Don’t push analogies too far.

How? How exactly did he give them agency? I’m not trying to attack you, I am genuinely curious.

thank you for asking! I was kind of up in arms when I first posted this, along with a lot of other statements but i’m happy to clarify.

here’s the thing. Lara El and Martha Wayne die. Period. Point blank. Unless we’re talking about alternate universes or elseworld canon, they die.

do they need to die? that’s up for debate. but to follow canon, they die.

and typically speaking, with little to no exceptions, they die unceremoniously, without face, without voice, just death. further the heroes story.

not only do they die without true or real standing in canon, both mothers are often offered little in the way of influencing their children's story. For both Martha and Lara, they are given the backseat to Thomas Wayne and Jor El as voices, influences, and motivators for both Clark’s and Bruce’s hero arcs.

the story is held by fathers, and passed down to sons.

so what do i mean by zack snyder gave agency to two women, two mothers, who do in fact die? a fact he makes no effort to change, move, or undermine?

he puts the story back into their hands. They die. This is canon. This is a fact, in the main universe, throughout time, to be indisputable. but throughout canon, martha wayne and lara el have been given little to no face time in comparison to their husbands.

in man of steel, the first time we see lara is in giving birth. the fact that she’s not just a voiceless vision of clark’s birthmother is something fairly new in and of itself, but the fact that she fights, is an equal to jor, sends her son away and thwarts the villain as her husband dies, is something new, certainly to the big screen. she stands at the trial for zod, she witnesses and pushes for his exile into the phantom zone. and when facing death, it is Lara who stands on her feet, head held high, hoping for a better life for her son, and accepting her fate with dignity in a way she’s not been given. Everytime Jor is on screen later, or nearly every time i should say, he mentions Lara as his equal. Lara, though dead with Jor, is given equal narrative importance rather than being relegated to the backseat while jor takes sole control of the krypton narrative in Clark’s life.

what about Martha Wayne?

Martha Wayne has died in every batman film, with her husband, and in nearly every comic and cartoon versions. but though Bruce mourns both of his parents deeply, it is often the legacy left behind by Thomas that eclipses Bruce’s story.

in batman v superman, thomas is shot first, and Marth fights for her son’s life. She struggles with the mugger, and Thomas’s lasts words were Martha. the love of his life, dying to protect their son. later, it is her grave stone in Bruce’s nightmare that triggers the bat/demon illusion that alludes to Bruce’s own descent into madness, and it is the importance that’s she’s been given in this film that later ties to Bruce’s breakdown when Clark mentions Martha.

now did early comic writers think about the connection between Clark’s adoptive mother named Martha and Bruce’s own mother named martha? no, probably not, and certainly didn’t think of it as anything more than a common name of the era that sounded motherly. but zack snyder placed narrative importance on martha wayne, and was able to connect it to martha kent, given a connection of humanity between two warring heroes, one descending into grief-stricken hatred(bruce), and one desperate to save his mother and the love of his life, after all the world turned their back on him (clark).

the point of this is. Yes. Martha Wayne and Lara El die. This is canon.

But Zack Snyder gave them back their will, their fight, and their importance to their children in a way that hasn’t been done before, or at the very least, has not been given as much significance in a wide platform. In a comic world where the importance of maleness and fatherhood and legacy are absolute, Zack Snyder placed his turning points on motherhood.

Corypheus’ prison was deep in the Vimmark Mountains, not Kirkwall–but the wardens did speculate if he had influence on Kirkwall being… like that.

However, I think the high rates of demons and possessions and the thin veil is more likely be attributed to the fact that the veil is thinner in places of great violence and arcane intervention. Such, as, you know, the fact that Kirkwall was once the centre of the slave trade in the Free Marches, with over a million slaves passing through the city gates. The blood sacrifices, torture and general violence and suffering Kirkwall was the site of was immeasurable…

“Because the new slave outpost would become wealthy beyond imagining, competition among prospects reportedly took over twenty years to resolve, resulting in great bloodshed in the frontier, well away from the archon’s eyes. Magister took arms against magister, mostly in the form of small armies of serfs and mercenaries. Over half the slaves in existence allegedly died in these battles…”

“The statues are not monuments to the suffering of slaves. Every inch and angle of the courtyard was designed by magisters bent on breaking the spirit of newcomers. Executions here took place daily, sometimes hourly, and corpses were hung from gibbets throughout the yard. New slaves trudging in from the docks saw what awaited them.”

