OMG LOLcats r KILLINZ MAE

Srsly. I can has releef? Frum LOLcats nd all ther kaind?

I feel like such a freaking doof (read: doofus, only less significant). I was generally aware of the LOLcat phenomenon when it began to crystallize into what it is today, but then I forgot about it. I mean, it's pictures of cats, with blocky fonts applied. It will not affect my life. Or so I assumed...

For those of you not in the know, worry not:

Wikipedia's got you covered

. It includes gems of explanation for the LOLcat phenomenon like a link to the brief

Time

(get it?) article devoted to them, and paraphrasing their use grammar thusly -- "Common themes include jokes of the form 'Im in ur

noun

,

verb

-ing ur

related noun

.'" It also links me to

this interesting wiki-nugget

, which helps me to understand why I am so enamored of teh LOLcats. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I must explain my love-hate relationship.

Everything about teh LOLcats seems engineered to piss me off. (For [nigh endless] examples, go

here

.) I mean

everything

.

First of all, it's pictures of cutesy animals, which reminds me utterly of those cat and/or dog and/or other-small-animal mavens one finds in any office of America. You know, she's usually a she, and she has a cubicle covered in pictures of baby ducklings or some such. It just reminds me of porn. Sick, I know, but it does. Those people covet animals like others covet wealth or sex or spiritual fulfillment.

Second, LOLcats are self-generating inside humor, which is just irritating. There's nothing quite so grotesque as when people revel in how "inside" their jokes are. Exclusivity is practically a disqualification from the category of humor, altogether! ("Exclusivity is practically...") Humor is a tool in communication, not exclusion, and though I'm not accusing the LOLcat-erz of intending to do so, they're nevertheless excludin' teh masses. But I lie: A running gag that is largely unappreciated is even more grotesque than a simple inside joke.

Thirdly, the spelling and grammar are intentionally wrong. Do you understand? THE SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ARE

INTENTIONALLY

WRONG. That is so messed up! I get irate over misplaced apostrophes, and I'm subjected to dialogue superimposed over cat photographs and written out in "texting" language and gobbledy-gook? Holy sack of hammers! I ought to be trying to eradicate all LOLcats and their makers, not writing a 'blog entry about them.

Yet. I love the LOLcats. It's driving me crazy that I can't get their syntax out of my head. They're responsible for a lot of time wastage of late. They are obnoxious, and not remotely cool, and they are inside and ridiculous, and I heart LOLcats.

I'm beginning to understand why, too. In the first, for reasons inexplicable by modern science, I've been wanting a cat lately. I have been an adamant dog person my entire life, and I still prefer dumb-and-loyal animals (I relate to them better), but cats are more appealing now. I don't know. Maybe it's living in the city this long. I want a pet who knows where to poop and how to get there. More significant for me, however, is this use of language in the photos.

Language is simply cool. In general. It rules. Language is fascinating and mysterious to me, and I enjoy anything that plays with it. Correction: Anything that plays with it

and contains an interior logic

. So people constantly confusing the uses of "take" and "bring" drive me up a wall, and a text message that says "ill talk 2 u later" (You'll talk to me later, or you're ill, and I should bring you soup?) drives me kabonkers. But LOLcats, partly through the profusion of them, have developed a rather complex psychology behind their lunatic ravings. They've even developed a mimic

mythology

. Stupid? Oui. Ma forse, anche genius.

Superheroes(TM) = Largely Impractical

I know it. You know it. We all know it. It's just like a lot of things people get really enthusiastic/defensive about. Take opera, for instance. As a genre, it's essentially about sociopathic people. Psychopathic, in some cases. If the goal of opera is to serve as a sort of emotional cautionary tale, we probably shouldn't identify with the characters as much as we tend to. If the goal of opera is to suggest we ought to live out our passions to their utter peaks and valleys, well, they probably shouldn't exhibit to us that the most likely result of this is maiming and/or killing yourself and/or loved ones. Try to express to an opera lover, however, that the form is all a bit inconsequential, and you better be prepared for a fight. With claws. And fangs. And arias.

