The timing, it must be admitted, is a little strange. The Batman comics were first published by DC Comics in 1939, but it has taken a full 69 years for the mayor of the small Turkish town named, yes, Batman to take legal action against the impostor using his town’s noble moniker. Undeterred by his tardiness, Huseyin Kalkan is throwing himself into the battle of Batman vs Batman with undiminished gusto: “There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.” The American producers in question, of course, are the men behind The Dark Knight, the latest in a seemingly infinite number of artistic enterprises and commercial ventures to prominently feature the alter ego of Bruce Wayne. Cynics have speculated that the success of Christopher Nolan’s current movie (his second venture in the franchise after Batman Begins) has prompted this lawsuit and that the approximately $1 billion dollars the picture has earned may not be coincidental to the timing of the action. Kalkan, however, has very specific charges he is bringing against Warner Bros., the studio behind The Dark Knight. According to Variety, the mayor holds the film and its makers responsible for “a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city's inhabitants” while also alleging that former Batman residents “have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad.”