I don't like the inner voice most of the time myself. For example, I always preferred the Jim Gordon narration in Year One to the Bruce Wayne narration, and in Morrison's A Serious House on Serious Earth, you rarely get into the head of Batman because his actions clearly display his mental state. It's a crutch writers rely on to make Batman seem vulnerable, but there's one big problem with that; everyone is vulnerable, and the best way to make someone vulnerable is to have someone else pierce their walls. Giving us Batman's thoughts all the time makes him seem weaker than his peers and foes, and that's just inappropriate; even if Batman is just a man in a suit (as many of the commenters have stated,) he's also one of the most formidable men in the DC universe. He has an absurd amount of fortitude and courage; it takes a lot to break the Bat, and, again, Morrison does it in Arkham Asylum without ever giving us his internal monologues.
That first image in the article is precisely the kind of thing that seems unbelievable in the context of fighting dudes, and it even seems unbelievable that he wouldn't just say that directly to Alfred. It's a crutch that people use to make Batman seem weak. Morrison, Miller and even Nolan have instilled this weakness through his actions rather than his words. It's the core tenet of writing; "show, don't tell." While the internal monologue occasionally is so well done that it escapes this rule (Jim Gordon's narration in Year One, and all the narration present in TDKR) it's generally a display of weakness on the writer more than the character.
P.S. I know I'm referencing non-serialized books, and there's a reason for that; I don't read comics from issue to issue, I read the best arcs as volumes. But I feel like removing most of the monologues would still work in serialized comics, especially considering it intensifies the legend, leaves more room on each page to work with, and makes the moments where you do still get monologues more meaningful.
Log in to comment