But one of the most fervent supporters of the Caped Crusader is not in a comic book, but in the United States Senate, and he has known the Bat for more than 80 years.
When he is not working on the Senate chambers in Washington, Leahy retires to Gotham, where Batman fights cartoon villains and equips the Batmobile. It is a comfort he acquired when he was 4 years old.
When Leahy met Batman
Leahy declined an interview for this story through his spokesman, but his affinity for all things Batman is well documented. As he wrote in the preface to “Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman”, he was born just a year after the first Batman comic published in 1939.
He discovered Batman at the age of 4, when he received his first library card. He attended the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, where he spent many afternoons poring over comics. While her school friends were raving about Superman, Leahy found a “similar bond” with the Bat.
“Entering the world of Batman through my imagination opened the door to an eternal love for reading,” he wrote in his preface.
He continued to spend hours in the library every day until adulthood, and even after moving to Washington, he made time to show up. He is a vocal advocate of literacy and library preservation so that children can have similar formative experiences with books.
Leahy’s appearances from page to screen
Leahy was elected to the Senate in 1974 and until the mid-1990s, his affinity for Batman did not have much to do with his duties on Capitol Hill.
“I explain to everyone that being blown up was OK because my wife is a registered nurse,” he joked to Roll Call in 2016. “She pulled me together and I never missed a vote.”
His most notable appearance, however, came in 2008’s “The Dark Knight”, when he confronts Heath Ledger’s Joker and tells the villain that he “is not intimidated by bandits”. The Joker, true to form, responds by grabbing Leahy’s character and threatening him with a knife.
Ledger, who died before the film’s release, is Leahy’s favorite Joker.
“He scared me a lot when he came at me with the knife,” he told Roll Call. “I didn’t have to act.”
“I have a lot of other things going on with Covid, with appropriation accounts,” he told the newspaper in August.
Although her film roles have certainly satisfied her inner fanboy, Leahy does so for the library where her love of reading flourished. He donates all fees for his appearances and royalty checks for residual exhibitions to his beloved Kellogg-Hubbard Library, where he helped finance a children’s ward named after him. Just for her roles in the “The Dark Knight” trilogy, Leahy donated more than $ 150,000 to her hometown library, said Carolyn Brennan, co-director of the library.
In 2012, the library hung a sign in honor of Leahy, who the team called a “superhero”.
Why Leahy loves Batman so much
Leahy met Batman when he was a boy, but his love for the fictional hero is central to who he is and the lawgiver he has become. Batman instilled Leahy’s love for reading and promoting literacy and for doing justice (albeit as a government servant, not a cover guard).
Leahy preferred Batman to other characters because, unlike God-like Superman or Super-powerful Spider-Man, Batman was just a man, though extremely rich, with “human strengths and weaknesses”. The danger Batman faced was different from that of other heroes – it seemed real, Leahy wrote in the preface to the DC collection.
“Batman prevailed through superior intellect and detective skills, through the freedoms provided by great wealth and pure will,” wrote Leahy in his preface. “Not superpowers, but skill, science and rationality.”
Much like Bruce Wayne, Leahy is just a man, though with more power than most and the chance to make real, tangible changes in his own Gotham. Following Batman’s example, he promised to use this power wisely.