DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) – A man dressed as the Batman today scaled the wall of Buckingham Palace and unfurled a banner advertising the protest groups Fathers 4 Justice, which advocates greater custody and visitation rights for divorced fathers.
The stunt was not characteristic of the Batman, who normally does not lend his name to political causes, and the obviously heart-felt and emotional nature of this particular cause led CBS News anchor Dan Rather to speculate that the Batman may himself be a divorced father being denied custody to his child.
“Perhaps the various Robins who have fought crime alongside the Batman have, in reality, been his children,” Rather speculated. “Perhaps he is now being denied access to them due to a contentious divorce situation in which their mother feels it is unsuitable for children to be fighting crime.”
The Caped Crusader’s success in protecting his secret identity seemed to run out this time, when British police arrested and unmasked him, revealing him to be Jason Hatch, 33, of Glouster and a member of Fathers 4 Justice.
The Boston Globe immediately announced the discovery of the Batman’s secret identity, but within hours superhero experts within the blogosphere debunked this idea.
“Just look at the pictures,” said Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog. “This clearly is not the Batman. He has way too much body fat and not nearly enough body muscle. The details of his ‘costume’ are all wrong. He’s wearing jackboots that come up to his knees. He’s got a poorly-fitting cowl that doesn’t even have the white, blunked-out eyes that keep criminals from telling where he’s directing his gaze. He’s got a simple cloth bat symbol on his chest, whereas the real the Batman wears a metal plate under this symbol to protect him from bullets. Finally, he’s not wearing gloves but cuffs with little bat fins on them–that means he would leave fingerprints everywhere he goes and severely compromise his secret identity.”
To underscore his points, Birdly posted to the Internet an animated gif superimposing pictures of “the Buckingham Batman,” as the blogosphere dubbed him, with a file picture of the established the Batman.
“The differences between the two are striking. Even if the Batman had totally let himself go, he wouldn’t lose height!” Birdly claimed.
The Daily Planet could not verify Birdly’s claims because the server to which the animated gif was posted immediately polularity crashed after being linked on The Drudge Report.
CBS and The Boston Globe continue to maintain that the Batman’s secret identity has been exposed, but Birdly disagrees. “Believe the evidence of your own eyes,” he pleaded. “Further, this guy lives in Glouster, which is five hours ahead of Gotham City. He would often be at work at the very late-night times the Batman has been busting criminals. There is no way, even with the high-speed Batplane, that he could be in two places at once. And besides, his British accent would be a dead giveaway in Gotham.”
Everyone knows the Batman was unmasked years ago as millionaire playboy Adam West. It’s sad that there are still romantics like Birdly living in denial.
Even overlooking the obvious holes in Birdly’s case “refuting” the West secret identity (I can’t believe anyone STILL falls for that old dummy-Batman / ventriloquist routine on one of those few occasons when West and Batman were “seen” in the same place at the same time), you don’t have to be an expert to see that Birdly SERIOUSLY overstates his case on the body fat / muscle issue.
Plus, Birdly’s conspicuous failure to note the Buckingham Batman’s glaring lack of a UTILITY BELT (HELLO!), as well as the excessive length of his bat-ears, obviously further undermines his self-styled “expert” qualifications. Though of course he is obviously correct about the gloves and boots.
OTOH, perhaps in this case I’m being unfair to Birdly. I notice that the Planet story doesn’t list a byline, and I’ve heard that they have a few former CBS writers working there these days. So who knows what Birdly really said in the first place.