Warning: This piece includes serious spoilers for Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires.

I have superpowers.

No, really. Ask my students, and they’ll tell you about how technological devices have an odd propensity to start working when I get closer to them.¹ Our current theory is that something about me (potentially a shared memory of all the computers I bricked as a child, because those For Dummies books my parents had me read were accurately named in my case) causes complex machinery to recoil at my approach.²

Between that and my preternatural talent for breaking things (which, at its best, manifests as an ability to open any container) we soon settled on calling my superhero identity Haywire.³

At which point, I suddenly realized that I had named myself “Haywire.”

Not, say, Alboroto. Not Caos.⁴ Not Desbarajuste or Trastorno. I had not even considered anything so searingly and unmistakably boricua as Algarete,⁵ Revolú or Salpafuera.

In other words, confronted with the problem of naming a superpowered identity, I went to English. Perhaps that is mere circumstance: after all, I was in a classroom full of Anglophone students who are shocked to discover other languages are more than a cipher for English.

Yet I could feel an uncomfortable thought surroding⁶ my brain stem. You may laugh when I finally express it; the answer may seem completely obvious to you; and yet, I think it’s worth asking.

But before we go there, I promised you spoilers for a movie I haven’t even mentioned yet. How about we get to it?

Bats, Bulls, Birds, Blooms and Burning Boats

Because not a single one of the neurons in my brain possesses that mystical quality known as “chill,” I felt that thought while I watched Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires.

AB:CoE itself is exactly what I expected when I put it on: decent fun. To be fair, it had a downhill battle where I was concerned: I have yet to find the Elseworlds take on Batman I haven’t enjoyed. A film where Aztec!BruceWayne (here named Yohualli Coatl⁷) is the priest of a god whose name⁸ means “biting bat” has the exact dimensions of my alley. Add literally Hernán Cortés as the main villain, and we’re cooking electronically.

Final warning: The spoilers begin after this picture.

Given you subscribe to a newsletter that’ll tell you Dirty Jack Doyle played professional baseball in Cuba and Puerto Rico, you’re probably not shocked to find out that I love a yoink-and-twist on an old classic.

The first Batman comics I owned were in the Knightfall storyline, so seeing Azrael in this context was fun. If anything, he seems a more natural fit here, among conquistadores who routinely cited divine justifications for their murderous deeds. Beyond that, I certainly enjoyed AB:CoE’s bloodier take on two of the villains most identified with Batman’s origins.

His dictis, I can’t say AB:CoE is uniform. Its animation certainly isn’t: many scenes are lushly illustrated, but believe your eyes when they detect gaps in coverage. In many scenes, something in my brain insisted on an odd flatness to the characters . . . but it was almost always the Spaniards, so there’s every chance it was a conscious decision.

There’s also some chuckleworthy visual bits, like Mesoamerican Poison (whoops, “Forest”) Ivy discovering the Wonderbra a few centuries early.

On the audio front, I watched the dub,⁹ and there is a palpable difference in commitment between, say, Jay Hernandez’s (Yohualli) and Raymond Cruz’s ([sigh] Yoka) performances. That’s not necessarily a compliment to the latter, insofar as Cruz has the worst case of television voice I think I’ve ever heard, but I appreciate it when an actor takes a big swing.

More disturbing for me is that there’s a clear effort to flatten (unnecessarily, I think) the narrative of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Under no circumstances am I going to pretend that Hernán¹⁰ Cortés, Pedro de Alvarado, and the rest of their pack of bloodthirsty social climbers were well-intentioned, let alone heroic.¹¹ At the same time, you know what I always say: be for real. The fall of Tenochtitlán, and everything that led to it, was due to Cortés allying with the Tlaxcalteca and others, many of which had excellent reasons to resent the Mexica who formed the ruling class of the Aztec Empire.

Speaking of those alliances, Malintzin is nowhere to be found, so you’re left wondering exactly when and how Cortés and his men learned to speak Nahuatl. Since they seem to have learned it by osmosis without any help from the locals, you could be forgiven for concluding that Cortés was right to believe God was on his side. This also means that, since Yohualli’s mother is already dead when the story begins, your two named female characters are the aforementioned Forest Ivy and Jaguar Woman.

(By the way, they never talk to each other, so AB:CoE blatantly fails the Bechdel test.¹²)

Meanwhile, it might shock those of you who know anything about the Aztecs that AB:CoE takes place in an alternate reality where the Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice. At no point is Yohualli, a member of the priestly class, called on to perform those sacrifices in moments of crisis, which is a well-attested Aztec religious practice.

That isn’t to say there is no depiction of human sacrifice in AB:CoE—but it’s explicitly a villainous act that creates the Aztec Joker. Admittedly, the scene of Yoka literally whitening himself into permanent insanity, via the ashes of the family he murdered, is one of the most effective in the whole movie.

As some of you no doubt already think, those choices are defensible. A 21st-century viewer may want to see Batman give those Spaniards what for, but would balk at cheering for the Aztecs if they’re an oppressive force whose priests routinely rip people’s hearts out.

Would it have been more honest? Yes.
Would it have been a more interesting watch? Also true.
Would it have raised some thorny questions about who the “good guys” are? Oh, you bet your ass.

Similarly, to call Malintzin a complex historical figure is an undersale of astronomical proportion, so I get why they would leave her out of the story . . . but I’m still pretty disappointed, not the least because without her, the Spaniards might have ended up as red smears on a wall somewhere.

I’m especially annoyed because her linguistic and diplomatic skills, and the perspicacity she showed in navigating an extremely perilous situation, could have made for a hell of a reimagined character. Give me a female Riddler working behind the scenes to form an independent center of power in post-invasion Mesoamerica, or a Mad Hatter alternative who’s been microdosing the Spaniards into letting her live and discovers she can now control their minds. Whatever you want! It’s the least you could do when Raymond Cruz is out here putting maximum effort into sounding like the South Park version of Carlos Mencia.

Unfortunately, this approach became actually infuriating when I realized that, while the animators do not shy away from showing Spanish atrocities, Yohualli!Batman has to feel like an important part of Aztec resistance to the Spanish invasion without affecting its ultimate course, since that would invite profound nerdery about whether a few thousand Spaniards would win against one glidey boy.

The history of Aztec Batman thus ends at the Noche Victoriosa, in which the Spanish were temporarily driven out of Tenochtitlán. In AB:CoE, Yohualli organizes the effort and dies defending the city, along with hundreds of his countrymen who are stabbed, shot, and blown to pieces by the retreating Spaniards.

But wait! As Yohualli is laid to rest by his brokenhearted faithful servant and the Jaguar Woman (who got real interested in her fellow heroic fursona right before he died) something happens:

Here endeth our main plot. You don’t see what our protagonist gets up to after Tzinacan makes his black eyes gold. Does he go Round Two against Cortés, and pack him up properly this time? Does he put together a band of heroes to maintain a free presence in Mesoamerica? Does he curb the worst of Spanish abuses from the shadows? Is this purely a king in the mountain scenario?

In a vacuum, I prefer that question unanswered. I know what my imaginary sequel is. It’s probably not the same as yours, and that’s fine. If AB:CoE’s creators had shown nerve in handling the nuances of their subject matter, I would like to think I wouldn’t be complaining here.

Unfortunately, given what we got, I think these questions have to be asked. After all, if the Aztecs have access to an immortal warrior with the ability to turn native materials into effective weaponry, and they still lose to the Spanish?

Maybe Forest Ivy is right and that’s just the way it is, but I’d prefer not to believe her.

What’s Even Left for Part II?

I mentioned a particular thought eating away at my brain stem. You notice how I never said what it was?