Kate Kane had specific hanukkah gelt made with the Batwoman symbol and Star of David
Batman Annual #1 – “Stag” (2017) written by Steve Orlando art by Riley Rossmo & Ivan Plascencia
I LOVE KATE SO MUCH OKAY OH MY GOSH 😀
SHE IS A GIFT ❤
the only thing that would make this better would be if they actually acknowledged that Bruce is Jewish.
He is? News to me.
I believe that he’s Jewish on his mother’s side? I’m not sure.
Yes. A flashback in Batwoman vol.02:no.25 (January 2014) confirmed the familial relationship between Kate Kane and Bruce Wayne (son of Martha Wayne, born Martha Kane) as being cousins. (Kate’s father Jacob & Bruce’s mother Martha were siblings.) Since the Kanes which Kate belongs to have been established as Jewish, and since Jewishness is matrilineal, this means Bruce Wayne is Jewish.
According to this 2005-07 article, most depictions of Batman/Bruce imply he was probably raised Catholic or Episcopalian. Even if this is the case, though, my understanding is that he’d still be considered Jewish.
It’s also established that things are… awkward, between the Kanes and the Waynes. At least back during the wonky timeline established in 2010′s The Return of Bruce Wayne (specifically, issue #5), the Kanes were convinced of the absolute worst about Thomas Wayne. The last decade or so has seen a lot of stories where accusations of terrible crimes and corruption are made against the late Waynes—as well as poor Alfred, having been their employee and close companion—and it’s often ambiguous whether or not there’s any truth to them. Especially since we’re talking about multiple writers with radically different plans for Bruce. In any case, the issue i mentioned above saw a time-lost amnesiac Bruce investigating his own parents’ murder. While he’s unknowingly speaking to his grandparents, we see this:
The cloud of insects harassing zayde Roddy and bubbe Betsy are emphatically identified as wasps, but this is Grant Morrison writing, and the cocky schmuck isn’t the type to resist a “WASPs” pun.
Fast-forwarding to the issue Doc mentions, we see that Bruce is still somewhat connected to his mother’s side of the family… but it’s only via a funeral that he seems to meet up with them.
If anything, the living Kanes seem to know Alfred better than Bruce, and their interactions with him seem fond and familiar.
Whereas we get this painfully formal and stilted “Cousin Bette” from Bruce. It seems like depressing formal functions like funerals are the only places Bruce sees any of his family.
The Kanes are distant from Bruce, and even in their more tender interactions with him, he’s linked to tragedy. A reminder of people who were lost. You’d think having had living relatives to visit with would have meant less time alone for Bruce after his parents died, but it’s made clear in that time-travel story that, even in tragedy, they aren’t comfortable having him around.
All in all, it seems a lot like Bruce is kept out of his Jewish heritage because that side of the family saw his father as something of a shegetz. Being Martha’s son means he’s in the tribe, but Thomas being his dad—and it’s often emphasized that Bruce looks so much like Thomas—means that he’s ostracized. There’s all kinds of suppositions i could make about the hows and whys, the exotified coding of Bruce as foreign in spite of his whiteness, even amidst the goyish-passing Kanes, the insularity and paranoia of Gothamites. And Bruce’s convictions about what he needs to be, what Gotham needs… well, that doesn’t help bring him in, does it?
All that said, i could write a whole huge tangent on the presentation of the Kanes as assimilated. Don’t let me ever write a real Batman story, because it’ll just be about Ashkenazic-American and Anglo-Sephardic heritage and the tensions between different Jewish ethnicities and early Tri-State Area culture clashes. Probably some stupid nods to the connection between “Gotham” as a mythical city of fools, and the Wise Men of Chelm.
I wonder if a villain has ever tried to kidnap Selina. Her regular person-persona is pretty well known as a Gotham socialite. The only reason no one’s done it is because most rouges know that Selina=Catwoman and that she’s literally one of the greatest escape artists of their time. But imagine some new villain trying to make a name for himself by doing the standard, damsel in distress, kidnapping and ransom sitch.
I feel like Selina would be so tickled by the idea of getting kidnaped that she’s play into it 110% percent. Initially Bruce isn’t going to go save her because she can save herself, but then someone leaks that high-profile socialite Selina Kyle has been kidnaped and is just so terrified won’t the big bad bat come to her rescue?
So Bruce shows up, clearly peeved, and Selina is swooning in the background, lying on the floor, making a huge scene.
“Oh woe is me!”
“Selina-”
“I’m so frightened-”
“Selina please-”
“I have never been in so much danger! Help me!”
“Selina for fuck’s sake.”
Sometimes she forgets that her hands are supposed to be tied behind her back, and has to slip back into her bonds. Meanwhile the villain is totally unawares that she could easily kick his ass and is honestly? a little pissed that Batman isn’t more into this whole thing? Like he put so much work into kidnaping the perfect damsel in distress and Batman just seems so done with it.
When Batman finally rescues Selina, she’s so into playing up the grateful victim.
“Oh my hero … is there any way I can repay you?” She’s batting her eyelashes, trailing her fingers up his chest, the whole nine yards. Bruce just stares back.
“Yeah, you can returns those diamonds you stole last Tuesday. I know it was you.”
All of a sudden the zipties on her arms are broken. Bruce tries to make a snide comment about what bullshit this whole endeavor was, but nope. She’s already out the window.
