After watching some footage from the new Harley Quinn show, it hit me.
Batman is 80 years old.
80 fucking years of this shit, of characters whose stories aren't going anywhere, like folk stories about some stock character except everything is controlled by one corporation and its writers. Time changes around him, fairly inconsequential stuff happens and arcs go by, some one-offs even toy with him getting older, but nothing really changes. Batman is never going to end conventionally and the clusterfuck that is comic book canon ensures DC will never write him a satisfying, final conclusion.
Maybe Batman's greatest foe is his own publisher and writers. His world's cruel gods and tormentors, who trap everyone in a neverending, ageless deadlock to wring more money and cultural control out of an old man and his enemies who should have concluded their stories or ascended to the public domain ages ago. Maybe the only satisfying ending Batman can ever have is through creating a new Batman narrative, Batman vs his editors, and through it taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall and letting the narrative spill out into the real world until Batman's greatest foe, the one he can never defeat himself, is forced to let him go.
Comic books have long flirted with the idea of men being inspired by superheroes to take up masks and fight villainy too. What they do not realize is we already have our masked men, our anons and the pseudonymous internet masses. We are fucking internet capeshit with all the stupid bombast, glamor, and drama that comes along with it and we haven't even taken advantage of that.
Yes, this is crazy. I'm not even sure if it makes any sense to most people. But I think there's also a good idea inside this somewhere and I hope that even if I can't, another anon will.
