“People are always asking, “Who’s the real man? Superman, Kal-El, or Clark Kent? Batman or Bruce Wayne?” And they do this completely unrealistic and, I’m sorry, completely ridiculous thing where they pick the mask as being the sole personality. As if these different titles do not encompass many aspects of a greater personality. As if there isn’t a person behind that mask. As much as Bruce Wayne wants to assume that he is no longer a human being, but instead a symbol greater than himself, he is not that symbol; he is a man in a mask who uses that symbol. Bruce Wayne is certainly Batman but Batman is not Bruce Wayne. And as much as we’d like to think that the human being underneath the mask who lost his parents as a young child isn’t really the man we see when we look at Batman, but that The Bat is the main personality, that’s not doing Bruce Wayne any justice. The Bruce Wayne the population of Gotham sees is not the real Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is a man who, after suffering a great loss, decided to go to the ends of the earth in order to protect the innocent and fight to ensure such tragedies will come to an end. The Bruce Wayne that Gotham sees is not who he is. The Batman that Gotham sees is not who he is. Bruce Wayne inside the suit is who that man really is. Then you have Superman, born Kal-El, raised Clark Kent. There are so many people who try to say that he’s Superman, he’s Kal-El, he’s Clark Kent. What they fail to take into account is that this is a very human man. Even Kryptonians, for all their differences, are very human. This is the story of an immigrant. From the time he was a baby, Clark Kent has lived on Earth and grown with a human family. His heritage is important, yes, but they did not make him the man that he is. His heritage, without his biological parentage, simply gave him his powers. It’s his Earth family who made him a man deserving of having them and capable of wisely using them. But the goofy and insecure Clark Kent that Metropolis sees is not the real Clark Kent. The real Clark Kent is the man that his parents welcome home when he visits their ranch. I would wager that Batman and Superman are never more themselves than when Batman calls Superman ‘Clark’ and Superman calls Batman ‘Bruce’. Both sides of their major personalities are inherently acknowledged in this exchange. They both see before them a person who is treated like a god but is really just as much a man as they themselves are. That’s why you’ll rarely see them referring to each other as anything by name in each others company. They both look directly at the myth and see the man. Yet they recognize, at the same time, that the man is the myth.”
I also agree with Paul Dini’s assetion that the “true” person is neither the ultra-grim Batman, nor public Bruce Wayne, but the man who sits in front of the Batcomputer, in costume, but with the cowl pulled back, putting the pieces of the latest puzzle together. There’s a reason Ra’s al Ghul respects that person enough to refer to him as “The Detective”.
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