of gold". I mean human as in "flawed".

See, something that's always bugged me about Superman is that he is the quintessential Nice Guy. His alter ego, Clark Kent, puts up this constant front of "Naive Farm-Boy From Smallville", while Supes himself is often known as the Big Blue Boy Scout (nothing against Boy Scouts, of course. I'm just saying.) Superman is the perfect hero, the good guy that sweeps in to fight the Forces of Evil. The one time he even inches towards turning to the dark side, the moment's significant enough to get him a whole movie (Superman III). And, in the end, he heroically overcomes his evil nature and becomes Mr. Nice Guy once again.

Batman, on the another hand, is anything but a Nice Guy. Even his alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, is less than wholesome; in Batman Begins, Bruce frolics in a pool with two lovely young European women. Try to imagine Clark Kent frolicking in a pool with any woman, much less two. And as for Bats himself....well, the best way to illustrate the difference is to use an example from the Justice League animated series. In the episode The Enemy Below, the Justice League is interrogating a captured sniper who attempted to kill Aquaman. Batman takes the guy aside, and says, "Let me give you one word of advice." He then says something very quietly in the guy's ear, and instantly the sniper cracks and tells what he knows. Wonder Woman asks Superman what Batman said, and Superman says, "You don't want to know." And he's probably right. By contrast, in the episode Injustice For All (boy, don't you love how nerdy this conversation has gotten? I know I do), Superman tries to interrogate the captured supervillain Copperhead. But Copperhead just laughs him off. You see, criminals, supervillians, and the like, they don't fear Superman, not really. They do fear Batman. Why?

I think it's because while Batman is not Mr. Nice Guy, he is still a hero. Batman may flirt with the lines between good and evil, justice and blind revenge, but he never crosses that line. Batman is so much more intense and emotionally developed than Superman, which allows him to go places that Superman could rarely go. And yet, he still has a clear concept of the lines between good and evil, and he holds to that line, even in the darkest moments.

Something else I just thought of, and it is a bit religious in nature, so if you're not into religious-type discussion, I humbly ask you to indulge me. Superman gets a lot of comparisons to Christ. Jesus was sent from heaven by his father, Superman from Krypton by his. Etc., etc. etc. I thought about it and it occured to me that Batman himself might make a good Christ-figure as well. See, Superman could easily pass for the Son of God, the perfect one who never sinned. But only Batman could be the Son of Man, the one who came down to Earth and lived among mankind. (Remember in Batman Begins where Bruce does his little trip in Asia?)

Superman is not one of us, Batman is .If Christianity was just like Superman, then, to me, it would have stopped with the idea that God is perfect and we're not, end of story. But it didn't stop there (take note, spammers) The point of Christianity is more like Batman; that someone came down, was part of us, knows our fears and our feelings, and yet rises above that to save us from ourselves. I'm not saying we should all start praying to Batman now, but even so....it's interesting to think about.

Alas, I do not have one. I am left out of the Featured Questions! To arms! To arms! Cue the Marseillaise!

But, waiiiiit.....I just remembered, I do have a significant other, so to speak. Katrina the Imaginary Girlfriend! (Who, incidentally, is at present being held hostage by Carmen Sandiego, the Miss of Misdeamenor, somewhere in the wide world. Poor lassie.)

So, how did I meet Katrina? Well....so far as I can tell, she first made her appearance on this blog on May 6th. There's actually an interesting story as to how she came to be (that is, if I might break the fourth wall, how her character came to be. No, Katrina does not actually exist in real life. Tragic, I know.)

First off, when I was a kid, I listened quite regularly  to the Focus on the Family radio show Adventures in Odyssey. I was, and still am, rather nerdy, and inevitably some of my friends would compare me to Eugene Meltsner, a brilliant, but nerdy character on the show. Eugene had a girlfriend named Katrina. Thus, the seed was planted.

Later, during a youth group road trip, the topic of romance came up, and one girl thoughtfully suggested to me that, someday, I might find "my Katrina." Shortly after that, on a whim, I came up with the song mentioned in that May 6th post.

Next on our little journey, I joined Xanga. As you may have noticed, Xanga has rather a lot of posts about relationships, romance, and the like. I wanted to comment on these, but alas, I have very little real-world experience. I've had a few crushes, a few failed attempts, and one possible experience that might have counted as a date. At present, I am entirely single. What to do, how to mingle.....and so, Katrina the Imaginary Girlfriend was born. She would go on to appear in the Xanga Saga and even help me to rally support for qccan in Xangan Idol 1. Unfortunately, we had a major fight after I briefly discussed a pressing social issue, which put a serious damper on our relationship. Then there was the whole psycho-temporal-spatial anomaly-thing which resulted in the creation of Myspace-Katrina, who then was shot by a laser just before her existence threw the universe into chaos. Funny how that works.   

Putting the "ish" in Datingish since 2008.  Wait, we're still in 2008. Scratch that.  

Who knows you can't write about politics and have fun, I ask you?

Note: I restructed it just a bit, to make it easier to read. Also, by request of adifferentkindofbeautful, I added a Libertarian verse and chorus. 

A Political Love Poem, with Balance

1) The Republican Version