...in which I discuss pop culture's obsession with badasses

The skinny on Batman:

• richer than America
  
• can kick your ass while eating breakfast
  
• more gadgets (mostly superfluo
  
• detective skills up the wahey
• probably banged zatanna, catwoman, talia al ghul, some stupid socialite here and there
• great car
• ridiculous but fantastic villains
  
• looks awesome crashing through a skylight
• has beaten the shit out of Superman. Sure it was probably with Kryptonite gloves/while Superman was under some magic spell/sleepwalking, but still, he beat the shit out of someone with super speed. Which begs the question why he can't just dodge real quick, then zip into the atmosphere and zap the gloves off with heat vision, but eh...
• Has a penchant for young wards. IT MAKES SENSE IN CONTEXT, DAMMIT.
  

The skinny on James Bond:

• great car and it probably handles turns better
• he has a gun and has/will kill you. he's probably killing you now.
• will probably look like a chump crashing through a skylight
• banged more women (and probably classier ones to boot) than god and every rock band ever, put together
• he can kill. i can't stress this enough. he will put a bullet in your face if you so much as get his drink order wrong. He has no moral code against killing. He has a license to do it. Some of us wait at the DMV for hours just to get a license to drive some shitty hatchback with vomit stains on the seats. A visit to Bond's DMV (Department of Murder and Violence) involves taking a number, getting impatient and banging every single woman while murdering his way towards the lamination machine. He probably looks way better in his ID photo too.
• Also, he has a gun. Holy shit.
• Everything around him explodes.
• He's British. Can't all be winners.

I really don't know who's better. It's amusing how both sides of the Atlantic have their own long-standing celebrations of bad-assery in the form of a condensed paean to male adolescent fantasies, that's for sure. Although Bond starts out as more of a semi-autobiographical analog to Ian Fleming's experiences as a naval intelligence officer, he is as much a product of a national imagination (read: aside from Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, Britain sorely needed an amalgam of manliness to counter their long-standing image of being tea-drinking nannygoats) as Batman was in the late 1930s.

Western fictional badasses have a long-standing tradition of being male, white and angsty beyond repair - see also Beowulf, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, the Man with No Name). Thankfully Marvel comics broke some tradition in the 1970s with Luke Cage (aka "Power Man"; I'm sure the name "Honkey Puncher" was either taken by a non-fictional man of the time or deemed unsuitable by the Comics Code - which would figure, since the Comics Code Authority was invariably made up of old Honkeys fully deserving to be Punched). They also did the same with Blade, the black superhero vampire hunter. As far as Honkey Punching goes, Blade presumably punched a lot of vampires, which is about as white as you can get.

However, as with most well-intentioned groundbreaking of race boundaries, Cage didn't have an auspicious start since he was a walking, talking stereotype. He featured blaxploitation-era hallmarks like a bandana, afro, street-wise jive talk (cause, you know, he came from the streets, as all black folk do) and his catchphrase wasn't even comparable to "Hulk smash!". It was "Sweet Christmas". Apparently because his grandmother hated profanity. His grandmother.

Superman fought alien robots. Luke Cage apparently battled a jonesing Martin Lawrence

It's also interesting that as badass as Luke Cage was, he was also known as the Hero for Hire, a sort of superhero mercenary. Not too shabby, considering that mysterious mercenaries have been portrayed in glorious ass-kicking fashion before. Cage being a man of the streets as the comics never wanted us to forget, he wouldn't be pulling cats out of trees or punching Dr Doom square in the balls for free; that shit will happen once paper hits hand. Never mind that Cage rarely seemed to actually get payment for his heroics, or had to accept something in its stead (possibly late 70's booty or some shiny new pants), the man had his principles. However, I have to wonder if the fact that Cage remained a relatively poor superhero was either clever social commentary on the part of the writers (highly doubt) or a projection of what they thought eventually happens to African-Americans - you give them the ability to change their world and shape their own destiny and yet they remain tied to their socio-economic status (quite possible). Or perhaps Mr Cage just enjoyed staying in his neighborhood, kicking ass and nailing women. Hell, that's what I'd do.

Interestingly enough, the current revival of Luke Cage by Brian Michael Bendis has the character seemingly modeled after a younger, buffer version of Samuel L Jackson. Sam Jackson, of course, being the one and only embodiment of black bad-assery, after Wesley Snipes, according to comic book writers anyway. How interesting that it all came back full circle: Wesley Snipes went on to play Blade in Marvel's first big budget movie adaptation of one of their characters. Snipes will be back in 2010 to play Blade in Blade IV: A Steak Through the Heart of Tax Evasion.

Although this post didn't initially set out to be a treatise on race issues in comics (or as regards to male adolescent fantasies as played out in popular fiction), I think it's a worthwhile subtopic to explore on the general issue of consummate badasses in pop culture. I suppose the current understanding is, whether 4 or 40, males will always identify with the one (seldom two) dimensional, gutteral representation of their childhood aspirations: to be able to kick so much ass your grandchildren will be finishing fights for you, to bone more women than god and to drive vehicles with supreme firepower and questionable mileage. I'm certainly part of a generation of men who haven't been able to get past that adolescent stage; now more than ever, 20 somethings play the most video games, consume more comics and watch more animated fare than the average 14 year old. This is the result of several facets of the entertainment industry realizing where their income source truly lies. A kid will probably get money here and there to buy a video game, but will only see comic books as "for kids". The 20 somethings of my generation will see comics as the subversive countercultural art, just like their lit theory professors told them, and will positively eat it up. Plus, the 20 somethings invariably have jobs, so once they're hooked, they'll be back for more.

To be continued. I started rambling and now I think I've lost my point.