It's Friday, March 18, 2022. I'm Albert Molar and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Well, we're at the end of the week once again and soon we'll turn to your questions, but

first today we're going to be talking about Batman and the Cat in the Hat.

Here we go.

First we turn to Batman.

The most recent Batman installment

has come out as the film known as The Batman,

and it has broken a lot of box office records.

Even as the Batman franchise has ebbed and flowed

over the course of the last several decades,

it nonetheless remains one of the most recognizable

cultural artifacts in all of American society.

Like so many of the superhero characters that emerged into American culture,

Batman appeared during the period of the rise of Nazi Germany and the onset of what became known as World War II.

There were very real, very obvious, unavoidable conflicts between good and evil.

And we were also looking at a very dark chapter in American and in world history beginning

to unfold even more dark, even more frightening than anyone could have known in 1939.

But it was Detective Comics number 27 that in the year 1939 introduced Batman.

And an American superhero narrative and brand was born.

But one of the issues to remember with Batman is that Batman is merely a human being.

A human being with a costume, a human being with a lot of money named Bruce Wayne and of course a very

intelligent suave and otherwise debonair character but in costume Batman takes on a very different personality.

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