Weigel

The Creator of the New* Batman Villain Thinks You’re an Idiot if You Compare Him to Romney

As D.C. comics fans know, Bane was created by Chuck Dixon in the 1994 Knightfall storyline for the same reason Doomsday was created in concurrent Superman comics. The company needed a new black hat to take out one of their flagship stars. Bane, a second-generation criminal genius from a fictional South American company, wore a luchador mask and pumped himself up with a sort of super-steroid called “Venom.” He engineered a brilliant plot to tire out Batman, stalked him home, then broke the hero’s spine. Eighteen years later, Christopher Nolan has reimagined Bane as less cartoonish, less South American master criminal terrorist and made him the villain of The Dark Knight Rises. Instead of a luchador mask, Bane 2.0 sports a terrifying kind of Nosferatu rehab headgear—easy to edit in Photoshop onto pictures of the former CEO of Bain Capital. Bain, Bane. Get it? I’ll explain: Kerry Picket was the first to notice Chuck Dixon’s response to this, as carried out on his Web forums. Dixon, who shares a lot of the libertarian philosophical flashes of creators like Steve Ditko and Frank Miller, is having none of this crap.

Overgrasping Dems?  Hey, if it gets Obama supporters into theaters. Maybe they’ll buy thousands of Bane toys to throw at Romney. It all adds to MY Bane capital. I wonder if the Romney campaign will contact me?
Later, a fan points out that the studio’s Bane/Bain conspiracy would have had to date back years. Dixon:
NINE years ago when the franchise started. Maybe Warners thought Ron Paul would get the nod and that’s why they wanted the Riddler. Of course, the answers to all his riddles would be “The warrrrrrrrr….”
(Photo via All American Blogger.) And Dixon’s last word so far on his politics: Screen shot 2012-07-17 at 2.25.32 PM *Just explaining the headline. This isn’t a new character.