Batman takes on new French angle

THE caped crusader has a new French sidekick as DC Comics aims to build a global empire of pen-and-ink crimefighters.

Avoiding the fairly obvious new name of L’Homme de Chauve-Souris, they have plumped instead for Nightrunner – and, more to the point, the new French lieutenant is no beret-wearing, white, Gallic smoothie, but Bilal Asselah, a red-blooded 22-year-old Sunni Muslim of Algerian origins from the riotous Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

British Batman writer David Hine told a fanzine he had originally looked at creating a Musketeer-style crime fighter, but felt it would be too bland. "Rather than use the obvious choice of The Musketeer as the new French Batman, I wanted to come up with the kind of hero I would want to see in a comic book if I were French. The process of developing a story is complex and there are all kinds of things I looked at.

"The urban unrest and problems of the ethnic minorities under Sarkozy’s government dominate the news from France and it became inevitable that the hero should come from a French-Algerian background."

With that in mind, Hine said Clichy-Sous-Bois, where the 2005 suburban riots began, was an "obvious location" for the home of Nightrunner, who took to crimefighting
after being caught up in a riot. He used his skills as a parkour runner – the free-running sport seen in the James Bond movie Casino Royale – to help him.

Hine said DC Comics aimed to shift the Batman legend to other countries and cultures. It is creating characters to use worldwide, including a Crusader-style UK Dark Knight.

He told the BBC: "We’re going to have a Batman in France, we’re going to have a Batman in Argentina, in Africa."

He added: "It was my task to come up with a story in Paris. and I wanted something new, something a little bit different.

"The Batman heroes are not super-powered; they are people who have natural athletic abilities, and for me a parkour runner was the obvious choice. Parkour runners in Paris tend to be from ethnic minorities.

"He happens to be a Muslim, as most French-Algerians are. There are a million Algerians in France and almost every Algerian who is born in France is a French citizen. It is not a question of whether he is or is not French."

However, the storyline was fiercely criticised by right-wing commentators in the US, who claimed that Muslims were the source of problems, not the solution.