Marvel World

As a kid, my favorite superhero was Batman. For me, superheroes are all about their origin story—not necessarily how they got their superpowers (Batman, after all, doesn’t have any), but why they’re driven to super-heroism. And Batman’s origin story is great: billionaire Bruce Wayne uses the financial bequest of his murdered parents to become strong enough to save them; only he can’t do that, because they’re already dead. So he spends his time compulsively regenerating the traumatic situation of their passing, inviting villainy and menace into his life, where it endangers whomever he loves. Batman is stuck in a loop, ever recreating the conditions for his primal failure, so that he may fail again. Freudians call this a “repetition compulsion.” We might just call it misery; the only love he knows is failure.