Tatiana Azundris

So anyway, I know that the times are a-changing, and all that, but, you know, there are limits. I honestly don't mind losing the campiness of the '70s — death machines, villains trying to kill our heros by tying them to the arm of a giant typewriter, that kind of thing. (On the other hand, not all was bad; at least the Joker, for all his ridiculous plans, was still a crime boss who committed crimes that actually brought in money.) Rather interestingly, when I stopped reading Batman as a teen, my distinct memory of the BatVerse was that it was pretty much film noir. Sure, it had the wrestling bit thrown in — showy fights between men in funny suits. It had the geeky bits — funky gadgets and amazing inventions. And it had the parkour bit, with the heros traveling from rooftop to rooftop.

This is interesting because when I look back at the comics of my youth, the noir bit isn't all that explicit — and yet, it's the essence I took with me.

Thus when I saw the animated series, I thought, "Wow, that's how I always saw it!" Take Mask of the Phantasm. Mystery. Drama. Pathos. Gangsters. Love. Doomed love, of course. Violence. Atmosphere. And the Joker gets to be both criminal and a whacko, not just plain gimmicky. I like.

I wish I could interest people in the '40s noir bit. The detecting — it's Detective Comics, for Goth's sake. : ) The chiaroscuro. The genre conventions. The sexual tension that never quite goes anywhere. And I don't think it's just because I reread Gotham Noir in the bath again last night. Nowadays with Hush and Red Hood, the detecting seems to largely consist of, somebody's wearing a stupid hat, but we won't tell you who. (Not yet, anyway.) Honestly, I'm less concerned with who — that can be interesting, but in the end, it's always second to how and why. There's a reason why Cracker was my favourite show.

Sex! Another thing was sexual tension. Sexual tension was everywhere, pretty much the same way actual sex was not. Consider the temptation manifested in Poison Ivy, guilty pleasure impersonated as well monument to male angst regarding the frightful intensity of their sex drive. Consider the tension between the Dark Knight and Catwoman. Consider, for Heaven's sake, a guy dressed in latex going out to punish this miaowing whip-bearing villainess 'cause she was a bad girl. I couldn't help experiencing that whole setup as sexual long before I even knew what sex was. Before I had a word for it. I don't see how people can not, it was just so obvious! (And I'm referring to regular issues here, not outright weirdness like BatSpankings).

Thank Goth, it's not all in my mind:

Images of men putting women into bondage commonly appeared on the covers of Sensation Comics and Wonder Woman from 1942 to 1947. In Wonder Woman issue #3, it is Wonder Woman herself who takes the dominant side, tying other women up […] This subtle, yet identifiable, sexual subtext to the book has been noted by comic book historians, who have debated whether it was an outlet for Dr. Marston's own sexual fantasies (recent biographies indicate that he was an avid practitioner of bondage); or whether it was meant (unconsciously or otherwise) to appeal to the developing sexuality of young readers. —Wikipedia

When many decades later, I started reading superhero comics again, not much seemed to have changed. Today however, things seem somewhat different. Maybe it's because certain things are no longer unmentionable, not even unshowable, off camera — maybe, symbolism is naturally neglected when signifiers visually closer to the referent stop being taboo. Be that as it may as far as the comic mainstream is concerned — the visual vocabulary of the relatively recent Xena, Warrior Princess when displaying the interaction between vigilante Xena and bad girl Callisto isn't all that different. The subtext.

What wondrous societies must they be, to introduce children to sexuality that way. Makes you wonder what it does to the mallable mind, eh?