On Vampires – or, Evil Sucks

Humans have a habit of making monsters. Whether it’s a fire-breathing dragon, a one-eyed giant, or a green guy with bolts going through his neck, we just love to make up more and more things that go bump in the night. It could be that this urge originates with an instinctual fear from the days our species had to contend with wild animals and the elements. It could equally be an actual subtle awareness of the diabolical, or even a sort of exorcism of our own demons buried within our fallen human nature. I would venture to say it’s a mix of all three. Whatever the reason, monsters are an enduring part of our creative consciousness from the Greek myths to modern day horror flicks.

That being said, I would say one of the most persistent and popular monster myths of the modern world has to be the vampire. Though blood-suckers are certainly present in many ancient cultures, we typically think of the vampire as we know it as a more recent invention. We can trace its origins back to penny dreadful stories of “Varney the Vampire” and of course Bram Stoker’s landmark horror masterpiece Dracula. In these early tales of gore, vampires were creatures of the night, half-demons who sucked the life out of innocent people and had access to a vast array of supernatural powers – flight, hypnotism, super-strength, transformation, and of course seduction.

Oh, but those days have long passed. Vampires, like many classic monsters, have largely been tamed and humanized. Twilight is by far the biggest culprit of this – turning a race of undead monsters into quasi-romantic, sympathetic creatures who sparkle in the sunlight. Another example would be the recent film Dracula Untold – though not “tame” by any means by my understanding the film whitewashes the sadistic character of Vlad Tepes and turns him into a bad guy worth rooting for. Another more obscure work in that line would be I, Dracula, where the famous count gives his own side of the story.

All this amounts to a disturbing trend to me – the tendency to downplay the role of evil beings and characters in literature and pop culture. There is always a desire to look at “the other side of the story” as seen with Disney’s recent hit Maleficent. The good guys are really bad and the bad guys are really good. Oh, but nothing is really “good” or “bad”. Asserting so would be ridiculous. It’s best to not pick a side – but we’d like you to think that all the evildoers are really just misunderstood. It’s Sympathy for the Devil to the max (capitalized out of respect to the Stones of course) – and something that ultimately makes for lame storytelling.

That’s because – well, let’s be honest. There is evil in the world. There is selfishness and greed and exploitation and a dozen other things that stem from our fallen nature. We need representations of that evil in art so that it can be conquered by art’s means. It goes back to G.K. Chesterton’s defense of fairy tales: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” I don’t think it’s too off-base to see this trend of turning the monsters into heroes as literary rivers rushing into the sea of relativism where nobody stands for anything – where there isn’t any good or evil only different point of views.

That is part of the reason why the original Dracula by Bram Stoker holds an almost counter-cultural place in the literary and film milieu of today. In that tale, the titular antagonist is the epitome of evil. He wants nothing but to suck the life out of human beings, create more images of himself, and ultimately take over the world.

The language of the tale is very clear, presenting a character who acts as a sort of anti-Christ. By that I mean he takes blood and deprives others of physical life as opposed to giving blood and granting others Divine life. This, after all, is the essential function of the vampire’s mythos. They are selfishness in pale flesh – feeding upon others for their own benefit and seeking immortality through their own means.

A vampire’s selfish nature also contributes to another trait which the classical image of vampirism puts forth: their role as seducer and an image of eroticism gone bad. This theme has been played up particularly in modern incarnations of vampire mythos. The spectacularly chilling opening to the 1998 movie Blade starring Wesley Snipes.(You can watch the whole intro here) In the scene, a rather gullible guy is led into a nightclub (suspiciously located in the back of a slaughterhouse mind you – that alone should be a red flag but no matter) by a sexy woman. Once inside the nightclub, the guy gets caught up in the wild excitement and loud music. However, he comes to his senses as the party goers grow colder and colder. This feeling comes to a climax when blood begins pouring from the sprinkler systems and everyone in the club goes wild. It’s one of the best modern interpretations of vampires that sticks with their evil origin, plus it’s a great intro to a badass Marvel character.

