Good afternoon and welcome back to the great new game that's sweeping the nation, "What Does Mark Think Is Wrong With These Pictures?" It has far surpassed the previous game that was sweeping the nation before yesterday, "Playing Pickleball Against An Otter." And before we dive into it, let me just remind you of the rules for "What Does Mark Think Is Wrong With These Pictures?" as I explained them here yesterday…
You look at these two drawings of Batman, then you guess what I think is wrong with them. Simple? Good. Here they are one more time…
I won't keep you in suspense any longer. Here is what Mark thinks is wrong with these pictures…
THE ANSWER: They're not drawings of Batman. They look more to me like drawings of Superman in a Batman costume.
Consider for a moment the key difference between those two popular characters: Superman is from another planet. He has super-powers that include super-speed, super-strength, x-ray vision, sometimes a kind of heat vision, super-hearing, the ability to fly and total invulnerability.
Now, consider the super-powers that Batman has: None.
He can't do any of those things. But he is pretty smart and he is pretty driven and he can do great but human-level physical feats. He also has developed an identity that…well, as he put it in the most reprinted and parodied origin story of all time in comics…
Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible…
Criminals fear him because he comes out of nowhere to stand against them. Often, they wonder if he's human. He's scary because they don't know who or what he is…and we love his adventures because in every one of them, he's risking his life, even if he's only going up against one drug smuggler with a pocket knife. Superman can't be harmed by a thousand thugs, each armed with The Guns of Navarone.
Superman poses for pictures. Batman doesn't…but in those photos above, he's posing and looking friendly. And look at the muscles on that guy. They're the exact same muscles those artists would draw on Superman, the guy who can juggle Buicks…and I'm not faulting the artists. Not really. Pretty much everyone who has ever drawn super-heroes draws the same muscles-on-top-of-muscles body over and over, just changing the costume. There are exceptions. Spider-Man is (usually) slimmer than most and has more distinct poses. The Hulk is wider and has bigger hands and feet. Plastic Man is…well, plastic. But almost all the men in super-heroic comics have always been built the same as each other…with bodies that would make Mr. Universe jealous.
Stare at the Batman drawings again, especially the one on the left. Would it surprise you if a Batman with that body pulled off his outfit and it was really Superman in disguise? The Batman on the right is on a rope connected to God-knows-what but he sure looks like a guy who knows how to fly. The rope isn't even taut. He looks weightless. He looks clean. He looks happy. He does not look like a man trying to strike terror in the heart of anyone unless there's some guy tied to the other end of that rope.
I'm not saying these are not very good drawings. Carmine Infantino (who penciled them) and Murphy Anderson (who inked them) produced wonderful work even though Carmine didn't like Murphy's inking and Murphy didn't like inking Carmine. In a more fair and just industry, they would have been teamed with others…or done both halves of the art jobs themselves. I just think this is bad casting the way great actors are sometimes assigned the wrong roles. Infantino drew some good Batman stories and he drew a slimmer crimefighter with a slimmer physique. For some reason though, when he drew Batman for a poster, he drew a smiling powerlifter.
Anyway, that's what Mark Thinks Is Wrong With These Pictures. If you disagree, that's fine. And since we may not have another round of "What Does Mark Think Is Wrong With These Pictures?" for some time, you may have to go back to "Playing Pickleball Against An Otter." I hope you don't mind…and by the way, I asked the otter if he knew what I thought was wrong with the Batman pictures and he got it right away. Smart otter.