Similarly, we fanboys (Uninitiated: this is slang for unabashed geeks of pop culture, usually comicbooks, video games and strange rock bands) will take umption with anyone claiming Superman(TM) is a silly thing. He is so NOT! And you know why? 'Cause he

rules!

There you have it. Fanboys can only argue with one another, because no one else takes the subjects as seriously as they do. This is well documented, even in the Aviary. When I posted an entry on

my belief that Batman(r) could beat Wolverine(c)

in a fight, I got the most number of responses ever. All of them from, to one extent or another, adamant fanboys. Or perhaps I should call them,

adamantium

fanboys! Get it? Do you get it? If you don't now, you probably never will.

Well, I have to come out as saying that I recognize the ridonkulous impracticality of the superhero(TM). This in no way lessens my enthusiasm for that aspect of my fantasy life, in my opinion, yet I know some of my fellow fanboys (henceforth, FBs) will feel betrayed. To them, I sincerely apologize. Try to understand: it's not you, it's me. I've just moved on. Priorities have shifted, and we'd only be holding

each other

back if we pretended like everything would eventually go back to being the same. I'd like us to still be friends, someday, down the road. When you're ready. You know, get together for the occasional Marvel(c) movie, maybe every once in a while Gchat over the possibility of maybe writing that cross-over first-person video game we always imagined . . .. But no more frenzied re-enactments of the fight between Hellboy and Sammael in the museum of antiquities. It, it would just be too hard. And weird. Admit it: It would feel weird, after all this.

For the purposes of this little essay, we must agree at least for the sake of argument that Superman is fairly ridiculous. He is excepted. He was the first, and probably the only conceivably successful superhero, what with all his powers. The only power he wasn't given is omniscience, and if the Highlander had really existed, Superman'd probably have that by now, too. Highlander: "I can see, everything! I know, everything! I--" ~Krchktk!~ Superman: "Oh geez. Here I am, just innocently

flicking beer nuts

in Cleveland, and one happened to fly to New York to decapitate you, Christopher Lambert. Sorry about that. Guess I'll be doing all the seeing/knowing/etc. from here on out. And the first thing I'm gonna do is flick beer nuts at the guys who will be responsible for

Highlander 2

."

(Yeah. I'm getting that geeky. Bail now, while you have a chance.)

The principal impracticality, of course, is that superheroes have to have a right-place/right-time habit akin to John McClane's wrong-place/wrong-time one to be even remotely effective. Only a few are prescient, and those, it seems, serve more to complicate storylines than to avert badness. Comicbook writers have been combatting this impracticality for years. Spider-Man has his "Spidey sense," various characters work as reporters, or computer gurus, etc., and I suppose Batman is just so smart that -- when the bat-signal isn't involved -- he can still calculate the likelihood of crime in a given radius. But it's all a little convenient. What's my point? Let me take it right off the bat with Bats, my favorite. He can't. Act. In. Enough. Time.

Especially

when the bat-signal is involved. I imagine it as if I were Bruce Wayne. (It's my 'blog--I can do what I want.) I see the signal, miraculously distinct against atmospheric water vapor, and I leap into costume, out the window, grapple-swing into my car (you know, the Batmobile?), drive to police headquarters, grapple-swing/shimmy up to the roof and . . . Two-Face is there, holding Gordon hostage, having already killed half an orphanage in the crime Jim had just gotten a warning about when he turned on the bat-lamp. Hell: Even a cell-phone call can't overcome the time it takes to get through midtown, no matter how late at night.

