Book Review: The villains get analyzed by a real-life psychologist in "Batman and Psychology" (2012)
Preamble: While I will be discussing this book to the best of my abilities, I know that there's nothing quite like seeing a work that's being critiques yourself rather than just hearing the critic's description. As such, if you're interested in checking this book out for yourself, I have found three separate extensive previews of this book: two
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That's good news about the Hatter - he really does need a good comics origin if he's going to remain a viable long-term character. I look forward to your thoughts once my next article is published on MRFH, as I specifically mention Jervis in it, and go into what my own personal solutions to the problem would be (at least so far as making him viable for inclusion in a movie).
Another thing against the 'why she doesn't move into a jungle' thing is that she did, more or less, during No Man's Land. Sure, it was a city park instead of a 'true' jungle, but she made it jungle-ish while still retaining human contact in the form of the runaways who inhabited it - which also is somewhat of a missed chance for analysis as far as the book goes.
Given how many recountings of Gotham City's origins have focused on elements of the supernatural and/or 'madness magnet' elements, I suppose one could argue that the reason so many of Batman's foes defy exact psychological analysis is due to the city itself subtly warping its inhabitant's minds so that 'standard' obsessions and psychoses become twisted in elaborate and unusual ways, ones that are very difficult to diagnose, let alone cure. If Gotham, on some strange level, 'wants' insanity as part of its makeup, then manipulating events to specifically create supervillainous madmen would not be a bad way to go about it.
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The upsetting thing, though, is that he's not just a gold standard for all cosplayers to emulate - he's an anomaly. Most con-goers, if given the choice, would rather slather on a thin layer of greasepaint and a "I slept overnight at the bus station" bedraggled purple suit than be bothered constructing an elaborate costume, and that's fine - if you've got time or budget restrictions. But if you're waiting six weeks for your replica coat and vest to come in the mail, you've officially become the "weekend warrior" of Comic-Con. In other words, a big nerdy tool.
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I don't know for sure if the storyline will give him an origin, but that's what I'm hoping for. Heck, what else could anyone do with a Hatter-centric story these days?
Another thing against the 'why she doesn't move into a jungle' thing is that she did, more or less, during No Man's Land...
I was actually thinking of addressing that, but I cut it out due to length. Thing is, it both confirms Langley's hypothesis about Ivy's biocentrist perspective while throwing it into question. Langley brought up the fact that she's charitable towards the orphan children as a sign of how she acts when her life is in balance, with the idea being that they are able to keep her in touch with her human side. So he does mention that.
Here's the thing, though: while Langley seems to conclude that this balance is thrown off whenever she gives into her desires to exert power and control over others, the Park subplot is similar to the island paradise in that BOTH were forcibly taken from her, and only THEN did she go back to power and control over others. If they'd left her alone to her own devices in both cases, then theoretically that balance could have been maintained indefinitely, without her ever wanting to go back to playing power games.
Sure, it's inevitable that something would have upset that balance sooner or later, but my point is that Ivy herself never would have sabotaged her own balance and happiness just to go back to controlling others for fun and profit. Langley was onto something, but it doesn't entirely work without taking a few other stories like that into account.
By the way, sorry I still haven't checked out your recent posts. I will finally get on that soon.
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Yeah, I've never really seen Pam's motivations as "a desire to exert power and control over others". True, she does have kind of a thing for seducing Batman, but that's more of a recurring personal challenge than a motivation, per se. If I had to pigeonhole her overall motives, I'd call them a misguided form of altruistic activism, kind of a sexy female Lorax-figure who not only speaks for the trees, she avenges them. It's not that she's above the occasional act of purely selfish manipulation, but her main goal? Eh-eh. Her main goal is keeping her beloved plants safe and lashing out against those who would hurt them - which is why her becoming a sort of mother-figure for the runaways makes sense, as do her continuing efforts to get Harley out from under the Joker's toxic influence. She likes being a protector and advocate of the helpless and mistreated; it's just that she has different definitions of that than most, and doesn't always know where to draw the line.
No worries, man; read 'em when you get the chance.
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Depressingly, the best case scenario I coud think of for an original Hatter story would be one where he somehow goes to Wonderland, not literally of course, but as a hallucination, a dream, or some sort of weird meta nonsense.
The story could have him be ecstatic to have finally reached the world he's mentally been living in his whole life, only to somehow be rejected by it ('Alice' is a pretty nasty satirical look at humanity if you think about it).
It could be Jervis's own version of Faces, with a little "For the Man Who Has Everything" thrown in
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If it weren't for the fact that modern DC would never go for something that whimsical these days, I'd suggest a retelling of the old 'Oz-Wonderland War' storyline from Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew, in which the two eponymous locations were treated as actual places - only instead of involving the Captain, this would involve the 'real' DC superheroes, Batman, Superman, etc. If ever there would be a good excuse to get the Hatter involved, it would be that - I can see a running subplot with him trying to bump off the genuine Hatter so he could take his place, then somehow usurp the throne of the Queen of Hearts so he could rule Wonderland forever, or some such. Whatever you did with it, it would be cool.
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