February 27, 2009 

The Phantom Batman

Here’s an idea we’ve never seen before! In this issue of Batman, something explodes and Batman gets strange powers! How unique.

Okay, I’m hardly a physicist, but shouldn’t that wall be um, exploding? Along with large portions of Batman?


  • Megalon

    So, shouldn’t he suffocate to death? Shouldn’t the positively charged atoms of the air pass right through his negatively charged lungs? And why doesn’t he fall through the floor? And where are Robin’s eyes?

  • http://www.cinrambler.wordpress.com Mark

    To be fair, Asimov’s robots had brains with positively-charged electrons (as did Data from Star Trek). Of course, it didn’t give them superpowers but they didn’t explode either.

  • Matt

    Matter + Antimatter = ???

    Where’s the boom?

  • Dierna

    So Batman is now Kitty Pryde…

  • K.W.

    Their whole conversation couldn’t scientifically take place. If Batman passes through all matter, it also means his vocal cords, lips, teeth, and tongue can’t interact with the air and make it vibrate in any way that Robin could hear. Neither could the vibrating air from Robin’s speech interact with Batman’s eardrums.

    But comic book writers generally count on their audiences being as blisteringly pig-ignorant of science as they are.

  • Naryldor

    He does not speak of the electrons of his atoms becoming positrons, so a negative core plus negative electrons should equal Batman blowing up and becoming a cloud of sub-atomic particles, shouldn’t it?

    In any case, sub-atomic particles charges DO NOT work that way!!

    Surely, he later gets back to normal MAGNE… Ok, no, sorry…

  • Maniac Doc

    Batman’s thoughts: “I have no &%@(ing clue what’s wrong with my body! I’ll make something up that nobody will question because I’m the world’s greatest detective and they don’t have any &%@(ing clue either!”

    I’m not quite sure how much to blame on bad research and how much to blame on the writers writing themselves into a corner because they wanted Batman to walk through walls. There’s nothing even remotely plausible in today’s known science that could make that believable, much less in the science of however many decades ago this comic was printed.

  • sezaar

    Doc, I don’t want to ruin the party but it’s not like anything else in the Batman-universe makes sense. :-)

  • onion3000

    Batman can’t admit that he has no idea what happened, so he’s talking Bat-bollocks to confuse Robin.

  • Thomas C

    I misread Robin’s last balloon as “Batman, this is terribly Unhealthy!” (instead of “unearthly”)

    As though this was some kind of well documented medical condition.

    Also “What’s happened to my hand and arm?” is a brilliant, Batmanish way of maintaining accuracy, yet still conveying the required level of panic!

    I’m not a physicist either, but: atomic nuclei don’t do those things he said, and getting Batman to cool down to non-lethal temperatures would require a special device at CERN called an antiproton decelerator.

    So he should be dead at least three different ways.

  • http://flickr.com/photos/sedary_raymaker/ Naked Bunny with a Whip

    This is why I keep my radiation in sturdy cans instead of fragile tubes.

  • Powers

    I don’t mean to be a spoilsport, but Doc has it right — no explanation of how Batman is now able to walk through walls would possibly be plausible. =)

  • sezaar

    Magnetically?

  • madwoman

    I don’t want to start a war here, and I am a product of the American public school system and all, but WHO CARES ABOUT SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY IN A COMIC? Isn’t the fantasy half the fun? I also want to know how the hell some of you know so much. You must have been edumacated elsewhere or paid better attention than I did.

  • sezaar

    I am a product of the roman-catholic European school systems. 8)

    Interestingly nobody noticed how the unconscious victim seems to jump of a cloud in the first panel, how the fire has disappeared in the second, returned in the third and decided to take a whole new route in the fourth. Not to mention how the window seems to grow larger and smaller.

    In the fourth panel neither B nor R seems to worry that they are still in a burning building. Also Batman casually leans against the wall in the second panel while he almost died in the first. Now that’s one tough cookie!