Another big one is the costumes. Even the most practical of superheroes have an iconic flambuoyancy that -- in reality -- would serve to somehow impede them to the point of their immediate death. Capes are nicely covered by

a sequence in

The Incredibles

, but you can also look at some of the fight scenes involving caped characters in movies. Talk about your liabilities. Even a Musketeer knows the first thing you do is whip that bad boy off and use it

one your opponent

. Capes are pure drama or, if you prefer, opera. "Okay," the FBs say, "Okay, but what about someone more pragmatic. Like Punisher." FBs, listen to me very carefully on this. He is a gun-toting vigilante who goes up against other gun-toters, mostly at night, and somehow thought it would be a good idea to imprint

an enormous

white

skull over his vital organs

. The only guy asking for it worse is Bullseye. There are myriad impracticalities involved in superhero costumes, from color to shape to size to generally advertizing complete vulnerability with either explicit contours of anatomy or, failing that, partial nudity. Suffice it to say: Impractical.

The final impracticality I will submit -- though there are many, many more -- is that, sadly, superheoes are real, real dumb. Or ignorant; take your pick. Now I don't want to generalize here . . . well yeah, I kind of do, but it's justifiable I think. Superheroes never seem to get anywhere. This comes of being born from a serial story-telling genre, obviously, once such a thing got mixed with good, old-fashioned American values. I mean, Dumas wrote serial adventure stories, and they still had an end. On top of the superhero struggle being self-perpetuated, it's also completely devoid of social insight -- meaning both insight into society and into social behavior. Every superhero is essentially anti-social. Even the squeaky-clean ones. Captain America is/was as "out" a superhero as one gets, his methods nurturing compared to some, yet he still operated by a creed devoid of any kind of social understanding. I don't know if this comes out of the stories having originally been written largely for teenage boys or what (see, I lack social insight, too), but I do know that power fantasies do not help the real world too durn much. Especially when it comes to social problems such as crime and tyranny.

This is why, as I come full-circle in my fandom, I prefer the 1989

Batman

film to the 1995

Batman Begins

. Burton's film makes no approach toward reality, yet takes the character very seriously. It is stylized, it is operatic, it is ultimately a more successful vision of the world a character like

Batman

occupies. I love

Batman Begins

for taking the character seriously again, re-upping it from the quasi-disdainful visions of Joel Schumacher, but in trying so hard to make Batman a believable, naturalistic character, Nolan has put him into a world in which he will never really belong. Chris, the cape can just be dramatic-looking camoflage; the ears can just be odd and frightening; Gotham can just be crime-ridden rather than economically depressed. There are plenty of movies that portray true societal problems, and a few that even suggest realistic, complex solutions. Superheroes were never meant to be sophisticated. They're meant to be audacious.

So. Why stand up for our men and women in tights? Well, they got to me young, they did. When I was a pre-teen (even maybe a "tween"), and in hungry need of some kind of guidance for how to weather the storms of growing up, something about Batman made sense to me. Hell: Superman got to me way before then. In some ways I've been indoctrinated, I suppose. Similar to the myths of older cultures, superheroes gave me a common language with my peers (the geeky ones, anyway) and even my parents to some extent, and they lit up the questions I always had about how to please people and deal with adversity in nice, bold, primary colors. And now? Well, now there's definitely a lot of escapism to my pursuit of more heroic adventures. Reading a comicbook is still the best way I can relax and go to sleep at night. But I would be lying, too, if I said I didn't occasionally wonder "What would Batman do?" when I'm faced with a difficult quandry. And sometimes, just sometimes, that wondering leads me through to previously unimagined possibilities.

Now if only I could get some of those wonderful toys . . .

Updating the Great Dialogue on March 10, 2008:

Friend Lea sent me an article, in which Michael Chabon (as he invariably does) bests me in getting to the heart of the costumed-hero issue. Read it

here

, at the New Yorker.

Send in the . . .. Oh wait; that's me.

