Batman, Turkey Mayor Sues Batman Director for Identity Theft

Batman has had his share of vilification, and he has taken his place as Gotham’s fall guy time and time again. Now, he’s getting flack from another city though: Batman, Turkey. Huseyin Kalkan, the city’s mayor, is suing Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan for identity theft and attributes unsolved murders and female suicides to psychological trauma suffered by Batman residents following release of the film this year.

The Guardian reports:

Hüseyin Kalkan, mayor of Batman, an ancient oil-producing town in south-eastern Turkey, is planning to sue Christopher Nolan, director of the recent box-office behemoth The Dark Knight, over the use of the name in the film. He claims Nolan and Warner Bros, which owns the film rights to the comic-book character, purloined the name without checking with him first.

"There is only one Batman in the world," said Kalkan, a member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society party. "The American producers used the name of our city without informing us."

The mayor will produce evidence of his city's neolithic origins to support his case that it predates the celluloid Batman. DC Comics originated Bob Kane's character in 1939 in Detective Comics #27.

Kalkan also blames a series of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact suffered by the town after being placed under the spotlight by Nolan's film.

Right, I’m sure that there are unsolved murders because of the Batman movies, not because the city is run by a mayor completely focused on inane things like movies about renegade crime fighters dressed like animals.