Holy Hookup, Batman

For many moviegoers, interest in the Caped Crusader lasted only until the up at the end of this year’s smashing hit, The Dark Knight. But for a swelling number of hard-core fans and aspiring authors, The yet more fodder for their endless, sexed-up obsession.
-By Shari Goldhagen – Illustration by Coulas & Lourdes

Gather a gaggle of girls, add a few martinis, shake, and it’s only a matter of time before talk turns to
only one thing: fantasy fucklists. Yes, that time-honored tradition of cataloging the famous men who’d surely be in our beds if it weren’t for pesky things like Hollywood starlets and restraining orders. My friends are no different; we recently didn’t make it past the second round of drinks before the lists were brandished.

Someone thought Shia LaBeouf was hot but too young (and maybe gay?), Harrison Ford hot but too old. As for me, I let my mind wander, and here is where it unequivocally settled: Batman. There’d been nods of agreement with prime choices like Brad Pitt and Hugh Grant, but my pick was met with blank stares and slackened jaws.

“Yeah, Christian Bale is really hot,” one friend offered weakly. “Not Christian Bale,” I said, “and definitely not Michael Keaton or even George Clooney, but Batman.” More dead silence; clearly I was the only one in the room with a subscription to Detective Comics.

“Mmm, Clooney,” another friend finally cooed. It’s hard to
argue with Clooney.

And yet I suspected I’m not the only one who finds the Dark Knight alluring on dark nights. I mean, come on: that rippling washboard stomach/suit; that lip-framing mask; those religion revealing tights. A make-out session in the Batmobile could undo a lot of emotional damage inflicted by the gearshift of my high school boyfriend’s Nissan Sentra. And The Dark Knight, which Warner Bros. is planning to rerelease next month in a not-sosubtle reminder to Oscar voters, has earned almost a billion bucks around the world. I simply couldn’t be alone in seeing the serious sex appeal of a well-hung utility belt.

A quick spin around ye olde Internet proved that I am far from alone. There I soon found thousands of stories about the DC Comics’ Kevlar-encased icon. Apparently I am not the only one wondering if there’s a bat insignia on Bruce’s boxers.

The idea of people telling stories about characters they did not invent isn’t a new one. A case could easily be made that it goes all the way back to average citizens spinning yarns around the fire about some really cool warrior named Odysseus or those crazy gods on Mount Olympus.

Modern fan fiction, however, probably has its roots less in Greek mythology and more in the Star Trek fanzines of the late sixties and seventies—it seems there was intense interest in what really went on in the captain’s quarters during that five-year mission. The increased accessibility of the World Wide Web in the mid-nineties burst open the floodgates. It was suddenly possible for writers and readers to find each other and interact with little lag time or cost. With a simple search, an anime buff in, say, Buffalo could be reading and commenting on the InuYasha tale of a Tokyo resident.

Today, FanFiction.net—the largest database for such writing—has more than a million fan-authored pieces based on productions as diverse as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series of teen vampire books and the funky late-seventies TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Pieces range from full-blown action adventures to angst-y existential meltdowns, but more often than not writers gravitate toward the erotic dalliances that are often just subplots in source material. And while Harry Potter seems the undisputed king of fandom (nearly 400,000 stories on FanFiction.net alone), as far as comic heroes go, Gotham’s finest isn’t doing too badly for himself at all.

Though dozens of fanfic writers want Superman and Wonder Woman to create genetically gifted spawn, and there are hundreds of curious configurations of the uncanny X-Men, Bruce Wayne’s softer side garners a great deal of ink. For a crimestopper who doesn’t fly, turn gigantic and green, or spew web from his wrists—that is, without any actual superpowers-plenty of people want nothing more than to curl up with our hero and his enormous…bat ears.

“It makes sense that writers would want to explore Batman’s erotic life,” says Ian Kerner, sex therapist and author of the bestselling book She Comes First. “He’s dark and brooding, and he has the complex emotions of a real person. As much as he’s saving others, he’s really crying out to be saved himself.”

Kerner explains that for many people, vulnerability-the idea that they could be the one to break through the emotional armor—is quite a turn-on.

“And let’s not forget he’s freaking rich,” Kerner adds. “Spider-Man lives with his aunt, and Superman’s in that ice fortress. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, owns prime real estate—and the tight black S&M garb probably holds some appeal as well.”

Pow!

Just like that form-fitting basic black he’s partial to, many online writers seem to think that Batman goes with everything-and everyone. There exist thousands of conventional storylines featuring Batman’s comic leading ladies-Catwoman, Talia, Vicki Vale—as well as enough Bruce/Boy Wonder sex scenes to warrant a Wayne Manor visit by Child Protective Services. Other writers like the idea of DC’s Holy Trinity—our hero, Superman, and Wonder Woman—becoming a Bat-based ménage à trois. But the borderline illegal (and definitely fucked-up) award goes to the dozens of Internet encounters between the 80-year-old Bruce Wayne and his 17-year-old protégé, Terry McGuiness, of the late-nineties television series Batman Beyond. Then there are the crazy crossovers—the Caped Crusader with Marvel Comics’ Ironman (two billionaire playboys; lots of great gadgets), Hugh Laurie’s caustic House doc, or Pirates of the Caribbean’s Captain Jack Sparrow.