In comic books themselves, one of the best handling of vampires I have read comes from a Spectre comic from DC – in fact the first one I picked up. (The Spectre Vol 3 #34 by Ostrander and Ridgway to be precise) In that story, the Spectre, aka Jim Corrigan, tracks down a group of vampires who turn out to be Hollywood executives. In one of the most clever pseudo-satires I’ve read in comics, the vampires reveal that they have been using their positions of power in the culture to change their species’ image. As one vampire notes: “Vampires used to be a symbol of evil and depravity. Now we’re seen as tragic, romantic, sexy figures. We free people from the bondage of sexual repression. It’s been an effective strategy.” Now, I’m not one to blame Hollywood for everything from gun violence to spilling my coffee, but I think this take by Spectre writer John Ostrander was spot on. The comic pulls off this in a way that is both darkly satirical while maintaining the fact that these really are terrifying creatures. After all, they do viciously attack several people in the first few pages – one of which is an infant (reminiscent to one of the more chilling scenes in Dracula). The comic also pins down the pride of the vampires in the character of Cruz, a recently-turned actor who is on a spree of turning others into vampires – much to dismay of the council. He explains himself by saying how because he no longer can work in films or plays (since he cannot be photographed or rehearse during the day) he sees spreading his vampirism as part of his creative process. “So I create more of myself. Isn’t that part of the creative urge, after all – to make little copies of ourselves?” The Spectre later describes Cruz as “a monster of the ego” – a monster which we all are too capable of creating. Vampirism revolves around the idea of making oneself immortal at the expense of others. We all have this kind of ambition lurking in the corners of our souls. We’d cheat death if we could, even if someone else had to pay for it.

All well and good, but why am I on about this? We can trace that back to the two founding principles of this blog – namely my Catholicism and my nerdiness. What that means in practical terms is that my nerdy side is concerned with literary and cultural phenomena for their own sake, whereupon my Catholic side swoops in and takes note of the moral, spiritual, and philosophical undertones of said phenomena. The vampire craze is no different. To me, the importance of the vampire in literature is to present a force for evil in a physical way. Vampirism is essentially anti-Christian (that is, opposed to the redemptive work of Christ) in that it seeks to corrupt that which is good and conduct a parasitic existence. They drink the blood from their victims until they either die or turn into a monster like them. In that vein, vampires can be interpreted as administers of an anti-Eucharistic feast . By that I mean it shares residual similarities with the Christian celebration but is used with the opposite intent. As mentioned above, Christ gives blood to give life, whereas vampires take blood to take or corrupt life. This makes them formidable supernatural creatures – walking Black Masses if you will. It also explains that how the modern vampire in its Stokerian roots is repelled by crucifixes, holy water, and most significantly – consecrated hosts. Part of the reason that we have trouble treating vampires in this fashion is that it makes blatant reference to the supernatural. Even more aggravating, it uses specifically Catholic-Orthodox imagery and symbols to defeat the vampire, making it not only a tale of good versus evil but of Church versus evil. Though none of the characters in Dracula claim any communion with Rome or the Eastern churches, they all use sacraments and sacramentals as weapons because well, they work. (No, garlic is not even a natural sacrament but you get the idea)

In short, the wider culture’s flirtation with vampirism seems to betrays its tendency to gravitate towards that which the vampire represents: selfishness, unbridled eroticism, and rejection of Christ and the Church. That being said, these are not faults we can totally project upon the culture. Reflecting on my own experience, I can think of plenty of times where I fell into pride, lust, or blasphemy. In that way, the vampire’s allure is something every one of us must struggle with. For example, the tempting realm of pornography, from a Christian perspective, is perfectly vampiric in that it promises pleasure but drains your spiritual life. Cut-throat ambition in business, politics or even the arts is vampiric as you climb a ladder to recognition and success by stepping on other people. We all have ways of falling under the figurative vampire’s spell.

From a cultural standpoint, my intention here isn’t to say that Hotel Transylvania is the devil or The Munsters represents the breakdown of American morals. I’ll leave that to those who think Harry Potter is the anti-Christ. My point is merely this: sometimes it is best for monsters to be monsters. It gives us something to set up as a mirror to our own dark desires and sins which ultimately leave us empty. The diabolical, like the Divine, must have it’s own iconography – so that we can recognize and destroy it when we meet it in the world and in our own souls. Vampires are myths – and like all myths, they reveal essential truths about human nature. We must be careful not to alter that source of revelation.