The only thing that could make this better is if it comes after they’re married.
Exactly. The film couldn’t have been more explicit about the fact that we’re not supposed to see him as being in the right and people still try to paint it as a glorification of his actions and accuse the film of endorsing toxic masculinity which is just olympic-level hypocrisy after all the shit They’ve given Clark for not being a perpetually smiling goon and daring to have complicated emotions.
it’s just bizarre to me that what draws me to bruce wayne as a character is how broken he is psychologically, how easy it is for him to want to ignore his own code, how much time he spends in ISSUE after ISSUE dreaming of killing criminals, of killing himself, of the deaths he has caused by accident and trying to bury them so far back he never has to deal with them.
and then we got that version of bruce wayne on screen, and people said it wasn’t really batman, batman would never act like that. it’s all i’ve EVER read batman as, and people who have never picked up a comic want to take away what makes him intensely precious to me? they don’t want to see him struggle with weighty moral problems and his own mental labyrinth? they don’t want that?
that’s why bvs criticism really, really bugs me, like on a deep level. it’s really crazy that people didn’t want to see ONE version of batman that’s as broken on the outside as how he always feels, when there are a million other versions of batman that are calmer, saner, more confident. like why are you so afraid of letting bruce wayne be afraid?
It’s the same reason they can’t stand a Superman that has doubts and existential dilemmas. They can’t stand the idea that these characters, who are ideals to them of what we can be, the perfect, strong, powerful hero, they can’t stand that they are still human, with human struggles and slave to their emotions.
You can’t have a power fantasy with emotional weaknesses, because we’re trained to think that the perfect person is a flawless person. But that’s not true. To be a perfect human is to be flawed. If you’re not flawed you’re essentially a god, and that separates you from humanity.
Arguably what makes Superman perfect is that he has all of the emotional strain that we do and still manages to save the world. He has godlike powers, but he isn’t a god, he doesn’t want to be a god either, he just wants to help people.
And what makes Batman such a compelling character is that he is so broken, and could be the most powerful villain ever, but he is still compelled to do good. Even when he loses his way, it’s still for the greater good, in his mind. And of course, that’s why he really was the main villain of BvS. Because villains always think what they’re doing is right, and can always justify their wrongs. What the audience struggled with is reconciling the ideas that a hero can be wrong. And he was wrong. People complaining that his actions aren’t true to the character are missing what his character is. Because this was Batman finally going off the edge that he’s balanced so precariously on. The edge that he looks down from and knows how easy and comforting the fall could be. But when he hits the ground, he realises that it’s ugly, painful and messy down there. So he has a choice, stay down there, a broken, ugly creature, or climb back up and get a clear perspective again.
Being shown this in a superhero movie is unprecedented. And to be shown it with arguably the most well known and well loved characters in superhero history is unfathomably brave and bold.
And people struggled to understand that if they had a problem with the way the character was behaving, it’s because they were supposed to.
But it damaged their perfect ideal, it punctured the puffed out chest of their power fantasy. There was no understanding that in saying that these characters could fail and still overcome, that they were even more powerful than ever shown. And to be shown them overcoming such obstacles is in fact an inspiration to people with personal struggles. They don’t want to accept that, because to put an element of effort into the power fantasy takes away their “fun”, but it adds so much more meaning. They want perfection and they want zero effort to achieve it. They don’t want human personalities and enotions, because those are seen as weak and distracting. They want cheat codes and convenience, and watching Batman struggle with the very mental illness that makes him the hero he is wasn’t convenient for them. It was difficult, it was real, it was human… it was perfect.
to be totally honest? in my opinion, bruce’s character was mostly mishandled throughout the 2000s, save for the animated series. for a while, batman’s characterization was just constantly and constantly bland, boring, assholish – it was a trend that people had decided that batman needed to be Batgod, Capable Of All. that’s also when the “prep time” meme was most popular, and the TDK trilogy was coming out with its mr. gritty realism batman, and the collective decision was that batman had become too badass for emotions. the empathy and compassion that had been central to his character for such a long time was scrapped. his dedication to gotham was recolored as a personal, narcissistic obsession, rather than any real desire to help people.
one of my favorite batman stories, and in my opinion one of the greatest batman stories, is in ‘tec #500, and it’s called to kill a legend. in it, phantom stranger shows up and gives bruce the chance to save his parents in another universe, and bruce, of course, takes it. but the little bruce wayne of that universe doesn’t grow up to be a bored playboy – he becomes batman anyway. that, to me, is the nexus of batman; bruce recognizing that this world needs heroes, and that if there isn’t any – and, in that world, there aren’t even literary heroes, so people from that earth fundamentally can’t fathom what a hero is – you have to make them. batman is a dark hero, but he’s not an anti-hero; his vengeance isn’t who gets punched, it’s the people he saves, and the families they go home to. that’s why i argue that any bruce wayne characterization worth its salt would become batman irregardless of the loss of his parents. maybe it shouldn’t be that the death of the waynes is the cornerstone of any stable timeline, and maybe it should be that the birth of batman is.
i don’t recognize that batman throughout the 2000s – i see a character that’s been stripped entirely of this interesting cross-section between idealism and darkness, and demoted to Loner Asshole Who Punches People To Satisfy His Rage Issues.
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