Mark,
Re your question below:
> . . . what keeps Batman out? While Bruce
Wayne
> may not be, Batman is
> tough and colloquial in many (most?) of
his
> incarnations. So why is he
> out according to the rule?
First of all, let me say I yield to none in my admiration of
The Batman, my favorite comic character growing up, and (with
the exception of the early Dick Tracy, who I discovered
later) still so to this day.
I suppose that the combination of his upper-class background
(VERY old inherited wealth; ancestors among the British
[specifically Scottish] aristocracy, and among the officer
class of the Continental Army ["Mad Anthony" Wayne is said
to've been a great-grandfather many times removed]), his
surrogate father being a very precisely-spoken British
butler, the flamboyance of his crime-fighting persona, and
his own fairly precise way with dialog (or at least what
seems to me to be a fairly precise way with dialog), put him
just barely outside the scope of "hard-boiled" for me.
But I didn't protest when he was nominated, and I don't
begrudge him his place on the list. It's a harder call than
some of the other characters we've discussed here, and,
because of that, I didn't weigh in with my opinion until I
was asked, and wouldn't have weighed in unless I was
asked.
In the interests of fairness, I'll point out that many
writers who've become identified with the hard-boiled story
in prose have become identified with BATMAN in comic book and
newspaper strip scripts. Right off the top of my head are
current Batman writer Greg Rucka, two-time Shamus-winner Al
Collins, and, of course, Batman's editor-in-chief, Dennis
O'Neil. So many hard-boiled lights contributing to the Batman
mythos certainly gives credence to the position that he
belongs in the fold.
Finally, remember that it's possible to agree on a definition
but disagree on whether or not a particular example fits that
definition.
JIM DOHERTY
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