 

My Encounter with The Spectre

The Spectre was one of the characters I had the joy of discovering on my own. I had been perusing around an antique mall in western Maine – looking to feed my newly rekindled love of comic books. To my great delight, I found a wall full of some great old titles – Avengers, Superman, and Spiderman. It being an antique mall, some of the books were placed a little higher than my poor college student pockets might allow. My wallet and I shared a mutual groan. I had quickly been spoiled by a few select thrift stores who carried comics and now I realized that my hobby might cost me. After all, my love of superheroes had previously been contained to borrowed books and animation, it was only now that I was really setting out to collect.

Then my eyes fell upon a somewhat less expensive title – the Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake. I think it was the cover art that caught my eye – the way the character was presented in different art styles and the cosmic, horrific style that they evoked. There were a few sequential titles from that run, and I ended up leaving the mall with all of them. Originally I had considered them a merely economic choice but in reality I had struck gold.

The Spectre is a lesser known character from DC comics – an avenging angel which shares a body with crime detective Jim Corrigan. With glaring white eyes and a billowing green cloak, the Spectre is more horrifying to evildoers than Batman and more mystically powerful than Superman. Nonetheless, he remains a rather elusive character. Part of this no doubt is due to his angelic nature – he operates primarily behind the scenes against supernatural threats rather than your run-of-the-mill (for the DC universe anyway) alien invasion or metahuman attack. Besides that, he is associated more with the less well known Justice Society, a sort of generational precursor to the Justice League which contains heroes like Hourman, Hawkman, the original Flash and Green Lanterns, and Wildcat. Though the second Green Lantern Hal Jordan would eventually take upon himself the role of Spectre, Jim Corrigan remains the original and the most iconic.

After reading the comics which I had gotten from the antique mall, I found myself searching the internet trying to complete the first story arc of which I had fragments. Again, this had been a first for me. I had been picking up a single title here and there, but this was the first time I had a complete run of a single title. Something had bewitched me in the story that Ostrander and Mandrake were painting – I was just then getting into horror and the terrifying images of evil in the comic made me see exactly the kind of feeling that the medium can create. Repulsion, fear, unease – everything you get from the best of horror in the film medium. I wouldn’t say that the comic was trying to be cinematic – in fact it still felt very “comic book” in the way it told the story. However, it did show me how powerful that mixture of words and images can be.

Another thing that enthralled me – though perhaps only subliminally – was the world in which the Spectre operated in. It was clearly a Judeo-Christian world – with a biblical background and reference to angels, demons, priesthood, God, and Christ crucified. Hell, the Spectre even fought St. Michael in one book – (who promptly kicked his ass back to earth). It also raised profound moral, religious, and philosophical questions such as the problem of evil, dealing with despair, and struggling with the will of God. As one reader wrote in one Spectre comic’s letter column: “More so than any other comic today, I think the Spectre is the morality comic, the Big Questions comic.” That was the sense I got out of reading that first run from Ostrander and Mandrake. As a reader, I was thrilled by being treated as a semi-intelligent person who could handle big questions and mature storylines. That, after all, is the pinnacle of what the comics medium can accomplish and what it should strive towards. To often the industry suffers from inflation, cranking out stories of little consequence or merely following the latest trends. Sometimes it takes a dig into the past to come out with something of substance that can inspire and enthrall a little soul like mine. Ostrander and Mandrake’s The Spectre not only helped me come back into comic books, but probably subtly led me back into the Faith. Even having been away from God, I realized that the strengths of this book touched on all the things which had made me a committed Catholic – an awareness of the supernatural, the presence of evil, and sound philosophy.

A Brief Apologia for Superman

Like many people, I didn’t used to like Superman. Constantly comparing him to Batman, I found him to be overpowered, too brightly colored, too much of a Boy Scout, too “capes and tights”. In short, he was too much of a superhero for me. I believe many people have similar feelings. After all, our recent philosophical trends bid us more towards rationalism, to materialism, to “realism”. In particular, movie adaptations tend to “flatten out” the more particular features of superhero tradition. Costumes, code names, powers, and themed villains are all laughed at or explained away. A rather absurd example would be dropping the trunks off the DC heroes in accordance with the New 52. In addition to our dislike of these visuals, we detest anything that seems like moral purity thanks to our relativistic attitude. Superman is the opposite of all that. He’s fantastical and mythic, he’s truth, justice and the American way. We moderns, especially we millenials, scoff at such ideals.