I heard recently (can't recall where) that a fear of clowns was the universal fear of all children. I know some adults who would postulate that children ain't the half of it. Clown fear, or

coulrophobia

, is prevalent. Of that there can be no doubt. Check some articles, my fine, feathered readers: and a-

one

, and a-

two

, and a-

three

. I hardly feel a need to provide references for this phobia, however. It seems to be universally understood that clowns are, under the right, or wrong or, for some, any circumstances, scary.

Friend Davey

backs this up. He doesn't like clowns, either (though apparently the Puck from Neil Gaiman's Sandman he's just hunky-dorry with), and one of his best friends is a clown. It's tearing our nation apart! It's brother against brother! Cats and dogs, living together; mass hysteria!

And that is what I think the fear of clowns comes down to. Someone, please, tell me if I've got it all backward. I'd love further insight into coulrophobia. (And while you're at it, please break down the etymology of that word, too.) To me, who only fears the certain, intentionally scary clown, it comes down to anarchy. People simply don't know what a clown will do next, and on top of that, clowns are the ultimate breakers of the fourth wall, or the audience-performer separation. We can't exist without you, audience. If a clown gets his foot lodged in a trashcan, then stumbles around until accidentally setting himself on fire, and no one's around to hear the screams of agony, did the clown really get his foot lodged in a trashcan and stumble around until accidentally setting himself aflame? The sad answer is: No, my dear audience. No.

I love clown work. I was introduced to it as a performer by a fellow clown,

Grey Valenti

. Friend Grey graduated from the

Dell'Arte school

, is a member in good standing of

Zuppa del Giorno

, and directed our only full-length clown production to date:

Silent Lives

. I think it's safe to say that Grey feels she learned a lot from clowning--the which she does in the general

Lecoq

/red-nose style--and applies those lessons to the rest of her life. I was very cautious to enter that world for quite a while. Rather like my few flirtations with attempting dance, I would find myself feeling lost in the work, a stranger in a strange land, and quickly become discouraged. Add to that all the aspects of clowning that actors are trained

not

to do, such as acknowledging the audience or drastically modifying one's behavior on stage in response to them, and you have yourself a pretty scary little world to enter . . . even without the intimidation of how personal clown work is. The idea is that one's clown is unique to one's self, thriving on our unexpressed emotions, and that the more difficult a time the clown is having, the funnier it is to the audience.

Taken from that perspective, I wonder if persons suffering from coulrophobia might not start to feel some sympathy for the clowns they meet.

It's unfortunate that, in our community at large (I'm speaking here of the U.S. of America, people), a "clown" has the stigma that it does. Google images of "clown" and (as of the date of this writing) you get that whole "birthday-clown" package, replete with elaborate face paint, grotesque colors and ginormous shoes. You also get Google suggesting you try searching for "

scary

clowns

." The allegory here is very nearly self-evident. I don't know a lot about how the birthday clown(TM) became the prototype clown for us. I can assume influences from what I know of clown history, but that's just what they'd be: assumptions. I do go so far as to suggest, however, that the birthday clown is the result of a certain competitive and/or capitalistic philosophy we tend to adopt, knowingly or no. Drive anything to a certain point of extremes, and it will become grotesque.

These things do not a clown make. We've got clowns we love (or hate) unabashedly, without fear, surrounding us in our culture. Certainly

two of the greatest silent-film comedians

were clowns (I'm not sure I'd classify Harold Lloyd as one; I see him as beginning the swing toward more naturalistic comedy), and possibly the birthday clown has borrowed from their pedestrian wardrobe.

Dr. Stephen T. Colbert

is a clown, and I don't mean that in the derogatory sense. I mean that he is an iconic comedian, heavily dependent upon his audience, and who is developed out of the particular personality of a performer. The fact that he is also a scripted telelvision "host," more verbally motivated than driven by pratfall, is simply an adaptation to the time, and has evolved from other, more Western traditions of clowning. I believe Simon Cowell may be a clown, too. If he really behaves the way he does on

American Idol

at all times in his life, well, then he's not, and I pity him.

