In addition to being a high school student, for part of the series he was supposed to be too young to drive the Batmobile.
Batman plugs for U.S. government...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
That depends. In kids' cartoons or more comical stories, the villains are often bungling, but in more serious works, they often pose genuine threats to the heroes. Lex Luthor, the Joker, Magneto, and Doctor Doom are, if anything, supercompetent, brilliant and organized enough to pose real challenges to their adversaries.
Hitler managed to kill 40 million people. As far as supervillainery goes, that's pretty "impressive". Of course, like any other supervillain he was defeated in the end.
But that's just it -- you don't need to be superhuman to inflict mass destruction. If WWII proved anything, it's what's been called "the banality of evil" -- the way that small acts of incompetence or pettiness or blind obedience can add up to massive injustice and destruction. Hitler was a petty man who just happened to come along at a time when cultural and historical forces were converging around him, and who had sufficient rhetorical skill to harness the anger and energy of masses who were willing to be led. He had a large organization to do things for him that he couldn't do on his own, but many have said that if that same organization had had a more competent leader, one less prone to make petty decisions and pit factions of his own organization against each other, the Nazis would've been even more dangerous than they were. I just read in another thread on this board that part of the reason Germany didn't retaliate massively on D-Day is because Hitler was sleeping late that morning and wasn't awake to give the order.
Is whether Hitler was technically a supervillain even relevant to the question of whether American involvement in WWII was a nobler effort than our involvement in Vietnam (and thereby whether the use of comic book characters in the pro-war public relations campaigns earns a greater level of criticism in the case of Vietnam)???
^^
I guess not.
The important thing is that fighting WWII was inevitable and an absolute necessity (one may also call it a "noble" effort, but this isn't as important as the fact that someone just had to put Hitler down). It was comparable to someone running amok and a SWAT team putting a bullet into a gunman.
Vietnam was simply a matter of ideology and power, an effort to prevent an expansion of the communist sphere of influence at the expense of the American sphere of influence. Nothing "glamarous" involved here, just part of an global game of chess, played with living pawns instead of pieces.
I guess not.
The important thing is that fighting WWII was inevitable and an absolute necessity (one may also call it a "noble" effort, but this isn't as important as the fact that someone just had to put Hitler down). It was comparable to someone running amok and a SWAT team putting a bullet into a gunman.
Vietnam was simply a matter of ideology and power, an effort to prevent an expansion of the communist sphere of influence at the expense of the American sphere of influence. Nothing "glamarous" involved here, just part of an global game of chess, played with living pawns instead of pieces.
To be clear, I didn't mean that the rationale for US involvement in WWII was based entirely or even largely on something like a code of gallantry. I said "nobler effort" and not "noble effort".
That's how it looks to us in retrospect, sure, but people in 1967 didn't see it the same way. For a long time, well into the Reagan administration, many Americans saw the Communist movement as an existential threat to the safety and freedom of the entire world. It's human nature to fight the last war, so the West assumed the Communists were just as grave and global a threat as the Nazis -- and the East probably assumed the same thing about the United States.
If Japan hadn't attacked America, America would not have joined the war, Europe would have been renamed Greater Germania and Russia would have just been a massive network of furnaces they threw people into.
America was insistent on staying out of the war because it was silly and far away and had nothing to do with America.
America was insistent on staying out of the war because it was silly and far away and had nothing to do with America.
Robin might have been too young to drive (I do remember Aflred in a Batman suit driving Robin around when Batman was captured by badies once.) but did Batman have a drivers license? (Bruce Wayne is not Batman.) Niether of the caped crusaders were allowed to drive legally, and what about speeding fines and parking fines? Did the Batmobile have a warrent, registration and insurance?
Atomic batteries cannot have been legal, and because of the turbine engine on the back, maybe the Batmobile was classified as a low flying plane, so this DMV bullshit was moot?
Commissioner Gordon did say that Batman and Robin had been deputized to fight crime legally... But a cop without a drivers license just seems like an unprofessional handicap (Flash backs to that bad Jimmy Fallen/Queen Lateffa movie "Taxi".) so even if they let Batman sit his drivers licence as Batman, that still leaves deputy Robin without a drivers license and you start thinking about all those laws about child endangerment.
But it's not like the Police department is paying wages to these masked deputies, so their obligations to live up to the minimum standards of deputization are not absolute.
Um.
How did Robin get to school and back?
It's 14 miles to the city limits from Wayne Stately Manor alone?
I (sorta) repeat, even if Alfred drove the boy back and forth, Dick still had no time to both fight crime and be a dilligent student.
Well Gomer Pyle who was a Marine also didn't go to Vietnam. Dick Grayson was a rich kid who couldn't even lie about his age to fight in 'Nam.
What was Kato and Green Hornet's excuse?
With 14 miles from the Batcave to the city limits, Batman would have to break any number of speed laws (and a few natural laws, probably
) to respond to anything in time. Either 1) Batman routinely gets pulled over and cited, or
2) Batman routinely ignores the sirens and flashing lights and just outruns the police every time (and it's hard to imagine '66 Batman doing that), or
3) Gordon's deputization for them to fight crime legally included a blanket order from Chief O'Hara to the police allowing the Duo to do whatever the hell they want.
A little aside: In the movie, apparently the Batcopter was legal enough to be stored, maintained, and given flight clearance at the airport.
Britt had an "in" with the DA's office. Every time an arrest warrant came down for draft dodging (for either him or for the Hornet), it would get lost, misfiled, or re-typed with the name of one of Scanlon's opponents.