“A dark, erotic fanfic where Batman is the submissive in a relationship with Nightwing [Robin all grown-up] can be just as convincing as a light, romantic story where he and Catwoman have vanilla sex by candlelight,” explains fanfic writer Meljean Brook. “Putting Batman in relationships—sexual or otherwise—allows readers to identify with someone who understands Batman, or who is attempting to understand him, and through that character we understand better.”

Brook’s pieces are primarily “ship”-oriented, as in “relationship.” In fanfic-speak, these are tales about a couple that isn’t explicitly together in the source material. Her pairing of choice: Bruce and Diana of Themyscira, aka Wonder Woman. The coupling is hugely popular online at such sites as FanFiction, the Last Arkham, and DC Fanfiction, among others, all of which archive stories and fan art.

“The appeal of their relationship lies in their friction,” Brook says. “They’re both warriors who are exceptionally intelligent, but present them with an external conflict, and they’ll have different opinions on how to face it.”

For its part, DC has flirted with the coupling. Comics writer Joe Kelly let Bats and Wondy kiss, die, come back, and contemplate a relationship during his tenure at the Justice League Elite books. And the animated TV series spin-off had the two dangerously close to dating. The comic-book illustrations of them sparring are hot enough that a reader could believe Batman doesn’t mind losing to the amazon. But even the most hard-core BM/WW shippers admit it seems unlikely that DC would let their iconic moneymakers ride the Batmobile off into the sunset.

Still, it has proved fertile ground for scribes, such as Brook. In her story “Haunted,” a curse is placed on Batman and Diana helps break it. Sex, love, and angst ensue:

One of the most effective ways to safely warm a person suffering from hypothermia was to hold them close, skin to skin. And he could feel far, far too much of her skin. He tried to gently slide her arm from his chest, move out from under, but she woke, looked up at him, and blinked. “What do you think you are doing?” Of course, Bruce thought, she wouldn’t have morning breath. Damn perfect woman. “Leaving.” He tried his best Batgrowl, but was intensely aware that its effectiveness was somewhat limited without the Batsuit. And even more limited than that, considering that he was unclothed except for his underwear.

Brook is also the author of a series of paranormal romances called The Guardian books, and says it took her six months to write her first fanfic, roughly the same amount of time she spent completing her first published novel. Because fanfic writers don’t own the characters (for that you have to bother the creators, in this case DC and the estate of Bob Kane), they can’t profit from their writing due to copyright laws, which begs the simple question: Why bother?

“Fans are as greedy as they are obsessed,” says Brook. “When the comic books and movies don’t ask the same questions we do, or don’t seem willing to explore the same territory, fan-fiction writers are going to do it—not for money, but because they want to see ‘what if.’ ”

An entertainment consultant calling herself Chris Dee says she began writing her Cat Tales series in 2001, after growing disgusted with DC writers Frank Miller and Bronwyn Carlton revamping Catwoman’s (Selina Kyle) origin from “a beautiful, witty, and cultured woman who was Bruce Wayne’s equal, adversary but not quite enemy” to a brutalized lady of the night. Dee’s Catwoman is sexy and smart and steals for sport. Batman corners her on a rooftop, stolen goods in her claws, and asks if she wants to do things the easy way or the hard way. Without blinking a green eye, she purrs, “Why, Batman, just how hard do you want it to get?”

Meow!

In a clever dig at DC, Dee’s Selina creates an off-Broadway show to quiet rumors about her, and, in the spirit of the best romantic comedies, this starts her relationship with Bruce. But as Selina (who knows her Shakespeare in Dee’s world) might say, the course of true love never did run smooth:
Let me be clear about this—I did not intend to ram my knee into his gut when I started returning that kiss. He leaned in, and I may have let out a breath or something that he took as a go-ahead, because all of a sudden our lips were touching and there was this hand on my waist and another stroking my hair, and it was very pleasant for a few moments. But then, just as suddenly, it was way too real. I mean, just when I should’ve been thinking, Wow! Finally, this is Batman, this is the fantasy, I was acutely aware that this wasn’t “Batman” at all. This was the guy inside Batman, and a very real and vulnerable man who could obviously be hurt very badly, and what the hell was he doing getting mixed up with somebody like Catwoman of all people? And that’s when I kicked him in the stomach.

“I expected to vent my spleen for two chapters, get my thoughts out there, and that would be that,” Dee told me.

Seven years later, she’s halfway through her fifth volume of stories, devotees of her series fill message boards with discussions of each new chapter, and they’ve designed fan art and even launched spin-off series based on her alternate take on the DC universe. Though it can take her a year and a half to complete a book she’s not paid to write, Dee has found other rewards. “I got a fan letter from Iraq,” she says. “Seriously—a soldier who couldn’t post on the message boards and had to jump through some hoops to send the e-mail. Then I had one reader who discovered the tales when he was in Afghanistan. Those keep you going.”

