Becoming Batman

by E. Paul Zehr

  When it comes to absolute performances, such as the most that could be lifted, the fastest running speeds, and so on, there will always remain a gender difference. However, in activities where skill and strategy are key components, such as fighting, a much more equal playing field is created. The use of weapons adds to the equalization. Let’s consider, then, an “Ultimate Battle of the Bats” in which Batman fights Batgirl. By the way, in this discussion I refer to most recent Batgirl, Cassandra Cain. The reason for this is that she has a legitimate training pedigree. This is shown very clearly in the graphic novel Batgirl: Kicking Assassins (2005). Here Batgirl, who was trained from childhood to be a martial artist par excellence, is shown going through her typical morning routine, which involves copious amounts of martial arts practice. She is shown as on par with Batman in the various books and is clearly a fantastic fighter. The quotation at the beginning of this chapter highlights that. The “old” Batgirl was no slouch, either. However, she was kind of airlifted into the Batman comics as a result of the producers’ wanting to add a female character to the 1960s TV series Batman. Later on she is given an update in the excellent graphic novel Batgirl: Year One by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon.

  TABLE 14.1. Comparison of Batman and female characters from Batman comics

  Before going farther, let’s return to the quote at the beginning of this chapter. Batman’s comment that Batgirl could defeat Lady Shiva but Batman could not does not actually mean Batgirl could beat Batman. This may be confusing, but a key issue here is the size of opponent and size of vulnerable areas. Think of baseball as an example. It is much more difficult for a pitcher to throw strikes to a very small batter than it is to a very large batter. The absolute vertical size of the strike zone is much larger in the large batter because the definition of the strike zone—roughly between a batter’s shoulders and his knees—changes with each batter. This means that the room for variability and error when throwing to the smaller batter is also much smaller and thus more difficult. If the strike zone were instead an absolute size, say between 0.6 and 1 meter (2 to 3.5 feet) off the plate, then this argument wouldn’t apply. Well, replace strike zone with vulnerable area in fighting and you have the same idea.

  The four areas to discuss for a fight between Batgirl and Batman are use of weapons, striking and kicking, throwing, and grappling. Right away it should be obvious that the use of weaponry is the great equalizer in fighting or combat. This is so even in the case of the weaponry that Batman and Batgirl would use. That is, projectiles such as batarangs or impact weapons such as a staff or cudgel. An aspect that may not be so obvious is that unlike making hands or feet (or elbows, knees, etc.) into weapons, actual handheld weapons have their own mechanical properties. That is, with the example of the staff, they are made of wood (or some other material) and are much harder than your fist could ever be. Think back to Chapter 10 and the example of the one-punch knockout Batman produced against Blockbuster when Batman’s hand was temporarily “calcified.” Accordingly, we are “even Steven” with weapons. There is no real advantage for either Batman or Batgirl when weapons are used.

  For striking and kicking, I can vouch from practical experience that fighting smaller opponents is much more difficult than larger opponents or those of about the same size. When I used to fight competitively I always preferred fighting someone my size. Certainly I had a larger reach than the smaller opponents I competed against, but I always seemed to be fighting down toward smaller targets and was susceptible to quick counterattacks.

  A major component of Batgirl’s strategy when fighting Batman would be based on that—but in reverse of course. She would then probably do mostly counterattacking. That means waiting for Batman to close the distance between them with his attacks and then attacking after parrying his attack or simply as he closed in. It is often foolhardy to initiate attacks against opponents with significantly larger reaches if they are equal to or of higher skill level than yourself. However, for them to attack the smaller fighter they must close the distance and do half the work for the other.

  While real fighting and tournament competitions are not the same thing, they do share some common elements of strategy and distancing. In fact, in one of the very first point scoring tournaments I ever fought in, I lost to a much smaller female opponent. She very carefully used my own attacks to close the distance and thereby negated my reach advantage. I would chase her all around the ring with her withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing and then counterattacking at times when my attack slowed. It was a very instructive experience!

  You might suggest that since Batgirl is smaller and of lower absolute strength and power than Batman, her ability to hit his larger targets would be largely ineffective. To a certain extent there is some validity to that. Certainly Batman’s punch has more destructive power than does Batgirl’s. However, not by that much. This is for two main reasons. Batgirl’s limbs are smaller and can be moved slightly faster. Kinetic energy is equal to mass times velocity squared, if you remember from Chapter 10. Therefore she will need slightly less energy in her strikes because her limbs are lighter. In Chapter 10 we also learned that pressure is greater in smaller areas. Batgirl is striking with hands and feet that are of smaller area, and therefore the pressure is higher in her strikes. Although Batman’s attacks may not as easily hit the vital points on Batgirl’s body, she still will absorb a lot of “body blows,” which will be very fatiguing and tiring. Unfortunately for Batgirl, even though she makes up for her smaller size with her technical competence, on balance the scales are either even here or tipped slightly toward Batman.

