I don't think I am particularly inclined to be polite about it.
The only real issue Mr. Reed seems to have stuck like a burr to is that "henchman" is somehow a comic/fantasy term, whereas "gangster" belong In The Rel World. The problem with that notion, though, is that in the end, all art is comparable. In fact, when you begin looking, you discover that the entirety of literature - and I mean the entire corpus of human writing ever - can be divided into just five differing plotlines.
That's it. Five plotlines. Thousands, perhaps millions of books, and they all compare to each other somehow. At least as far as distilling them down to the basic archetypal plots is concerned. So dno't go about telling me that I cannot in any valid way make a comparasent between Film A and Film B.
And that's another matter; of course Batman is not a quintessential gangster film - just as it is not a quintessentil drama - so perhaps some people who don't exactly know how to parse through the exterior devices can miss it - but nonetheless it is a film that deals with the issues of Law vs. Crime Syndicate and with the issues of doing things the legal way vs. doing them the expedient way, not to mention present a certain amount of connundrum the hero is facing regarding his or her morality. Even if it is not a quintesentia distillation of a plotline, it certainly deals with enough particular issues and archetypes that I can say; "Here is what it compares to, and this is how it compares to that." Especially since The Godfather is a very much valid candidate to the best thing ever created within the cinematic medium. Just like I can compare new books to great classics, so can I compare new films to the great classics of their genre.
It would help, though, if Mr. Reed were to actually see the film in question.
In addition, there's the little issue of him trying to have the cake, and eat it, too. If Mr. Reed expects for a film based on a comic to be treated with any amount of seriousness, he has to allow that Batman isn't just "some guy who runs around dressed like a bat" but perhaps has something more substantial to offer. If he does, suddenly artistic discussions such as "how does this drama compare to that drama?" are not only valid, but necessary in order to pin the film down in the place it belongs.
Incidentally, haven't you ever heard of Pullamn's His Dark Materials compared to Paradise Lost?
I think that I have sufficient literary education (i.e, I actually read a book in my lifetime) as well as a nice degree in Linguistics to be able to discuss both artistic issues as well as synonymy with credibility and without my opinions being labelled as idiotic.
