Similarities Between the Bat and the Captain
By William Hillman
July 24, 2013 - 00:38
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To begin with both characters have lost a teenage sidekick. Batman lost the Robin known as Jason Todd to the Joker while Captain America lost his partner; Bucky Barnes, when the young tried to stop a missile aimed at Washington D.C. These two were some of the characters people thought of when thinking about long dead members of the DC or Marvel Comics staples. Decades later they were both resurrected in multi part stories in 2005. Jason Todd would don the mantle of the Red Hood in the Under the Hood storyline while Bucky became the Winter Soldier in the story of the same name. They would become anti-heroes who had no problem using lethal force against their enemies, symbols of innocence lost in the modern era. Eventually they would each be redeemed in a fashion and then go off into their own ongoing series. Jason Todd took a pivotal role in Red Hood and the Outlaws in November of 2012 and Bucky would be the lead in Winter Soldier in April 2012.
Both Batman and Captain America were said to be killed. Batman in Final Crisis # 6 and Captain American in issue # 25 of the fifth volume of his series which was published two years earlier. They were actually found to be alive and were each brought back in a miniseries event. Batman in Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and Captain America in Captain America: Reborn. It was in the Reborn series that Sin; the daughter of the Red Skull; the archenemy of Captain America, suffered an explosion to her face scarring her. A year later, the Joker would have his face cut off in Detective Comics # 1 of the DC comics’ new 52 reboot leaving another similar event in the storylines; the facial scaring of villains.
While they were presumed dead former sidekicks assumed both of their mantles. Dick Grayson aka Nightwing donned the mask of Batman at the end of the miniseries Battle for the Cowl while Bucky took on the moniker of Captain America the next year in Captain America # 34. It was discovered that both of the heroes were actually alive and somehow trapped in time. Batman was traveling through human history while Captain America’s journey was confided to his own life.
In 2010 they both became heads of international crime fighting organizations. In Batman and Robin # 16 Bruce Wayne announced that he had been secretly funding Batman and that he was forming a new global alliance of crime fighters called Batman Incorporated. In issue # 4 of the Siege miniseries after Norman Osborn is removed as head of the spy agency H.A.M.M.E.R and it had been turned back to S.H.I.E.L.D the American president put Captain America in charge of the organization. Soon new series were created to deal with both of these events. Batman Incorporated would be the focus of the series with the same name and Cap would temporary step out of his costume identity to fight evil covertly as “America’s Top Cop” in Steve Rogers: Super Soldier. These events happened five months apart with Captain America taking the lead.
Whether this is some kind of “anything you can do I can do better” contest or somehow some sort of coincidence hasn’t been answered by Marvel or DC Comics but it’s still interesting to watch. These characters are both very human in universes filled with gods though how they express that humanity differs. Batman is grimmer in his outlook on humanity, believing that people need to be frightened in to following the law. Captain America made himself a symbol of American society in order to inspire others to take part of it as responsible citizens. They are examples of two viewpoints on how people can look at the world. Watching these outlooks and seeing how they influence choices the characters make in similar situations is interesting because these different choices can lead to different outcomes. It’s like reworking these storylines again and again seeing all the different ways they can play out. Even if these storylines are deliberately copying each other it doesn’t matter as long as they continue to be fun to read. It’s not a matter of which is better but a look at all the different ways the heroes can save the day and have an adventure while doing it.