InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Have you guys seen Mark?"

trelas (trelas) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-11 19:04:00

SuperTripping
Yesterday I posted scenes from the first issue of Green's run on Superman/Batman and realized that it would be a crime to not post a certain scene from the third issue of the storyline. At the end of the first issue, Superman has convinced Batman to help him round-up the kryptonite on Earth, so it won't stop him from helping people. It just turns out that there is a lot of it around after the Kryptonite meteor in the first storyline of the title. While they are doing this, Batman receives a weird signal from the satellites, indicating a location of Kryptonite in a certain bar. What bar? The Oblivion Bar, which is basically the hangout for magic-users, so Supes and Bats are simply thrilled in going there. At the bar they do find the kryptonite in a medallion sealed way and are confused by it being silver and so old that Krypton was still around when it was made. At that point Clark picks it up and it goes bam.

Clark goes unconcious and is taken to the satellite to study, with Zatanna there explaining that the kryptonite probably caused an enchancement on Supes, Bats claiming there is no magic, but rather areas not yet studied and Wally names the silver Kryptonite Magic-K. So what did the silver kryptonite do?

Yep, Superman is h- Highly unstable. And it is awesome, even if smell doesn't work that way.

When Zatanna finally sees the amulet which caused this, she recognizes it as a magical artifact used to enslave the mind of an enemy and the only way to remove the curse is through it's sister amulet. Where is that amulet? On Dinosaur Island. They actually poke a lot of fun on the existance of the island.

Zee and Bats learn from a tribe on the island that the other amulet is located in a volcano, but that no one with godly powers can enter it as it is guarded by enchantments left by a jealous god. That leaves pretty much Batman to be the one to retrieve it. Meanwhile, at the satellite...

That 'Stupid Batman' line just cracks me up. A small word warning at this time as the story now transitions to a sadder tone.

Okay, Batman's stand on magic is pretty hilarous, but still.

I realize some people will disagree with me, but to me those last few panels were just so powerful and in a way sad in how Supes didn't get that about Bats, even though they were close enough to be brothers. With that I end this post, once again hoping that the people enjoyed these pages as much as I did.

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freeman333
2009-10-11 11:16 pm UTC (link)

Unfortunately, that's not a terribly good example, since it's actually pretty easy to deny the existence of nitrogen in the atmosphere. I've certainly never seen any nitrogen in the atmosphere--and God knows, I've been looking for a while--I've only heard other people make the claim that it's there, and that they have proof. Sure, maybe they think they have proof, but they could be lying, or they could simply be misinterpreting the information, or acting on incomplete information. To accept any of the evidence they offer means first accepting, a priori, the fact that their underlying conclusions aren't flawed, that they're not simply crazy, that they actually know what they're talking about, and that there is in fact actually something meaningful there for them to be talking about. Deny any of those, and all the arguments for the presence of nitrogen in the atmosphere come to naught.

Sure, you could claim that there are other things that are best explained by the presence of nitrogen in the atmosphere, but you can't conclusively prove that those things couldn't have some other cause--you literally can't, since there's no way to prove a negative (that I'm aware of, anyway). "Nitrogen in the atmosphere" could be nothing more than a convenient fiction that we choose to accept because it makes other things make sense.

All of these arguments, conceivably, apply to Batman's position on magic. Sure, he's seen plenty of stuff for which "it's magic!" serves as a working explanation. But to accept that as the true explanation means accepting that there is no better explanation available, and that may simply not be the case. As Bats points out, there could be another explanation for all these phenomena, it just hasn't been discovered yet.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't nitrogen in the atmosphere (honestly, I couldn't care less either way), nor am I saying there's no magic in the DCU. I'm just saying that Batman can easily hold the position he holds without committing any logical fallacy (that I'm aware of). He's just making it harder for himself, since he's denying something that most of the people around him accept as true--but when has Batman ever been the type to go along with what other people say just to make his own life easier?

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icon_uk
2009-10-11 11:48 pm UTC (link)

Actually I picked that one precisely because whilst you can't see it, any halfway decent chemistry student could prove the existence of nitrogen in the atmosphere beyond any shadow of a doubt. They MIGHT be lying in a vast conspiracy, but it would be absurd to suggest so in the face of multiple, credible scientific proofs, to the extent you'd make yourself look like a loon by denying it. Humans have an enormous capacity for that sort of thing, but it does them no credit when they use it.

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freeman333
2009-10-13 02:57 am UTC (link)

I'm curious, since I already went to all that trouble to write a contrary opinion--what experiments could be used to prove the existence of nitrogen "beyond the shadow of a doubt"? I'm no scientist, but my understanding has always been that any type of scientific proof was always predicated on an acceptance of certain underlying principles, which of necessity cannot themselves be proven, since they are the mechanism by which proof is established, and can't be applied to themselves.

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