Battle For The Cowl, if you don’t know, is a current DC Comics storyline about bunch of Gotham City vigilantes  (and maybe Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon), fighting over who will be the next Batman now that Bruce Wayne is dead/sent back in time (I don’t know; ask Grant Morrison).  This ramble was sparked off by a blog post (savblog? find, link) pointing out that with Huntress, Robin, Nightwing, Azrael etc all in the city, that the idea that Gotham would degenerate after one guy is gone doesn’t really hold water.

But maybe it does if you think about it in more illogical, more human terms: we’re talking about the mythology of The Bat, the force of order, like Hobbes’ Leviathan, holding sway to prevent Gotham from reverting to its natural state of chaos.  As much as, or much more than, a person, The Bat is a socially engineered boogyman, a narrative that keeps order in the minds of Gotham’s populace.

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