The sixth episode of Bat-Fam, “The Art of Claire”, digs into some of the family dynamics of this take on the Bat Family but while the story is focused on Claire Selton/Volcana and her struggles to fit in, it’s what the episode gets into with Batman that is the real insight. The episode does something that most DC media never does when it comes to the Dark Knight: admit Bruce Wayne’s greatest weakness.
In the episode, Claire is seen struggling to fit in. She’s always getting some sort of infraction at school. no one at home understands her art, and she just feels misunderstood and isolated. When her former villainous partner Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost approaches her under the guise of wanting to show her art, Claire is happy to go along, eager to feel understood and belong. However, Bruce is also struggling as he’s not connecting with Claire as easily as he does Damian and he’s not sure what to do. Things come to a head when it turns out Killer Frost is just trying to get Claire to help her with crime and, in the process of coming to her rescue as Batman, Bruce realize the best way to connect with Claire is by being vulnerable and showing he’s trying to meet her where she is. This in turn leads to a touching moment between the pair where he gets at what might be the biggest admission he could possibly make: “Being Batman is about being perfect.”
Batman explains to Claire that he has to be perfect as Batman so criminals will always fear him and those that he protects know he always has the answers. However, he also admits that he’s starting to learn that to be the Bruce Wayne he wants and needs to be, he’s learning that there’s more to life than simply being perfect all the time. It’s a huge moment of understanding for Bruce and it ultimately helps him be a better father to Claire and seemingly sets him on the path to being a better Batman, too.
While Bat-Fam gives Bruce’s admission about perfection a humorous edge to it — apparently, Bruce’s paintings of clouds are so bad that they’re what disarm the villains — it actually speaks to a larger issue with the character more generally. Batman is always presented as being, or at least needing to be, perfect. It’s almost pathological. Batman is the ultimate control freak, having to be in charge of every possible variable, never allowing himself to make even the slightest mistake, being unflinching in his choices, and even going so far as to be obsessive about what he eats because just the slightest miscalculation in his diet could, in his mind, have disastrous results.
This obsession with perfection may give him some advantages as Batman, but it’s also a weakness. The kind of preoccupation with flawlessness inevitably creates issues in other areas of his life and, most notably, his relationship suffer because of his need for absolute control as an extension of his need for absolute perfection. It’s a heavy burden and it’s one that, while the animated Bat-Fam Batman seems to understand and be working on, other iterations of the character haven’t. At least now that we’re getting a version of Batman who can admit that maybe being perfect as Batman doesn’t have to translate to his life as Bruce Wayne, maybe we’ll start to see this sort of exploration of the character in other presentations as well. After all, a self-aware hero is an interesting hero. And who knows, maybe a Batman with flaws would be unsettling enough to stop villains in their tracks, just like Bruce’s terrible artwork.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
