"These essays examine how Batman is both the canvas on which our cultural identity is painted, and the Eternal Other that informs our own journeys of understanding. Questions relating to a wide range of disciplines--philosophy, literature, psychology, pop culture, and more--are thoroughly explored, in a manner that will appeal both to scholars and to fans"--;Virtue in Gotham: Aristotle's Batman -- The Dark Knight Errant: Power and Authority in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns -- Why Adam West Matters: Camp and Classical Virtue -- Dark Knight, White Knight, and the King of Anarchy -- Introducing a Little Anarchy: The Dark Knight and Power Structures on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown -- Batman's Canon: Hybridity and the Interpretation of the Superhero -- Seminar on the Burloined Batarang: Batman and Lacan -- Queer Matters in The Dark Knight Returns: Why We Insist on a Sexual Identity for Batman -- The Hero We Read: The Dark Knight, Popular Allegoresis, and Blockbuster Ideology -- Rolling the Boulder in Gotham -- Figuration of the Superheroic Revolutionary: The Dark Knight of Negation -- "One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain": Grim Humor and the Warrior Ethos -- "And Doesn't All the World Love a Clown?": Finding the Joker and the Representation of His Evil -- Call It (Friendo): Flipism and Folklore in No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight.