So since I may very well be presenting about how
Lee Bermejo's Batman: Noel relates to 19th Century British Literature at Comic-Con this summer, and I'm definitely presenting on it for Faculty Research Day tomorrow (just found out yesterday!), I thought I should get to writing. And as I tell my students, it helps to start with a summary of the texts. Luckily for me, a quick Google search suggests that Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol has been adapted so many times since it publication in 1843 that its story is so widely known I can just move right along to
Batman and how Bermejo interprets Dickens' classic ghost story of redemption.
Noel begins on the cold, Christmas Eve streets of Gotham City (a fictional city made out to be Victorian London if ever there was one). A nameless narrator tells us the story of Bob Cratchit, a down-on-his-luck dad working for the miserly Mr. Scrooge. In this way,
Noel is actually two stories: the narrator's abridged version of
A Christmas Carol and the story of Batman trying to hunt down the Joker on Christmas Eve. Of course, the two tales coincide so that the reader can follow Batman and Scrooge's transformations around the rest of the cast.
Batman's story begins with him secretly chasing one of the Joker's new lackeys--a blundering bag-man who's taken the job just to take care of his young son. Like Scrooge sticking it to poor Bob Cratchit, Batman drops the hammer on this Bob too. But Batman lets him go, using him as bait to catch the Joker when he doesn't deliver the money--knowingly putting Bob and his son in danger for the sake of catching a madman. Of course, just like in Dickens' tale, Bob's son Tim has a heart of gold. Bob comes home to find Tim decorating a dead plant with ornaments made from beer cans, bottles, and old army men--their Christmas tree. It's immediately clear that Bob and Tim have nothing, while Batman is back at Wayne Manor, surrounded by expensive high-tech gear and a doting butler. But he doesn't kick back in a front of a roaring fire. Like Scrooge, he doesn't call it a night so early; he's down in the Bat Cave, watching Bob and waiting for the Joker, an echo of Scrooge: "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it." And just like Scrooge receives a visit from his deceased partner to warn him he needs to change his ways and will be visited by three ghosts, Batman's dead sidekick appears in his cave.
Shaking it off as a moment of exhaustion, Batman goes back into the night, hunting for the Joker by finding the Ghost of Christmas Past--Catwoman--instead. Old age is a constant theme in this comic: the Joker taunts Batman calling him "Old Man"), he has a cough he can't seem to get rid off, and Batman's youthful, on-again, off-again flame simultaneously reminds him of his youthful adventuring and that he isn't that man anymore. As the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge shadows of his past, chasing Catwoman over Gotham's rooftops takes Batman back in time, until his age catches up to him, he can chase no longer, and falls. Scrooge is left with memories of his lost loved ones, and so is Batman.
Lucky for him, Superman is there to pick him up, just as in
A Christmas Carol:
a jolly giant, glorious to see...Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air.
He offers to take Batman home, and Batman agrees on the condition they stop by Bob's place. When Superman sees that the plan for catching the Joker involves young Tim, he takes Batman on a journey around Gotham. Where the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the beauty of Christmas, Superman shows Batman the compassion and goodness of those he would sacrifice. And before leaving him, he shows Batman that he's not seen as well as he sees himself.
And Batman is left with Death, the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Joker. Batman falls for a trap the Joker sets, and the Joker buries him alive beneath a tombstone: "Here lies a bat. He died boring & predictable and nobody loved him!" At this point in the story, the narrator offers his own conjecture about Scrooge's visit with the Ghost of Christmas Future. He suggests Scrooge never goes anywhere with the Ghost but that Scrooge actually dies, and it is this death that makes him value his and life so dearly when he awakens Christmas morning. In this same way, Batman dies and sees a glimpse of the legacy he'll leave behind. And it frightens him. He remembers why he fights in the first place--not to stop villains like the Joker but to protect the helpless like Tim.
At the end of
A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit gets the prize turkey from the poulterer. In
Batman: Noel, he gets a Christmas tree and a job at Wayne Enterprises. Scrooge's soul is saved and his life restored, and Batman earns a well-deserved rest to take stock of his. All in all, it's not only a pretty accurate adaptation, but Bermejo makes it his own. The real question, however, isn't whether or not
Batman: Noel is a faithful adaptation of
A Christmas Carol. The real question is whether that's all it is.
A Christmas Carol, in itself, represents a popular 19th century genre--the Christmas Crawler. Christmas Crawlers were Gothic horror stories published during the holiday season. And while this story of Dickens' is easily the most famous, it's certainly wasn't the only one he or his contemporaries wrote. Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, wrote many, and even
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was slated to be among them. That particular Christmas, however, was so flooded with other Christmas Crawlers, his publishers decided to hold onto it till after the holiday season when it wouldn't be simply white noise.
This in itself makes
Batman: Noel not only a more faithful adaptation, since it was not only published in the 2011 holiday season but is a rare adaptation that isn't exactly intended for children like so many others. In fact,
A Christmas Carol has become one of the quintessential children's holiday stories, losing not only most of its Gothic traits but horror elements, as well. But where
Noel sets itself even further apart from other adaptations is its adherence to the sub-genre of the Christmas Crawler and its parent genre the Gothic novel.
But I won't bore you with those details just yet, since that's where my research is now.
Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?