J. C. Roberts came to Batman fanfics for similar reasons. Having grown up with comic books, she took issue with recent arcs that had the Caped Crusader doing unceremoniously non-Batman-y things (she found especially irksome the Bruce Wayne Murderer? storyline, where our guy allows a woman protecting him to rot in prison for months).

The 47-year-old Philadelphia teacher and mother of a comicreading teen wrote a story that had been rattling around in her head for more than a decade—while her son was always her first reader, she didn’t show him some of the sexier parts. Her novellength Truth and Justice series pairs a fiftysomething Bruce with Martha Kent—a character of Roberts’s imagination—who is the
adult daughter of Clark Kent and Lois Lane and a superhero in her
own right.

While many fanfic writers shy away from action sequences, Roberts’s trilogy has plenty of full-on fight scenes, and her saga includes subplots for dozens of DC characters. At its heart,
though, it’s still a love story—with complications:
“Your bed’s too small,” Bruce said, squirming to free a stuffed superhero figure that was trapped beneath his shoulder. He picked up the Superman doll. “And your father keeps staring at me.”

“You’ll notice,” she added, as Bruce’s face started to cloud, “That I have two Batmans.”

Picking one of them up in each hand, he mused, “Kinky.”

“The fact that Bruce is sexually involved with Superman’s daughter—while something he thinks initially wrong for honorable reasons—is also a turn-on,” Roberts says. “In the comics, Batman has always been attracted to the forbidden, or the character wouldn’t have become involved with Catwoman or Talia. The idea for Truth and Justice is that Bruce and Martha’s involvement would first create a wedge in the already tense relationship between Batman and Superman, but would eventually unite their legacies.”

A number of writers would like to see Batman and Superman united in, uh, other ways. In the 1950s, Frederic Wertham got the Senate riled up with his notion that Batman and Robin were actually gay partners, and there are still plenty of fanfic writers out there giving credence to his theory with Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson “slash”—a term that refers to fanfics where two male characters engage in sexual acts despite being straight in canon. But the slash pairing of Superman and Batman gives the Boy Wonder a run for his batarangs. In the comics, the two often serve as foils for each other—Supes as the big blue Boy Scout vs. Batman, whose tactics often aren’t that different from those of the criminals he pursues. In 2003, DC launched a monthly Superman/Batman series highlighting the friendship and antagonism between the two and widening the menu to fanfic writers.

The matchup was a natural fit for Lara, a thirtysomething French Canadian IT professional using the pen name ADarkerKnight. A fan of both DC superstuds since childhood, Lara couldn’t decide which one made a better tattoo, so she settled upon the logo from the Superman/Batman comics—an S shield nestled inside a bat emblem. The writing followed. “I had a slashy tattoo already, so I figured I’d dive right in,” she says. “They work incredibly well as partners, and it takes just a tiny little stretch of the imagination to picture them as a couple.”

She’s written several pieces, including the multichapter Kansas, where a pre-Bat Bruce Wayne shacks up with a pre–Man of Tomorrow Clark Kent in Nepal. In a way that seems entirely organic, Clark wants a meaningful relationship, while Bruce is reluctant.

Just days before the much-anticipated sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, hit theaters in mid-July, several new sites sprung up for stories spun off from the flick. Dozens of authors
penned slash tales about Heath Ledger’s Joker and Christian Bale’s angry Bat. One 23-year-old writer, using the nom de plume Cindercupcakes, thought a more convincing scenario involved the film’s love triangle forming a threesome—Batman; Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent; and Dent’s fiancée, Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

“Rachel loves both Bruce and Harvey,” Cindercupcakes says. “Harvey loves Rachel and the idea that Batman represents, and Bruce loves Rachel and the ideals that Harvey encompasses—the ability to heal Gotham without wearing a mask.”

She got the idea during a premiere-day midnight screening of Dark Knight, and posted “No Loneliness (Like Theirs)” before the film finished its box-office-record-breaking first week: Rachel slipped Harvey’s shirt completely off his shoulders and pushed him back down, settling on top of him now that her dress was gone. His hands played along her thighs until she leaned down to kiss him again, and she felt Bruce’s arms go around her waist as she pinned Harvey’s wrists to the incredibly soft mattress. She bit at his shoulder this time, and a low cry escaped him; she felt him stiffen further beneath her. Her own body responded in kind to that noise, warmth shooting through her, and she pushed back against Bruce a little harder, trying to signal to him that she wasn’t going to break anytime soon.

While Cindercupcakes agrees the ménage à Bat seemed an unlikely end to Christopher Nolan’s film, she discovered she wasn’t alone. “The number of people who wrote me and said, ‘This is exactly what I wanted to read after seeing the movie,’ floored me,” she says. “Maybe I managed to hit on something.”

Cindercupcakes is selling herself short—the idea that her Baterotica has moved many readers is beyond a dark shadow of a doubt.