The funny thing about clowns (ha-ha), is that we are essentially children. I've spoken to a lot of people with theories from all sorts of places about why this fear of clowns. My sister recently insisted that the "traditional" clown face-painting taps into a primal fear of death, that children see a white face and know instinctively that it means a dead person. Could be. Lots of articles suggest that clowns are chaos-makers, and most mythologies contain some such figure, which is often associated with animalistic behavior. A fear of clowns, then, is a survival instinct, a defensive reaction to something outside one's community that has found its way in. (Never mind that many Native Americans figured this clown figure--Raven--for having created the world.) I can dig it. Me, though: I think people are threatened by the anarchy of a person behaving child-like. That is, in ignorance of "the rules."

As I grow older and (ever-so-slowly) more mature, I value what the clown has to teach me more and more. The clown takes nothing for granted. The clown makes mistakes regularly, and makes them with absolute commitment, and sometimes they even work out for him or her, in which case he or she never comes to view it as a mistake. The clown sees purpose in everything, understanding in nothing. The clown is selfish in its needs, yet absolutely dependent on the love of others. The clown, in short, makes me feel a little less an "adult, " and a little more human.

Which, I admit, can be scary.

Concepts I Don't Believe In But That Still Rule My Life And I Have No Hope For Doing Anything About Because They're Just Too Pervasive In Our Culture

Plus one I do believe in: God.

• Fate.
• It's not just that I am uncomfortable with the idea that my life is planned out. I find the notion of fate insulting to my intelligence. What is the point of anything, if it all already exists in a plan somewhere? Yet most theatre is based on some idea, or at least feeling, of fate.

• Omens.
• Self-fulfilling nonsense. And I will never stop seeing them everywhere. Thank God, actually, because these things can get through to me when I'm otherwise completely disconnected from myself.

• "Everything happens for a reason."
• No, it doesn't. If science isn't enough to convince you of this, at least take a moment to regard that there is no ending to stories (except death), and therefore no basis by which to judge the supposed long-term purpose of incidents. Still, we need hope or faith or both to get through it all, don't we?

• Angels/Demons.
• They make great symbols, but ultimately they're contradictory even to the theologies that purport their existence.

• The D/Evil.
• Another great symbol here, and mainly what he's a symbol for is our guilt. Sometimes the guilt we feel over our lack of guilt, for growing up, for self-interest -- Lucifer (named for a mistranslation, by the way) is all these things. Mainly, I don't believe in such a thing as absolute evil. "Evil," as it is commonly perceived, requires self-awareness, and every self-aware creature I've ever met does "evil" things out of sickness, ill-thought. Plain and simple.

• Cuteness (as a virtue).
• Oh man. Must I endure? I must, because cuteness, either as an expression of "aw" or the more visceral "oh," endures. We want to procreate, to get freaky with cuteness, to create more cuteness. So we'll always want the cute. But it ain't a measure of nothin'. Except that it is.

• Violence (as a solution).
• It only works on zombies, and even then you've probably got a lot of personal dehumanization to deal with as an after-effect, assuming the movies are at all relevant to the "real" thing.

• Zombies.
• See above.
•  
• Organized sports.
• Blame it on my youth: They don't actually matter.

• Money.
• I eagerly anticipate the Star Trek utopian future, in which capitalism is obliterated somehow. As common systems of exchange go, money blows. I don't have to justify this feeling to anyone

• Elvis.
• I just don't get what was so great about The King. Maybe someone can explain it to me. In them meantime, alive or dead, he doesn't make my list of believed-in.

