What is Your Call to Adventure?
By Jonathon Nixon, LMFT
There is an infamous moment in the mythology of comic books where the son of a wealthy philanthropists is forced to watch on as his parents are gunned down in front of him, right before the would-be murder who would flee with a handful of pearls and his dead father’s wallet. Left alone within the cavity of a soggy alley adjacent to an opera house that maintained this slayed family’s audience just moments before this abandoned child would be subjected to a dark trauma that would eventually shape the greatest detective mind of the D.C comic universe.
Left alone to the care of the family’s loyal butler, this boy would succumb to the perils of his own nightmares, recusing himself to the confines of an empty mansion that only served to mock him around the paradox of his inherited wealth. He could have any possession that his heart desired, but he knew that his heart would never be fulfilled because the thing he loved the most (his parents) could never be acquired.
For years this boy would run, in attempt to escape the pain that waited for him at home. Drifting to every corner of the world, this boy would busy himself within the criminal arts in attempts to find refuge with those he equivocated to be as hopeless and lost as he was. Years would go by, allowing this boy to grow into a man who was now able to navigate the criminal underworld with ease and boredom. His mind would ultimately develop a new crave of stimulation, one that far exceeded the cheap thrill of petty burglaries or theft and graduated into the permeance of revenge and death. This man would become consumed with a perversion of justice that aimed to return death to the desperate crook who brought death to him – so many years ago.
As fate would have it, the opportunity would come for this ravenous man to fulfill his immoral sense of revenge on his family’s assailant during an open court hearing back in his hometown. Reluctant to return, the man intoxicated himself with his own hate and vengeance that would eventually bring him within the shadow of his target, with a gun steady in his angry hands.
At the sound of a firing gun and the screams of innocent bystanders surrounding this murderous criminal being transported to the courtroom, the revenge for the once traumatized boy was now complete, but not at the expense of his own smoking gun. Rather, the killing shot would come from another low-level assassin, a criminal byproduct of the ruthless mob that effortlessly ran the city of this broken boy’s childhood home.
As he watched the chaos that ensued in front of him, in the wake of his murderous villain’s assassination, the ravenous man would find himself teetering between the ballasts of justice and gratification because of the symbolic nature that was unfolding in front of his eyes. For what he was looking at was not the simple act of a mafia planned execution, but rather a plea for a hero who could fight back against the blatant display of chaos and turmoil that now infected the city his parents once passionately loved. For in this moment, something changed within this man. A new calling, that drained his heart from all his misguided rage and replaced it with something purer and more absolute. Something of a higher calling and purpose.
Thus, the story of The Batman would begin…