However, I came to realize that’s the whole point of Superman. After all, he is the original. His debut in Action Comics was the single thing that combined all the right stuff at the right time to make the superhero an enduring icon in American culture. Neil Gaiman describes it thus:

“It all kicks off with Superman! I find that sort of awesome. It was honestly as if Siegel and Shuster had happened onto some hitherto undiscovered elements. It was pure, this thing was pure teenage wish fulfillment… wrapped up in a weird kind of shape that kids related to in one way and adults related to in another… this wonderful sort of strange recipe that’s a jigger of myth, a dash of costume, a dash of magic…”

And so the superhero was born. It all starts with Supes. Now, the character has certainly evolved since this point. Like all characters – particularly the giants of DC – he has many different interpretations and incarnations. Obviously the Golden Age Superman who could sneeze galaxies out of existence deserves a little satire. (No, really. That was a thing.) Not too mention the old Christopher Reeves flick where he reverses Lois Lane’s death by just flying around the earth really fast. (Because apparently that is how time works. It doesn’t get more ridiculously  OP than that). Moreover, one of the more famous negative portrayals of Superman comes from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns where he is merely the pawn of an nationalist Reagen-esque government. However, I don’t think these are the heart of the character. They can’t be, if you realize the place that Superman has in the comic book universe. Superman is meant to be a symbol of the impossible, into simply the absurd. He fights for the American way, but he’s also alien in origin and has gone underground while being hunted by the government.

The point is this, if you don’t like Superman, it becomes a lot harder to get into the “supermen” that followed in his wake. The fact that he is overpowered simply means he is the archetype for the power which all superheroes struggle to use for good. Like it or not, without the Son of Krypton, it is unlikely there would be any superheroes at all – DC or Marvel. Pulling Superman out from the whole fabric of comic book mythos topples the whole pyramid. He is very much like Atlas, holding up the multiverse in his mighty hands. He is the rock upon which the church of heroes is built and the gates of cynicism will not prevail against him.

 

Both Human and Divine

Secret identities are a common theme among superheroes. It basically involves the hero donning both a mask and the guise of a “normal person” to help cover their tracks and protect the ones they care about. Much drama unfolds from this dual lifestyle, as the heroes struggle to balance their “normal lives” with beating up bloodthirsty criminals or saving the planet from alien invasion. After all, it’s easy to forget your mom’s birthday when you’ve spent the afternoon facing down Galactus and sometimes saving people from a burning building takes precedence over your kid’s soccer game. Keeping a secret identity also invites controversy, as your villains and government organizations are very interested in the man (or woman) behind the mask for their own interests. This is essentially the theme of Marvel’s Civil War storyline, where superheroes are being forced to unmask by the government. One of the most dramatic scene in that arc is where Spiderman – who has one of the most famous secret identities – reveals himself as Peter Parker on live television.

That being said, the most famous example of this theme peculiar to superhero comics is none other than Superman – the original superhero. We’ve all heard the gags about Clark Kent being a stupid disguise. After all, he’s just Kal El in glasses. Why doesn’t anyone recognize him? 

In the Superman: Birthright storyline, Superman trains intensely as an actor to create Clark Kent as a character who no one would expect to be Superman. Christopher Reeves does a great job of portraying this dual character in the original Superman flicks (campy as they are). An even more poignant representation of Superman’s skills as an actor would be from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman. The artist of the comic Frank Quietly brilliantly shows how when Superman “becomes” Clark Kent he changes everything. His posture, his speech, his mannerisms, and of course his bumbling and oafish demeanor all make it such a convincing disguise that when Clark really does reveal himself as Superman to Lois Lane she simply doesn’t believe him. (For more on Superman’s disguise and why it works, I’d suggest the Comic Misconceptions YouTube video on said topic.)

All well and good, but why do I bring this up? It’s not merely to discuss Superman apologetics (I’ll save that for a later post). This notion of a secret identity and a dual nature in our heroes deeply appeals to us. We like the veil of secrecy that allows for the hero in disguise – the idea that these powerful and godlike beings dwell among us as everyday people that you could bump into on the street. It’s not unlike the picture of Christ we have in the Gospels. One of the most pressing doctrines that the Early Church had to iron out was the balancing of Christ’s humanity and divinity. The whole Arian controversy revolved around this, until St. Athanasius proclaimed his creed and solidified the tradition that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man.