What inspired this rant of rejection, especially from one whose history is so steeped in a faith of universal acceptance? I have been noticing and reading a lot lately--or so it seems to me--about Atheism as a movement. I do not oppose this movement. On the contrary, I think Atheists have been rather oppressed in our global culture, and I don't like anyone to be oppressed (REpressed, sometimes...) and so, say "Bully!" to the outspoken Atheists. I worry, however, over the way so many of them with the benefit of the public ear are immediately resorting to the stampeding debate tactics of those further into a life of faith that they so oppose. It's natural, when your beliefs are shaped by what you don't believe, to oppose another view, and nascent societies (such as openly atheistic groups in America) are bound to overstate their claim when they finally get a voice. So maybe I've nothing to worry about. Maybe them thar' Atheists will never become quite as fascist as to start bombing cathedrals and synagogues.

I believe in God, and it's important you know that if you're going to know me. I know there's no empirical evidence for the big G. I know lots of people think they have lots of conclusive evidence that God can't exist. I don't disagree with such people on any particular point, and actually tend to agree with the "facts," as scientists understand them. I even agree with Lennon, "Imagine," and think the world would be a much more peaceful place without religion. So why do I continue to believe in God? Is it just because I'm a minister's son? Is it stubborn wishful thinking, or deep-seeded superstition? Perhaps it's just playing it safe.

It's that I believe in something greater than all we can perceive. This "greater" thing is pervasive, interconnects us and has more meaningful significance than forces like gravity and magnetism (hell: it may be the source of all force[s]). It's not important to me that the greatness, which I'll go ahead and call God from here on out, created us, or nurtures us, or even has any personally conceivable relationship to us. What is important, to my mind and heart, is that the belief in God keep us from turning completely into self-important little gits, hell-bent on destroying one another and our celestial terrarium. I feel most in a spirit of God when I am grateful for life, all of it, and I can do that without seeing God as a man or regarding a book as gooder than most (the gooderest book). So rock on, Atheists. Get heard. I'm all for it. I hope you do some good in the world.

Me, though: I'm a believer.

Bat-tle Roy...lverine?

In the anarchic spirit of true artistry, I intend with this entry to break the mould of Odin's Aviary by discussing a topic seemingly unrelated to

The Third Life

(TM), though I'm likewise sure that I'll find a way to tie it in somehow. That topic is as follows:

Just who

would

win in a fight between Wolverine and Batman?

Now, everybody: Calm down. Calm right the hell on down. (Some of you may think I'm using an ironic tone at this moment, but nothing could be further from the truth; I have friends that will be offended that there is even a question about this match up--and for both sides, too.) We're going to look at this rationally, and I'm going to be as unbiased as possible. To that end, I must admit to those of you who don't yet know me (though I'm on the cover of this week's

The Record

. . . WATCH OUT!) that I am about as biased for Batman--in all things--as I could possibly be. Bearing that in mind, let's us begin our fair and balanced exploration of the question.

Batman would win.

Okay, I'm sorry. For

reals

now:

Batman would kick shorty's hairy butt.

No, no, really. Really. It's a tough call. (It

is

, Mark.) They're both the more popular bad boys of their respective universes--which is no doubt part of what inspired Amalgam to bring them together in their character,

Dark Claw

. One could make a quick argument that Wolverine's enhancements make him the sure winner, but frankly, Batman has dealt with supernatural (

et

al

) powers before, and has a reputation for being the smarter fighter in any situation. But I get ahead of myself. Let's take a look at our fighters in some limited detail.

(Isn't it great to, every once in a while, be shameless in one's geek self? "

Geeking

out" is the popular term, but it can refer to any incidence in which someone unabashedly reveals their enthusiasm for anything. Why should it be such a social sin to relish anything in this world? Because not everyone will care? So what? You don't have to listen/read.)

Dealing with a brief outline of the conditions: Batman is a hero from the DC Comics universe, Wolverine from the Marvel. For the purposes of this discussion, we will be approaching the characters as being at the peak of their natural condition; that is to say,

Wolvie

with his standard set of attributes in the X-Men arc, Batman in his late-twenties/early-thirties...none of this sapped

adamantium

or Return of the Dark Knight stuff. (Non-

fanboys

: Anyone over

geeked

yet?) And they shall be comic characters, not movie characters. So

sayeth

I. And they shall be drawn according to their origins, with some allowance for increased anatomical awareness in artists of the latter half of the 20

th

century. So

Wolvie

is short, and Batman is not hulking. Finally, they're both to some degree anarchic good guys, with Wolverine taking the anarchy cake: He will kill; Bats will not.

