Becoming Batman

I thought with Halloween coming up tomorrow this blog posting would be somewhat topical. I just finished a book called Becoming Batman by Dr. E. Paul Zehr.

This isn't really a book on creating a costume so you can go out and have some actual fun with tricks when you don't get treats.

Wow...that sounded wrong.

This book is about the feasibility of training yourself to become Batman. Batman is unique among the superhero genre in that he doesn't have magic powers, he doesn't have alien superpowers (like a well-known Kryptonian), and he didn't get any of his powers from a freak accident or by tempting the fates by playing God or any other origin story posed as a moral. He was a kid who was screwed up at the injustice of seeing his parents murdered.

He trained himself to the peak of athletic perfection, training his body.

He studied the arts, forensic science, martial arts...training his mind.

Then he pursued his inner demons by ridding Gotham City of criminals. Seeking justice.

He was an ordinary man. His powers came from gadgets purchased from his millionaire holdings in Wayne Industries and his physical prowess came from hard work.

(Sure, some will bring up Iron Man, Marvel's answer to Batman, but this is about a man that gained his talents through hard training, not technology. Although for the record I think Iron Man still rocks and is quite possibly still better than most of the Batman franchise.)

Batman's history is, of course, subject to some editing and revision over history. A great summary is here.

Aaaand thus ends the history lesson. The book was an uneven read in my opinion. It presents excellent information on physiology and training and exercise, and the author carries a "Dr." in his title as well as being a martial artist. He presents information on topics such as hardening bones and the biology behind it; basically the structure of the bone gains microfractures, and in the process of "healing" they get stronger. He gives an overview of a technique that some martial arts masters had used and he had once tried that basically amounted to "hitting something really hard 1000 times a day until you hurt like a !@# and wait for it to heal"...a tree, a wall, a thin pad on a concrete wall are all good. And it works. I remembered reading outside this book that Bruce Lee (if you don't know him...you don't have any interest in martial arts) used to punch buckets of stones hundreds of times a day to harden his skin and bones in his hands. The author tried a similar technique and found that while it does work, it also seemed to damage nerves in his hands because his fingertips began to tingle, which interfered with some of his day job duties at the keyboard.

There was information on sleep deprivation, effects of aging, muscle growth, even physical stresses and how it affects the body.

The problem I had were relatively minor. First, the book is called "Becoming Batman". But it's not a how-to. It's more of an overview of whether it's possible to train to become someone like Batman. And he gives an answer. But if you're looking for an overview of what you would have to do to become a physical specimen of athletic perfection like Mr. Wayne, you're not going to find it here. If you want to know what your bones are made of at the cellular level, this is perfect for you.

Second the book read more like a physiology lesson given by a comic-obsessed nerd. Which is okay given that this is a book about Batman. But it wasn't really written focusing on Batman. It was focusing on the body and how attempting to train it to a condition like Batman's body would affect it while being sprinkled liberally with Batman references. It's like reading a book about how to send men to the moon with references to Battlestar Galactica thrown in, sans Cylons (We'd need armor plating made of ___ ___ inches thick to withstand the radiation of space while traveling en route to the moon, just like Galactica repelled nuclear blasts during the attack on the colonies! Okay, bad reference, but that's the gist of the feeling I got).

In the end this could have been a good book on the affects of training your body even if the Batman references were removed. It wasn't a bad read but it isn't on my gotta-gotta save shelf either. I'll probably pass it on to someone else who might benefit from the information. Any fans out there interested? Let me know.