This doctrine makes the Gospels seem almost like a story with a secret identity. After all, here we have mild-mannered Jesus of hickville Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary and you’re telling me that he’s really Yahweh the Eternal God of the Universe? Get real. There is even scenes where Jesus, after performing grand and life-saving miracles, urges the people not to say anything. He operates for so long in this sort of covert fashion, for fear of the authorities and attracting too much attention to himself. Now we know this dual persona doesn’t keep up for long once his public ministry gets into full swing – his mission is to be accepted by the people as the Son of God. That being said, he hardly ever comes right out and says that he is indeed divine. He is nearly always subtle in asserting his divinity, though still infuriating to his adversaries.

The analogy, of course, can only be stretched so far. I’m not claiming that Christ’s divinity makes him something like a powerful alien from outer space. That would be Arianism. However, I do think that Christ fulfills something of this dual nature present in many of our heroes from mythology both old and new – from demigods like Hercules to resident aliens like Kal El. He’s not just another hybrid from Olympus or Krypton, but that doesn’t mean that our myths don’t touch on the drama, grandeur, and mystery that is the Incarnation of the Son of God.

Batman’s Catholicity

 

There’s an interesting debate floating around the internet for people like me who have little better to talk about. Is Batman a Catholic or an atheist? It’s an interesting topic and one that reminds me of a quote from Bl. Cardinal Newman: “There are but two roads: the road to Rome and the road to atheism.” Not only do I personally find this true, but I think it could be the case of Batman as well. Speculation places Bruce Wayne’s father as an Episcopalian and his mother Catholic – a faith which he would inherit and was most likely raised in. The question is really whether he stuck it out or “lapsed” giving into a sort of atheistic nihilism (or just atheism) that is present in some incarnations of the character. Now, I have little interest in taking up that debate here. Batman, like many comic book characters, is flexible and open to many different interpretations. That’s why there is a multiverse and elseworlds and all that jazz. I don’t much feel like pouring over the hundreds of different writers’ versions of Batman to figure out whether he would still recite the Apostle’s Creed.

However, what is in interest to me is what I would describe as the “catholicity” of Batman’s character – no matter what Bruce Wayne’s personal beliefs are. Even if he were an atheist, there are certain aspects of his character which seem to connect to aspects of the Catholic tradition. This can be seen as merely having literary, rather than theological significance but I would venture to say that Batman, to use an expression of the philosopher Peter Kreeft, simply “smells Catholic.” Let me explain what I mean.

We can start with some of his more famous epithets. Along with being the World’s Greatest Detective, Batman is also known as the Dark Knight (made famous by the Nolan films) and the Caped Crusader. Both conjure up overtly medieval and Catholic images: a “knight” and a “crusader”. This shows us the martial and moral sides of Batman: he is a knight who fights for justice in his crusade against crime. In The Dark Knight Returns, Superman grudgingly says of Bruce, “Nothing matters to you – except your holy war.” Like many of the knights of old, Batman also has a distinctly monastic vibe to him. We can think of the rigorous training and discipline which he undergoes to remain in the peak of physical and mental condition. His training in the East a la Batman Begins is clearly monastic (though the League of Shadows are no Benedictans for sure). In the earlier mentioned Dark Knight Returns book, he describes the first time he saw the Batcave as “huge, empty, silent as a church…” The use of the cave reminds one of the saints that lived as cave dwellers, such as the fiery Church Father St. Jerome.

 

Batman wears black for the same reason a priest does – to symbolize death. The death of his parents, the death of his partners, and the self-death which he must undertake each day to fulfill his role as the Dark Knight of Gotham. As such, he also acts a sort of exorcist. One of the most notable things about Batman is his ability to scare the daylights out of criminals. We can see Jesus displaying this “Batman effect” in the Gospels – the devils scream at the sight of him and beg not to be tortured. This calm, cool hand of the exorcist in the face of evil is one of the defining qualities of a character like Batman who has to face the darkest and most evil grime that the underbelly of Gotham can throw at him. Him facing down the evil of the Joker or Victor Zsasz has all the qualities of the battle between good and evil present in the scriptures. In fact, this symbolism is frankly pointed to in the conclusion of Rocksteady’s Arkham Origins, game where Batman confronts the Joker in a chapel with a stain glass window of St. Michael the Archangel fighting the devil. Batman’s regular confrontation with the sinister smacks of spiritual warfare, and I think that’s why such images are used to help understand his character.

