It was a somewhat windy Tuesday morning in Gotham City Upon Bespin when Lando Calrissian and Bruce Wayne found themselves stuck on an elevator on the way to the local zoo. Both were, of course, in their respective ways, symbols of the very city itself, with Lando a successful politician and Bruce the town's wealthiest man and whose face may as well have been its own tabloid title. And yet, now here both were, just two breathing men wanting to see a cage filled with Ewoks and now unable to do so due to an elevator's electronic decision to cease its movements. Both were, of course, displeased, for what man of tremendous success and power does not wish to spend the early part of a Tuesday walking in the wind and looking at Wampas with the safety and glass between themselves and the beasts?
This week had not started like this of course, for weeks so seldom begin with powerful men who have both awakened with the start of the day filled with the somewhat childlike desire to see Banthas inside the context of an interactive petting area. No, for Bruce Wayne, the week started well before this. Bruce Wayne's weeks never began so early, nor with such whimsy. No, Bruce Wayne's weeks began when the sun hid itself from the clouds that made up Gotham's surroundings and the shell that was the billionaire was burst once again to reveal the true creature that dwelled inside whom people from Tattoine to Alderaan had come to call…THE BATMAN.
THE BATMAN, many felt they had seen, some in their hearts, others in the bruises they were experiences throughout their anatomies from being brutally punched and kicked in the middle of attempting some variety of crime or another. But be he a symbol of hope to the honest men and women of Bespin or a very real source of terror to its outlaws, THE BATMAN was, at the end of the night, a person. And at this moment, on this somewhat windy Tuesday morning, he was a person standing next to a politician, both wanting nothing more than to step off the elevator and into the zoo.