  When we are talking about throwing, the same issue as above for striking and kicking comes up—the scaling issue. Batman is taller than Batgirl and therefore has a higher center of mass. This means it is easier for him to be thrown, all things being equal, than if he were shorter and of similar size to Batgirl. As we discussed in Chapter 10 (that was sure a useful chapter!), throwing is all about making somebody unstable and off balance and then toppling them over. Well, the higher the center of mass of an object—including a human body—the easier it is to topple over. Assuming again equal technical ability, we will give the slight nod to Batgirl here.

  Lastly, we come to grappling and wrestling. In this context technique is still of paramount importance. However, we have been assuming all along that Batgirl and Batman have equal technical competence. For “close quarters” fighting on the ground such as wrestling and grappling, absolute strength is much more important than in any of the other areas of fighting. Because Batman has higher absolute strength, he has a clear advantage over Batgirl in grappling and ground fighting. The only real way for Batgirl to minimize Batman’s advantage is to make use of the distancing we talked about earlier and try to avoid closing the distance that makes grappling a likely outcome. She needs to ensure that Batman stays upright and fighting with her to have a chance. The caveat is if the fight between Batman and Batgirl became one of ground fighting, in which case strength becomes much more of a significant factor. In that case the odds weigh heavily in Batman’s favor.

  In the Batgirl comic “Tough Love” (Batgirl #50, 2004), Batgirl fought Batman. A small skirmish started between the two when Batman asked Batgirl to “stand down” from further fighting. Then, an evil mad scientist sprayed them with “soul,” a drug that causes manic behavior. The fight escalated and covered most of Gotham City and an entire comic. Batgirl did very well in the encounter and really held her own. We find out later that Batman was in possession of himself enough that he used the encounter as a cathartic training exercise for Batgirl. That is, he held back his own attacks but only slightly.

  Taken overall I give the nod to Batman over Batgirl—but only just. If they fought in the “Ultimate Battle of the Bats” as a best of seven World Series, I would bet on Batman to defeat Batgirl four fights to two. Batgirl’s two wins would be by knockout!

  But just wait, I hear you asking now: “Why don’t more of Batman’s fights with Catwoma
n end in draws”? This brings us back to the caveat used all along in the discussion above. Catwoman does not have the same technical competence that Batman or Batgirl have. Therefore, while she does exploit the use of weapons including her long cat of nine tails, she does not have the same technical ability in other areas of fighting. Too often, she violates the old adage of using weapons. That is, we must learn to use them but not depend on them. So, when she loses her whip, she often loses the fight. The fact that she does so well clearly shows how important weapons can be as equalizers.

  Overall and taken on balance, in Batman’s world just as in our own world, women can perform just as well as men when skill and relative performance are the main criteria for success. When absolute physical performances—like the longest running distance, shortest time, largest weight to be lifted, and so on—are the main criteria, the balance shifts toward Batman.

  We have seen in previous chapters the effects of training and fighting on Batman and have now seen how he would fare against the toughest male and female opponents. Now let’s see how the Caped Crusader stacks up against an opponent we all must face one day—Father Time.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Aging Avenger

  COULD THE CAPED CRUSADER

  BECOME THE CAPED CODGER?

  An older head can’t be put on younger shoulders.

  —Adam West as Batman from the ABC TV series Batman

  My main interest is Batman himself . . . Bruce Wayne and the other heroes in Batman are human beings. I think that is what separates Batman the most from the other DC Comics heroes. I guess you could say that I admire Superman, but I’d want to be Batman if I could.

  —From an interview with Kia Asamiya, author of Batman: Child of Dreams (2003)

  In this chapter we are going to explore what it would be like to be Batman as he ages and gets older. Batman after becoming Batman, as it were. We’ll look at how long Bruce Wayne could continue to work as Batman. As such, the title of this chapter must really be taken kind of tongue in cheek. We are not going to explore Batman at age 100! Rather, the point is to discuss how well a person can really offset the effects of aging and how well someone like Batman can really prepare for getting older. To do that I will talk about the cumulative effects of Batman’s repeated combative activities and examine how an aging Batman would fare over time.

  An important first principle in discussing aging is that Batman has always been an aging Batman. Right now, while I write and while you read, we are both aging. Biological aging is a steady, continual process that starts after life has begun. The more accurate term that covers what I am trying to get at is “senescence,” which shares the same Latin root as the word “senile.” The term indicates a decline in function that occurs after a certain age. For us humans, this age is about 30 and beyond. What we want to address is the concept of how becoming an aging—senescing—Batman would affect his continued ability to be Batman. To evaluate this, we revisit Bruce’s imaginary twin brother Bob some years into the future. We won’t go too far, just until the twins are 50 years old—or maybe that should be 50 years young?

  There are going to be some surprises for you in this chapter. For example, Batman is at increased risk for osteoporosis as a result of his nocturnal lifestyle. All of the bonks to the head he has taken seemingly without consequence increase his chances of dementia, such as occurs with Alzheimer’s disease.