  • http://www.jlroberson.org JLRoberson

    I guess if it were me, at the very least I’d be screaming, “AA! I’M BLIND! MY FACE IS MASHED TO PULP! MY COSTUME IS ON FIRE! AAA! NO POWERS! NO POWERS AT ALL! IT BURNS! PUT IT OUT!”

    Or gibberish to that effect.

  • http://www.jlroberson.org JLRoberson

    Addendum: of course, what this really is, is the comfort-place of hallucination he retreats into after the explosion leaves him as something even that guy in JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN would find repulsive.

    Why, he even later hallucinated some woman called Jezebel Jet. And a crying Dick kept stroking Bruce’s hand as he told him all about it, every day.

  • Mike

    JLRoberson:Addendum: of course, what this really is, is the comfort-place of hallucination he retreats into after the explosion leaves him as something even that guy in JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN would find repulsive.

    So this is a second-order hallucination, running within the whole Batman-thing playing in the mind of an unconscious and dying eight year old Bruce Wayne as his father’s friends work desperately to save the last member of the family using the medical technology of seventy years ago? Kids got some imagination.

  • MrP

    Scientific accuracy is one thing, but Batman is able to walk on the ground, yet not touch anything else?

  • Dierna

    It’s called control. Kitty is able to walk on the ground and walk thru walls. And she’s also able to go under the ground.

  • HellRazor

    Batman thinks: This is going to make Man-Boy Cuddle Time ™ with Dick mighty difficult.

  • HellRazor

    The same scene as written by Frank Miller:

    “Batman, what’s happened to you?”

    “What, are you retarded or something? I’m the GODDAMNED BATMAN and my GODDAMNED ATOMS have a GODDAMNED NEGATIVE ELECTRIC CHARGE. As a result I can walk through GODDAMNED WALLS!

    I’m Batman, DAMMIT!”

  • http://www.jlroberson.org JLRoberson

    >>Kids got some imagination.

    “Batman thinks of EVERYTHING.” –Bat-mite.

  • Batgirl1

    So, wait–if all atoms are positive and his are negative, then shouldn’t he be sticking to things, like a magnet when it meets an opposite pole?

    Science is not my forte either.

  • http://www.myspace.com/thischarmingoscar Rorschach

    He might get used to it, now he can explore whole new aspects of Robin…

    But: we joke about the scientific inaccuracy of Silver Age Batman, yet we (me too, o’course) never had anything to bitch about the origin of Doctor Manhattan. A bit unfair, eh?

  • sezaar

    Watchmenkind of tackles the whole comic heroes stuff, it’s kind off dificult to take on a hommage/critic/parody. Still the movie comes out on wednesday here, can’t wait to see it and be disappointed. :-)

    We make fun of this because we love it.

  • http://www.myspace.com/thischarmingoscar Rorschach

    That goes for me, too, that’s why I visit the blog on a daily basis.

    Watchmen: I can’t wait to see it and tell everyone “Well, it was good, but the portayal of Dollar Bill was somehow flat…and I always imagined the blue glow of Doc in a more light tone, and the stink of Rorchach didn’t came across.”

  • HellRazor

    I love how Batman has to explain everything to himself in his head.

    “The fire’s shorted the wiring!

    The big tubes are bursting!

    That radiation is hitting me!”

    He does the same thing when he goes to the bathroom.

    “The toilet seat has been lifted!

    My pants have dropped to my ankles!

    I’m sitting on the toilet!

    My anus is opening!”

    Um, I’d better stop now.

  • sezaar

    I laughed out loud with that last comment! And now I imagine how Frank Miller would have written it…

  • Maniac Doc

    Self-narration is irritatingly common in comics, I’ve noticed. It makes me wonder if anyone’s ever used the excuse that “I didn’t narrate it to myself so it didn’t happen!”

    sezaar says: “Doc, I don’t want to ruin the party but it’s not like anything else in the Batman-universe makes sense. :-) ”

    Granted, but I’m still going to whine about it. :-)

  • sackett

    :LOL: @ Hellrazor…good one. ;)