Kato was apparently a non-entity in either of his guises ... no one took enough notice of him to wonder about his draft status. A vigilante who has no other description than "the Green Hornet's masked aide", despite the fact that the Hornet is constantly yelling "Kato!" in everyone's hearing while they're both in costume, probably has nothing to worry about.
He was apparently protected by an SEP Field.
What if the city/police department owned the Batmobile?
If Gordon held the pink slips, then the lights and siren on the top "technically" make the Batmobile an official police car which is allowed to ignore speed limits while in the course of law giving.
(Of course, if Gordon did try to seize it, because of some disagreement between the Bat and the law, it's likely that Batman has a self destruct wired in that will protect his secret identity from any forensic analysis.)
If Gordon held the pink slips, then the lights and siren on the top "technically" make the Batmobile an official police car which is allowed to ignore speed limits while in the course of law giving.
(Of course, if Gordon did try to seize it, because of some disagreement between the Bat and the law, it's likely that Batman has a self destruct wired in that will protect his secret identity from any forensic analysis.)
Hey, good idea!
Although I think it would be simpler for Batman to put a self-destruct device in the pink slips instead of the car. That wouldn't be hard; he could borrow something appropriate from IMF.
"Owned by the city, Commissioner? You'll have to show me paperwork before you can seize the property of a respectable citizen. You can't find them? How mysterious. All right, Robin, let's be on our way. And let's mind the speed limits of this good city like the law-abiding fellows we are."
Although I think it would be simpler for Batman to put a self-destruct device in the pink slips instead of the car. That wouldn't be hard; he could borrow something appropriate from IMF.
"Owned by the city, Commissioner? You'll have to show me paperwork before you can seize the property of a respectable citizen. You can't find them? How mysterious. All right, Robin, let's be on our way. And let's mind the speed limits of this good city like the law-abiding fellows we are."
As far as Superman should have been concerned, until he was notified about the deathcamps and the ethnic cleansing, Superman should not have supported either side as a half measure because, he could have won the war in minutes with a swift and clear decapitation strike on whichever side seemed less virtuous... And frankly by that point that he gets to make these decisions, he might as well be Emperor Superman and really make the world a better place.
Working in Publishing, Superman's views before Pearl Harbour on the matter would have been heavily coloured by the pro Nazi billionaire publishing mogul William Randal Hurst who was most likely Clark's ultimate boss if you kept going up the food chain far enough.
Superman doesn't fight wars, he decides wars.
Fuck tossing tanks at soldiers.
Supersonic speed, ballistic trajectory, from a standing jump he touches space and then lands stomping on the world leader of his choice into goo as he hits ground on the other side of that leap.
Batman by design is a conscientious objector. He's never going to use a firearm on another human being under any circumstances that he can foresee (this early in his development.).
Working in Publishing, Superman's views before Pearl Harbour on the matter would have been heavily coloured by the pro Nazi billionaire publishing mogul William Randal Hurst who was most likely Clark's ultimate boss if you kept going up the food chain far enough.
Superman doesn't fight wars, he decides wars.
Fuck tossing tanks at soldiers.
Supersonic speed, ballistic trajectory, from a standing jump he touches space and then lands stomping on the world leader of his choice into goo as he hits ground on the other side of that leap.
Batman by design is a conscientious objector. He's never going to use a firearm on another human being under any circumstances that he can foresee (this early in his development.).
With 14 miles from the Batcave to the city limits, Batman would have to break any number of speed laws (and a few natural laws, probably
Well, the crises he was called in for were rarely that immediate, since there was enough time to drive to police headquarters, exchange exposition and melodramatic dialogue with the Commissioner and Chief O'Hara, then go to investigate the clues before the first confrontation with the villains and/or henchmen.
In the early episodes of the show, he was known to the public and criminals only as "the Green Hornet's man," and GH only addressed him as Kato in private. In later episodes, the writers forgot that and had the bad guys aware that he was named Kato.
Mike Resnick wrote a story for the 1993 prose anthology The Further Adventures of Superman in which Clark Kent is drafted for WWII, but the examining doctor can't vaccinate him or take his blood pressure, he reads the wrong eye chart in an adjacent room, and his test results and answers to questions are so anomalous that the doctor concludes he's deeply ill and probably crazy and declares him 4-F. A very similar eye-chart gimmick was used long before that in a 1940s comic strip story written to explain why Superman wasn't drafted. (Joe Shuster was himself exempted from service for bad eyesight, so it may have been an in-joke.) The wartime comics had Superman decide that the US military was even more powerful than he was and thus didn't need his help to win, so he'd be of more use fighting spies and saboteurs at home.
If the first comic page is true, that's what I described, minus the bloodshed.
Decapitation strikes.
Hitler and Stalin were removed from play.
Game over.
No world war II, with in hours of Superman deciding that WWII had to end.
As far as the second cover is concerned?
Does the meat inside the book match that cover?
Maybe that chain gun is a prototype of the trankdart machine guns Batman and Robin used in Cult?
Decapitation strikes.
Hitler and Stalin were removed from play.
Game over.
No world war II, with in hours of Superman deciding that WWII had to end.
As far as the second cover is concerned?
Does the meat inside the book match that cover?
Maybe that chain gun is a prototype of the trankdart machine guns Batman and Robin used in Cult?
Superman had no problems interfering before America got into the war.
As I recall, that was a brief story published in a magazine as a speculation about how Superman would end the war if he existed and got involved. It wasn't part of the actual comics continuity, but what was later called an "imaginary story." (Aren't they all?)
And that was a figurative cover that didn't reflect the actual contents of the issue -- akin to the way radio stars at the time would take breaks from the story in progress to do live commercials for war bonds. By that point, Batman's no guns/no killing policy was solidly in effect in the actual stories.
