A lovely little tale of Batman's mentoring of Superman, a pre-Crisis tale in which young Clark and Bruce know each other, and so Bruce has no qualms, no hesitation in removing his cowl and revealing himself to a time-displaced Superboy.
I miss this version of Batman, prior to the Millerian reinvention, a man who, though grim, though darker than his fellows, still betrays some optimism, some trust, who is not the paranoid figure that Batman becomes in the decades following this story.
It's a weird morning, this morning. I went downstairs to pick out a comic, and I knew I needed to read something with Superman in it. There's this wrestling I do when I'm feeling betrayed by the world, when I'm shocked by the events that transpire, by the triumph of hatred. I'm a queer man, yes, but I'm also a middle-aged white man, and that puts me, unfairly, in a privileged position. And whenever I rail about unfairness in the world, it comes from that position of privilege. I have to be aware of that whenever I express the kind of shock and disgust I feel this morning, looking south. That there are people for whom this kind of shock and disgust is a fact of daily life. That there are people who live in fear of their lives every day in a way that I will likely never understand. So I wrestle with my place in the conversation. The best I can do is to be not just an ally, but a comrade. To echo the words of Superman in All-Star, that you are stronger than you think, all of you. And, together, I still firmly believe that we can make the world better for everyone.
Today, more than usual, onward. Ever onward.
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