The Darkest Knight

In the past year, I have really immersed myself in the world of Frank Miller's and Jeph Loeb's Batman. "Year One", "Hush", "The Dark Knight Returns", "The Long Halloween", and Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke". Much of the storyline developed there is the basis for "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight".

Batman is unique in so many ways to the "superhero" world, but mostly because he simply does not yield "Super Powers", like many of the alien or mutant heroes we have come to know. He is just a human, with an absurd amount of money, mostly spent to afford travels to the far east, in his early years, and then also to develop new technologies, so he can stay one step ahead of both police and criminals. and even more interesting, are his most notorious enemies, simply insane madmen, potentially influenced by Batman's own theatrical, symbolic nature.

The above photo is a still from the animated short "Working Through Pain", from the recent release of "Batman: Gotham Knight". The photo represents the first time, since my immersion that I became "emmotionally involved" with the plight of Bruce Wayne. If you click on the photo, you will see the many guns he has gathered from a pile of trash, in the Gotham City sewer. Alfred has come to get him, because he (Bruce) has a nasty bullet wound in his side. Alfred asks for Bruce's hand, but Bruce cannot give it to him, because he cannot leave even one of the guns behind.

His entire existence has been given to stopping the bullets that killed his parents. He will do whatever it takes (including going to the far east to overcome his grief and PTSD, as well as mastering certain forms of martial arts) to stop those that kill - but he will never kill, in order to stop the killing. This principle causes much grief for him, later in his life, because the system of justice and psycho-therapy that he has depended on, has only made things worse - making him sometimes regret that he didn't kill criminals, like the Joker, a long time ago (because so many would not have died, had he just "ended" the Joker's life). but even then, he still cannot participate in the awful act of killing, because he knows that killing is not justice.

even when he is old, and should retire (remember, he is just human), he still answers the call, because his desire to reconcile what is irreconcilable, is far too great for him to ignore.

and so, in that moment, I found myself deeply saddened, because even if Bruce found and destroyed every handgun in the world, there would always be one handgun left, in his mind, that would always kill his parents.