Undiagnosed Heroes – Comic Book Characters and PTSD

The superhero comic book industry’s treatment of mentally ill characters has often been somewhat dubious. Mentally ill characters are by no means absent from graphic novels – far from it. No reader of GEEKPR0N would have to think long before bringing a mentally ill character to mind. The mentally ill proliferate the pages of superhero comics across the board. However, their portrayal is generally less than sensitive. The mentally ill are explicitly portrayed as deluded, dangerous villains, spurred by their psychological disorders to wreak violent havoc upon the innocent.

The ‘dangerously insane’ of the DC Universe are incarcerated in the house of horrors that is Arkham Asylum, where their treatment appears to be spasmodic and disordered at best. Little wonder, then, that there have been calls for the comic book industry to get to grips with their depictions of the mentally ill. However, it may be unfair to accuse Marvel and DC of providing a completely negative portrayal of mental illness. It is notable how many of their characters – both heroic and villainous – display symptoms of PTSD.

Given the traumas inherent in the superpowered lifestyle, this is perhaps not surprising! What makes the difference, however, is the way in which they deal with and even use their afflictions.

Traumatic Beginnings

A surprisingly high number of costumed vigilantes have their career kickstarted by traumatic events. Batman dons the cape in response to the murder of his parents. The Punisher is driven by the murder of his family by the Mafia. Magneto’s entire young life is blighted by the trauma of Nazi death camps, and then the murder of his infant daughter by a mob. All three of these characters experience, in varying degrees, some of the symptoms of PTSD. The Punisher suffers from nightmares in which his family are murdered again and again before his eyes, and also demonstrates hypervigilance alongside a restricted emotional range. Magneto experiences periodic flashbacks to traumatic events in his life, and is arguably deeply depressive. Both have uncontrolled outbursts of anger and attempt to disassociate themselves from the world. However, perhaps the greatest case study in comic book PTSD is Batman.

Batman is a man trapped in his past, his psyche deeply scarred by the murder of his parents. He suffers from feelings of intense guilt, from flashbacks, from a need to disassociate himself from the identity of Bruce Wayne (who failed to save his parents). He has trouble forming close relationships with people, and experiences profound distress when confronted with triggers that remind him of the initial trauma – his mother’s pearl necklace, for example. The evidence, from a psychiatrist’s point of view, is certainly weighed in favor of a PTSD diagnosis.

A Scarred Psyche

Alan Moore appears to have been well aware of this when writing ‘Watchmen’. He tried, with the character of Walter Kovacs – ‘Rorschach’ – to portray a Batman-style psyche as it would manifest in the real world. The name ‘Rorschach’ is clearly a studied choice. Derived from the Rorschach inkblot test, a tool used for psychological assessment, the name has instant connotations of mental instability. Indeed, all of the flawed ‘heroes’ of ‘Watchmen’ seem to have some mental disorder or another, but Rorschach’s problems are the most overtly signaled. The related implications for his Gotham counterpart are clear.

Much of Rorschach’s psychology is even relayed through the character’s revelations to a psychiatrist, Dr Long. While Walter Kovacs is by no means as wealthy or influential as Bruce Wayne – quite the opposite, in fact –he too has apparently experienced significant childhood trauma, suffering from an abusive mother and an absent father, which has left him with a very polarized view of the world. Childhood abuse is known to trigger PTSD. Very early on he seeks to disassociate himself from the world and his own identity – much as Bruce Wayne retreats into the Batcave and becomes Batman – but the final ‘snap’ comes when he discovers the butchered remains of young Blaire Roche. At that, he states, Walter Kovacs ceased to exist, and he felt himself to have become exclusively Rorschach. Like Batman, Rorschach is driven by an obsessive need to purge the world of its traumas. However, in keeping with the more ‘realistic’ flavor of ‘Watchmen’, Rorschach is shown to become one of the more traumatic elements of the world in his effort to cleanse it. The violent and traumatic part played by Batman in the life of Gotham City is sometimes brought up, but never played quite so explicitly for this purpose as the dubious, semi-sociopathic methods of Rorschach.

Blurred Lines

It is notable that trauma-driven characters often walk a very fine line between heroism and villainy. Rorschach is ostensibly a ‘hero’, yet his methods and motives often err on the side of outright villainy. He is, consequently, something of an anti-hero, and the reader is unsure how much they are meant to sympathise with his point of view. Magneto, meanwhile, is a very clear-cut villain – yet his traumatic experiences humanize and provide a rationale for his actions. He is one of the more sympathetic of Marvel’s villains. The Punisher is only a ‘good guy’ because he unleashes the full extent of his impulse to violence on the ‘bad guys’, and Batman frequently finds himself on the wrong side of the law. In each case, the characters use the traumas of their past as a driving experience. The difference between heroism and villainy appears to come in the focus of the hatred stemming from that trauma. Magneto takes his rage against the Nazis and applies it to the whole of humanity, while Batman and the Punisher unleash their primal fury against the criminal underworld against criminals. Rorschach, like Batman and the Punisher, is driven by the distressing actions of violent criminals – but he takes his rage against these and focuses it on the whole of society, conceiving a misanthropic hatred for humanity in general, which renders him an ambiguous ‘hero’ who often seems quite evil.

‘Hulking Out’

Some comic book superheroes can be read as more abstract representations of PTSD. In the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie, Bruce Banner is explicitly shown to be suffering from the disease. Making his comic book debut in 1962, the Hulk was born into a world still suffering the psychological wounds of the Second World War, and an America deeply embroiled in the Vietnam conflict. Soldiers and veterans suffering the symptoms of PTSD were a known and very recognizable phenomenon. The eruptions of Bruce Banner into another character – the enraged and immensely destructive Hulk – call vividly to mind the violent rages and apparent character transformations of suffering servicemen. Furthermore, the methods used by Banner to ‘tame’ the Hulk, including meditation, have been proven to help keep the symptoms of PTSD at bay. Meanwhile, Captain America, a super solider eminently at home on the battlefield, is frozen for decades, and returns to an America he does not recognize and does not know how to interact with. Again, this could be said to reflect the disorientation experienced by returning service personnel who simply cannot adjust to civilian life.

Very Human Portrayals

While characters explicitly suffering from mental illnesses are thus usually dealt with less than kindly by superhero comics, many characters are arguably suffering from less obvious forms of mental illness. Several characters demonstrate clear signs of PTSD, and these are dealt with in a much more sensitive way. Often nuanced and sympathetic characters, the traumatic drivers behind their often unsympathetic actions render them understandable, and humanize them. It is the way in which these characters deal with and focus their reactions to the traumas which have damaged them that show their worth as characters in the superhero universe.