MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In this paper, I propose a diagnosis of Detective Comics’ Batman’s superpowers as being symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In her New York Times article “Childhood Heroes: Once Self-Made, Now to the Manner Born,” journalist Rachel Kadish explains, “I’ve stared blithely at these images (of superheroes) all my life. Yet only recently did it occur to me that this imposing assembly is also a gallery of PTSD” (para 3). Although superheroes such as the Hulk and Spiderman have sparked significant scholarship on the obvious display of their physical disabilities, Batman’s mental disability has traditionally been left in the shadows of the conversation, which perhaps reflects the nascence of scholarship on PTSD as a disability. When one expands the definition of “disability” to include not only physical disabilities, but mental as well, it becomes clear that Batman represents a figure of disability. However, because of Batman’s utilization of his trauma as motivation to save Gotham, I argue for a new diagnosis for his mental disability: Post Traumatic Strength Disorder. I claim that what readers love in this dark, brooding, and tormented figure, which has ensured his spot as the timeless superhero, is the accentuation of his human nature, his grappling with pain from experienced trauma and his psychological efforts to cope. Readers can hardly help but continue to be fascinated by the superhero who defines himself, not by what is underneath, but by what he does as Gotham’s Dark Knight.