Talking Meme: Writing Bruce and Clark!

[mithen]

jlvsclrk sked me to talk about what I enjoy about writing Clark and Bruce! TWIST MY ARM. :)



There are basically two reasons they're fun to write: an in-text reason and a meta reason. To start with the in-text reason, I love love love characters who have different world views but are deeply committed to the same goals--not enemies or rivals, but not buddies either. They both have such different background and such different values, but as Mark Waid's Clark puts it in Kingdom Come, they have one great thing in common:






("More than anyone in the world, when you scratch everything else away from Batman, you're left with someone who doesn't want to see anybody die.")

Also, they have so much history together (or, uh, they did...but it's still out there, just obscured right now). They've risked their lives and their sanity for each other over and over again, they've faced down certain death together so many times and come through on the other side. No matter how much they argue and clash, when it's the end of the world they'll be back to back fighting it off.

(As a side note, there's no denying the reboot hasn't treated their friendship well. They're asserted quite often to be good buddies, but we're constantly TOLD that instead of being SHOWN it. Even in their shared title, most of the time Greg Pak seems determined to write them NOT interacting--it's Clark talking with Earth 2 Batman and Bruce with Earth 2 Superman! It's Clark teaming up with Selina and Bruce with Lois! Clark is unconscious and says practically nothing all issue! Clark and/or Bruce are mind controlled and refuse to talk to each other! We're 18 issues in and they've talked only a handful of times. Of course, when they do, it manages to be amazingly slashy for a panel or two: for example when Superman has amnesia and Bruce snaps him out of it simply by whispering his name.



Pak might just be refusing to write them together much because stuff like that happens when he does... *grin*)

The meta reason I love writing them is that there are so many different versions of them--hell, even IN CANON the Bruce in the Batman title is different from the Bruce in the Batman/Superman title is different from the Bruce in the Justice League title. And Bruce is different from the Brucie playboy mask is different from Batman, just like Superman is different from Clark Kent is different from Kal-El, even while all of them are valid facets of their personality.

Then there are all the different canons out there--movies, comics, animated series, it's easy to list a dozen Supermans and a dozen Batmans, each with a different tone and POV, ready to mix and match.

And THEN there are canon Elseworlds that can be explored and expanded, like the one where Clark is a samurai and Bruce is a female ninja:



or the one where Clark grows up in Soviet Russia and Bruce works with the KGB and gets a spiffy hat:



or the one (I am not making this up) where all the superheroes are musicians and Clark is basically one of the Beatles and Bruce is basically Marilyn Manson (Clark gets killed, probably by Luthor, in the story, but I'd write Bruce as unraveling the mystery of his disappearance and tracking him down where he's still living).



Amazingly, I think there's no canon Elseworld wrestling AU, but there absolutely should be!

All of which is to say, there's just SO MUCH out there to work with; so many different versions, so many different worlds. And in all of them, Clark and Bruce are shadow and light, fire and ice, playing off each other in fascinating ways.