It’s fair to say, however, that these images can only be taken so far. I think if Batman was advocated as an ultra-Catholic character, or even as “practicing” as the likes of Daredevil or Nightcrawler, his character wouldn’t quite be the same. His catholicity is more subtle. In fact, an attempt to make an “very Catholic” or triumphalist Batman would merely come out looking like Azrael, a sometimes villain-sometimes ally of the Dark Knight and a member of the fictional Order of St. Dumas – another league of assassins and religious zealots. In some ways one wonders if a character like Azrael was created to show what Batman isn’t. If the Catholic and medieval symbolism are taken too far he becomes a different character.

Nonetheless, it can’t be denied that the images discussed help reinforce Batman’s essential-but-underlying Catholic characteristics. We could also discuss his “Catholic guilt” – which is apparently part of the reason why he is so driven to fight against the forces of evil. In any event, even if Batman is portrayed in some cases as a atheist or a rationalist, I think the Catholic aspects of the character are equally strong. Lapsed or otherwise, Batman’s upbringing in the Faith sticks with the character in a memorable way.

 

World’s Finest – A Tale of Two Cities

It goes without saying that Superman and Batman are DC’s (and perhaps all of comics) most famous, popular and iconic heroes. And if it doesn’t go without saying, well, they are. Given the grandness of their individual characters, I’ll be sure to look at different into different aspects of their respective mythos in different posts. Here though, I want to talk about their specific relationship and how these titans of the comic book world interact.

In many ways, they represent the polar opposites of everything a superhero can be. Superman is godlike in his powers, soaring through the sky and lifting trains overhead and whatnot. In contrast, Batman is a mere human – relying on his intelligence, experience, and physical and mental discipline to fight evil and protect the world. Given how early the two of them appeared on the American comics scene (Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938 while the Caped Crusader would first appear the year after in 1939) it follows that all the superheroes who would come after them would fall somewhere between them on the level of power they would have.

Their polarization doesn’t come just from how powerful they are, however. Even from their origins they seem to inhabit different worlds. Though both a have a very tragic past, the Wayne’s a rich-beyond-belief city-dwellers while Superman’s adopted family are simple farmers from Kansas.  Superman is DC’s most morally pure character, while Batman’s motivations and persona (though in many ways admirable) have always been more ambiguous. As Bruce admits in the Batman: Hush storyline: “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person… and deep down, I’m not.” Now, one can argue this is just Batman being humble and reflective, but it is definitely a theme picked up by many comic writers when describing the relationship of the two characters. Take Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns  book, where Batman sets his mind to beating Superman merely because he can. (Not a canon story mind you, but much deserving a review here)

Given these stark contrasts, it seems odd that these two should often be paired together in adventures – even be friends. As the “World’s Finest” superheroes, they often pair up to for similar causes outside the Justice League. I remember first seeing the two of them interact in the old animated Batman/Superman: The Movie where they teamed up to take down Lex Luthor and the Joker. For a great, more mature animated film that showcases their bromance, I would suggest Batman/Superman: Public Enemies. (I would definitely chose that over Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. More on that later perhaps.)

In any event, I think there is essential reason that these two are often paired together. There is something essential in the dichotomy they represent. It’s not just that they are foils to each other, though that is a big part of it too. I think they represent the two sides essential to a universal philosophy or religion. Take their respective cities for example. Metropolis and Gotham. Metropolis is bright, sunny, and booming with activity and technology. In Gotham, however, the sun never shines. It is often pictures as a dark and rainy place run by criminals and corrupt cops where people are scared to walk at night.

These two cities’ stark differences are even more striking than the things that make their resident heroes go about things in the different way. Metropolis in many ways represents human achievement and progress, while Gotham is a cesspool of human depravity. Metropolis is smiling, Gotham is suffering. To put into terms of the liturgical year, Metropolis is an Easter city, Gotham is a Lenten one.

And that’s just it. Both cities represent things essential to the Christian Faith. We, as Catholics, are called to inhabit both Metropolis and Gotham. This Scriptures both to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4) and to “be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow.” (James 4:9) Both celebration and suffering are at the heart of our human lives – and I believe Batman and Superman tap into that desire. In the words of Benedict XVI, “In the Church of God, everyday is both Good Friday and Easter Sunday.” This is the beauty of world’s finest: the dark and the light come together, the human and the divine mingle and cooperate.