“The Overseer lined seventeen slaves up, one behind the other, at the lip of the quarry. The second slave in line was ordered to push the man in front over the edge. The third slave pushed the second, the fourth the third, and on it went. Workers in the quarry heard the screams, the crack of bone against rock, and then the survivor’s anguished cries as the Overseer’s dragonlings feasted on the sixteen helpless bodies splayed upon the quarry’s basin.”

“Radun’s growing influence prevented the magisters from touching him, but eventually they had him poisoned. Furious, a group of Radun’s supporters stormed the Gallows and were massacred, and so began a bloody yearlong rebellion. The city burned, and wealthy Hightown was sacked. The magisters hung before cheering crowds. Emerius assumed the new name of Kirkwall, “kirk” meaning “black,” after its jet stone cliffs. The new city plunged into anarchy for over a decade, and its defenses fell into ruin. Kirkwall has been conquered many times since, the city’s own independence suffering since the freeing of its slaves.”

“The list of elven children is numbing: “three maimed, two mute, and four serviceable.” These numbers don’t add up. For every thousand slaves that came to Kirkwall, a hundred disappeared. I checked the tax rolls, as well, and the discrepancy exists there, too, if one has the wit to see it: 203 slaves went missing in the Imperium’s 312th year! That’s just one year. Other records showed similar discrepancies. Over centuries, practically a whole civilization of slaves simply disappeared.”

“The blood of countless slaves was spilled beneath the city in sacrifice. Whole buildings were built upon lakes of blood. The sewers have grooves where blood would flow, all leading down. The scale is hard to fathom. A blood mage can channel great power from a simple cut. At least a thousand unfortunates died here every year for centuries. For what ungodly purpose would one need so much power?”

…And the magisters were purposely thinning the veil The were doing something in a whole secret city under the city, (the reason for said massive sacrifices) and I mean fuck, Kirkwall’s very design is made up of ancient magic glyphs… (Like having recently finished reading then watching Good Omens, let me just say I am entirely prepared for Kirkwall to go up in flames)

“The magisters had hundreds of mages deep below Kirkwall. They lived and researched here, far from the scrutiny of common men. Many ancient cities specialized in arcane research, but why did Kirkwall hide its efforts here? Why go to such great pains to keep it out of sight?”

“The mason showed me a plan of the city, and my heart skipped a beat. There were patterns in the intersections, back alleys, and boulevards. Some magisters believed in the power of symbols or shapes. In the oldest parts of the city, one can make out the outlines of glyphs in the very streets! What manner of magic is this?”

“It is well known that the Veil is thin in Kirkwall, small wonder given the suffering in the city. But we’ve discovered the magisters were deliberately thinning it even further. Beneath the city, demons can contact even normal men. Did they seek the Black City to compound the madness of their previous efforts? Or was it something else?”

All in all, Kirkwall was fucked long before Corypheus ever moved in next door.

SOURCES:

Codex Entry: The Bone Pit (DA:2)

Codex entry: Kirkwall - The Gallows (DA:2)

Codex entry: History of Kirkwall: Chapter 1 (DA:2)

Codex entry: History of Kirkwall: Chapter 2 (DA:2)

Hello! I was hired by the creator to do the illustrations only, yes :)

The creator of Aegean Adventures is Stoo Goff, and a few other people have written some of the adventures included!

Disclaimer: I’m not too familiar with The Shadow, I got all my info from frantic googling. 

I’d say they’re both impressive examples of terror heroes. Both work to take back the night through stealth and horror. Though Batman has staunch rules against killing, while the shadow had no problem killing folks. The shadow also has the ability to “cloud the minds of men” and has powers of hypnotism, so he works a lot with illusions

I want to give points to the Shadow, as he’s the first, and helped cement a lot of superhero tropes while inspiring several other heroes...

Batman, however, is also incredibly inspiring, outside of the fistfights and daring battles against Gotham's criminal elite, he’s shown to inspire hope. He believes that everyone is worth it, and his eternal crusade on crime is born out of his desire for no one to experience what he has experienced. 

Basically, batman cares, and to paraphrase others, “if you can’t imagine batman comforting a scared child, you’re not writing batman”.

There’s really no right or wrong way to do it. My advice would be to start with an idea of the project you want to write (genre, style, etc.) and then think about the type of person you would imagine writing it. Who could pull off that kind of story? What’s their name? What’s their background? You can keep it basic or answer more detailed questions to flesh out the character more; that’s all up to you. Mainly though, the goal is to create a character who you believe would be able to write what you want to write.

I hope that helps!