  It is worth noting that this issue has been explored in several stories of the DC Comics panoply of Batman comic and graphic novels. A particularly good example can be found in the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller. In this story, Batman has been retired for ten years. However, when things in Gotham City get totally out of hand, Batman comes out of retirement at age 55 to bring order to the city. His functional capacity has diminished with age—Batman remarks while climbing up a building that he is “old enough to need my legs to climb a rope”—but he is revitalized by the experience.

  This idea of a retired Batman was the explicit focus of the animated tele vision series Batman Beyond, which ran from 1999 to 2001 and took place in the future—2039 actually. Batman has gradually been slowing down and has modified the batsuit and other devices to compensate for his declining physical prowess. These modifications include a powered exoskeleton and interfaces to activate his muscles, wings, and rocket thrusters in the boots. However, despite all these technical enhancements, Batman suffers a heart attack one evening while trying to subdue some bad guys. To save himself he picks up a gun from one of the thugs and threatens them with it. This brings him great shame since it violates his code on firearms. This shame forces him into retirement.

  Now let’s see what the physiological effects of aging would be on Batman. Let’s look at what happens to your body when you age. I hinted above that aging is really not a process that has a sudden onset or offset point. You don’t just all of sudden start experiencing “aging” on, say your 28th, 39th, or 53rd birthday. Instead, all animals, including Homo sapiens, begin to age as soon as we begin to live. However, I think what most of us think of when we hear the word “aging” is a decline of our physical capacity.

  We will soon get into some specifics, but first we need a bit of grounding in what our cells do as we age, because aging and maturation are closely related to the basic operation of our cells. In Batman’s body, the total number of cells is kept pretty steady by ongoing cell division (mitosis) matched with cell death. This is needed to maintain—get ready for this because this will surely shock you—homeostasis. Unregulated cell growth or death would be completely inconsistent with homeostasis. When this balance between cell division and cell death is altered, negative outcomes such as tumor growth can occur.

  The basic idea about how long cells could live was originally described by Leonard Hayflick in the 1960s. Through his extensive work at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Hayflick made some observations that were the opposite of the prevailing paradigms. He showed that animal cells have a limited capacity to reproduce. Instead of having the ability to replicate indefinitely, a limit of about 50 times was observed, which has subsequently become known as “the Hayflick limit.” These experiments showed that there were separate cell “lines” of what are called “immortal” and “mortal” cells. This work has not only been crucial for improving the understanding of how aging works, but it has also been extremely useful for laying the groundwork for modern cancer research.

  What does aging really mean for cells? Senescence as applied to cells means the loss of the ability to divide. Some suggestions have been that normal cellular processes lead to accumulated damage. In particular damage to the DNA occurs, and the cells fail to flourish or actually die via self-destruction. This is termed “apoptosis” and is a form of programmed “deliberate” cell death. This has often been likened to cellular suicide, which does get across the general idea quite effectively. However, apoptosis is actually very useful and a bit too much of a negative impression is created by using a term like “suicide.” That is because the programmed cell death is meant as a form of generalized cleanup that benefits the rest of the cells in the organism. I guess it would be fair to say that your cells are quite selfless in their behavior and are real team players.

  All these changes to our cells are just one facet of aging. When we put changes to each of Batman’s cells together to see the effect on the man as a whole, we see that aging is the ongoing decline in the ability to respond to stress. Homeostasis slowly becomes more difficult to maintain, and overall function gradually declines. Of course, the ultimate result of this process is death.

  The life span of any organism is therefore the sum total of all the processes occurring in all cells in the organism. Different animals have different rates and have different maximum life spans. However, the general pattern of aging is similar across species as shown in the shape of the different curves for worms, mice, and humans in Figure 15.1. These “viability curves” essent
ially tell about the survival and mortality within each species over time. A human is considered elderly at 85 or 90 years of “real time,” while a mouse is elderly at the age of three years. These different life spans occur due to differences in genetic components that affect physiological processes, including the efficiency of DNA repairs.

  Occupational hazards and chronic exposure to an unsafe workplace are real concerns for Bruce Wayne as he continues being Batman and continues to age. These are in addition to the concerns he must have over getting injured (and which we discussed in Chapter 13). There are really three (here we go again with the threes . . . I know, I know) main themes we will touch on here. I want to address the declines in cognitive and motor performance that Batman will experience while he gets older. The third theme, though, is to explore the possible protective role that Batman’s—get ready for the understatement to follow—fairly “active lifestyle” might have on reducing the impact of normal aging on cognitive and motor impairments. To make a lot of these points we are also going to revisit our old—pun intended, sorry—friend Bob Wayne, Bruce’s twin. This will be important since that is the only way we can really hope to understand how much of the changes in Batman’s cognitive ability and motor performance are due to his work and how much are due to his normal aging.

  Figure 15.1. Similar shape of viability curves for worm, mouse, and human. Modified from Kaeberlein et al. (2001).

  Cognition and the Caped Crusader

  One of the injuries we focused on in Chapter 13 was concussion. At that time we learned about not just an acute concussive incident but also about the concern with secondary impact syndrome. In this chapter on aging I want to go a bit farther and think about the repeated exposure—across a lifetime—and what that might really entail.