Let's get it on!

Wolverine is a mutant who has been experimented upon (fact-check me here gang; I am not a Marvel dude). He has regenerative powers of shocking rapidity, but for the purposes of this discussion we're gonna go with the popular comic choice of him needing some time (one or two nights) to heal from something severe, like a dozen machine guns. He also has three foot-long claws that extend at will from his fists, which are made from

adamantium

, a purportedly indestructible metal. In fact, his entire skeleton is coated with a layer of the stuff, adding to his indestructibility and making him heavy as all hell. Now, the healing is a mutant power, and the

adamantium

is the result of a government experiment. The claws were long assumed to be part of the government's work, but a twist in the nineties suggested they were there before all that, made, at their core, of bone. Sadly, as a result of powerful amnesia,

Wolvie

barely knows a thing about his origins. Given his healing ability, it's possible he is really very old, but he maintains a loner attitude and an underdeveloped emotional capacity. He is trained in martial arts with a Japanese flavor, and prefers direct action to intricacy or planning.

Batman is just a dude--no superpowers. He has, however, spent every waking moment since he was six years old (or so) dedicating his life to studies both physical and mental that will help him fight crime in the urban sprawl of Gotham City, so often the argument is held that his single-minded determination is his "superpower." These studies include gymnastics, mixed martial arts, all sciences and technologies (with an emphasis on computers and

mechanistic devices

), detection, criminology and behavioral psychology. His mind and body are honed into excellence, and he's backed up in all of this by a huge estate and corporation left to him by his deceased parents. His

modus

operandi

is to research and investigate the hell out of everything ahead of time and be prepared, like an inky black boyscout. Owing to his background, he is incapable of accepting loss, either of people or in achievement.

Now (and I owe Friend Mark a nod for this): chances are it would all go down in Gotham. It's not hard to imagine these two egos clashing, but given that Wolverine generally wishes to best bad guys, it would take his stomping on Batman's grounds to make Bats take issue with him or his methods. So Gotham it is. And methods it is. Specifically,

Wolvie

would most likely only come to such a big city if he had to, presumably in pursuit of answers about his past or to hunt a baddie, and he wouldn't

announce

himself to the authorities. Now, it's hard to say what DC characters would feel about mutants. Batman would have no love lost over their DC equivalent--

metahumans

--but he's teamed with super types before, and some much fruitier than

Wolvie

. He is something of a control freak, though, and

Wolvie

would probably pretty quickly foul up some careful lead Bats was following. Bats would sneak up on him,

Wolvie

would smell him coming, Bats would warn,

Wolvie

would yawn him off, Bats would disappear suddenly and without a trace (because you can't smell them

going

). It's only on their next encounter they'd fight, probably with Bats tracking

Wolvie

, but

Wolvie

aware of it, and so he provokes him by threatening to shred a house of drug traffickers instead of arrest them.

And it's on.

My preference is to judge the winner by character examination. You can spend all day debating the merits of strategy, relative invulnerability and motorcycles versus

sports cars

, but at the end of the day, we're talking about events in a storytelling medium. If it isn't a good story, in this context, then it just isn't feasible (much less

desirable

). So we'll talk here about claws and cowls, but hopefully in how they serve an outcome, not their viability strictly as weapons.

(Brief irrelevant observation here: Why in the hell does Wolverine wear a mask? Bruce Wayne has to hide his identity to function in both worlds, but Logan has never shown any sign of needing to mask

himself

. Hell, he's on a continual quest for his identity! That's not the kind of guy who would dig getting his disguise on. Yeah, yeah; I know when he was created it was fashionable and they were trying to make him look more like his namesake. But come on.)

The fight would be all about control and, from this perspective, with Batman as the aggressor (trying to achieve control) and Wolverine as the defender (trying to escape control). This doesn't, however, mean that Bats gets to start the fight.

Wolvie

would probably startle him by drawing him in and then attacking suddenly. Bats would want to keep the high ground afforded him by his aerial equipment, but would just have to keep swinging lower to suppress

Wolvie

until it degraded into a street-level (or rooftop) brawl.

Surprises

would abound. Bats would have all kinds of interesting ways of evening the odds (in the eighties it would have

been a

neural suppressor to prevent the claws from engaging; in the sixties a giant bat-magnet), and

Wolvie

would shock Bats with moves so ugly they're almost absurd. Essentially, they're both incredibly experienced, intelligent fighters, once they get past the emotions. Along those lines, Bats would be doing everything he could to make Logan lose it whilst he maintained control of himself and the environment, and

Wolvie

would be doing whatever he could think of to cause Bats to falter from his grim determination.

Which is why, ultimately, Batman would win.

In every fight, Bats has some part of himself standing outside of the engagement, being the deductive reasoner, that part of him that he found years before, ready to carry him on past his parents' deaths. It's this part of him that inevitably carries the Rocky-

esque

twists of his fights: Just when he seems most lost, we discover that Bats was merely doing what he had to to manipulate the situation into his ultimate plan. He is ultimately objective, which is what makes him a hero, rather than a revenge-

obsessed

sociopath with a

Narcissus

complex.

Which is why, ultimately, Batman can't win.

In every fight, Wolverine's spirit is

indomitable

. It has to be--it's all he really has. Wolverine is actually a supremely vulnerable character. When he started out, this was manifested only by his impulsiveness and relative lack of strength compared to the other X-Men, rendering him more often as comic relief than as his current status of anti-hero. As writers developed his story, however, the vulnerability came out of this incredible amnesia and a conflict between who he seems to be and who he wants to be. For all his indestructible qualities, inside he's destroyed, and it's only his fighting spirit that he can rely on.

What we have here is a conflict between essential natures, and a stricture of conventional

comicbook

plots. The characters and their stories are serial, and keeping a balance between continuity and ingenuity is what marketing those comics is all about. That's part of what makes

comicbook

characters such contemporary icons: like the gods and heroes of myth, they are defined by specific characteristics that remain essentially the same. So we can have several Robins, and Batman can get his will broken by Bane, but only if it eventually returns him to his essential character with renewed vigor. This is great for hero worship and power fantasies. This sucks for narrative, because what's really interesting about a story is how people change as a result of it.

So I propose that the fight would end with Bats getting control of the

Wolvie

, and having his say about his jurisdiction and

Wolvie's

methods.

Wolvie

might even find his arguments compelling enough to stop threatening him for a moment. But

Wolvie

will not change his ways, and Bats will be forced to

expel

him from Gotham, like an animal released into the wild. Another little tussle, in which

Wolvie

gets a claw swipe at the utility belt, to no apparent harm, and Bats will have him ready for transport. The much-battered Batman will escort a bound Logan across whatever harbor borders Gotham, and Logan will light a

stoagie

, turn wryly back and say over his shoulder as all his bruises fade, "Been a while since I've had a beating, but I've had worse. Bit of advice: Remember that I owe you one, bub." And with that cryptic line, Wolverine leaves the scene.

In a brief coda, Bats goes back to the scene of their first meeting to scavenge clues that may not have been obliterated by

Wolvie

. In departing there, he uses his fly line to span an alleyway, to discover

mid-flight

that it is nicked. The line snaps, sending him crashing to a fire escape. "I suppose now we're even..." he says as he rather gingerly descends the escape.

Thoughts? Comments? Complete disagreement?