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Review by Michael Sims
As a small child, Bruce Wayne witnessed a hoodlum murdering his parents. Outside the comic book universe, he might have grown up and become a lobbyist for handgun control, or he might have founded Adult Children of Gunned-Down Parents. Instead he became a twisted vigilante with a mask fetish. Life is unpredictable.
Just as odd as the hero's canonical origin is the true story of how the character came to exist. One Friday afternoon in the winter of 1938-9, a colleague at DC Comics said to illustrator Bob Kane, "We're looking for another superhero. Do you think you could come up with one?"
Kane replied, "I'll have one for you Monday." He went home and invented the Batman. Comic books were six years old; Kane was 22.
In Kane's first sketches, Batman wore a red union suit and bulky bat-wings. Writer Bill Finger suggested the costume with which we are now familiar -- and also came up with the alter ego, Bruce Wayne. When Kane delivered his drawings, someone worried, "It looks kind of mysterious and creepy. Do you think the public will like it?"
The public liked it. During the Golden Age of comics, from 1938 to 1954, there were 700-plus costumed characters. Gradually most went the way of the singing cowboy. Raise your hand if you remember Steel Sterling or the Blonde Phantom. Or how about that entomological foe of evil, the Blue Beetle, who acquired his superpowers by taking vitamin 2X? Batman was one of the handful of superheroes to endure beyond the early 1950s.
From the first, comic books and movies were arm-in-arm. The schizoid felon Two-Face was inspired by Fredric March's double role in the 1932 version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Catwoman was modeled partially upon Jean Harlow. Bob Kane said that he patterned Batman himself after Douglas Fairbanks's portrayal of the swashbuckling Zorro.
The cross-fertilization worked both ways. During the 1940s, Batman was featured in two adventure serials. Then came the campy mid-'60s TV show, with fisticuffs punctuated by POW! and KER-SPLOOSH! The series proved so popular that, through some tragic oversight, Adam West and Burt Ward were permitted to camp it up in the full-length 1966 film "Batman: The Movie." West never again scaled such terpsichorean heights, and the world came to regard Batman as a buffoon in tights.
Such irreverence had to be battled. Gradually comic books began restoring Batman's nocturnal-vigilante style. In 1986, artist and writer Frank Miller gave the world his vision of heroism and urban decay, "The Dark Knight Returns." It became a bestseller and revitalized the genre. Soon the dynamic duo returned to TV. They star in an Emmy-winning animated TV series, "The New Adventures of Batman and Robin," which is beautifully drawn and maintains the classical tone.
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Batman was one of the handful of superheroes to endure beyond the early 1950s. |
In 1995's third outing, "Batman Forever," Val Kilmer's Batman was reunited with the Boy Wonder, Robin (Chris O'Donnell). It was high time. In the comics, there have been several Robins. The first grew up, retired his teenage persona, and went his own way as the ponytailed Nightwing. The second was killed off at the behest of bloodthirsty teenage boys calling a 900-number. The latest is alive and well in Gotham City.
The Boy Wonder shares the marquee in the fourth Batman movie, premiering this month. Batman and Robin features yet another Batman (George Clooney, resident heartthrob on television's "ER"). This time there will be Batgirl and, in the opposite corner, such villains as Poison Ivy. Michael Friedman's novelization (not exactly our favorite literary form) at least captures something of the film's appeal (WarnerAspect, $5.99, 0446604585).
Batman's popularity in film was inevitable. Like comics, movies are a visual medium that thrives on spectacle. More surprising is Batman's appearance in novels such as the one published by popular crime novelist Andrew Vachss in 1995, "Batman: The Ultimate Evil" (Warner, $5.99, 0446603368). A New York City lawyer, Vachss is a tireless crusader against child abuse. To show how far Batman has come in his almost six decades, the evil of the title is child prostitution. It is a harrowing story, but Vachss perfectly captures the hybrid of obsession and compassion that drives the Batman.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Batman books for small children. As Hollywood has discovered, Batman has a broad appeal. Veteran Batman comics writer Chuck Dixon tells of a child enamored of the caped crusader's archenemy in "Batman: The Joker's Apprentice" (Little, Brown, $13.95, 0316177989). Susan Colón's "Batman: The Terror of Two-Face" even bears an enticement: "27 Super Hero Tattoos Inside!"
If you want to join the true Batfans, you have to go to the comic books themselves. But you can find much of the history of Batman collected into handsome trade paperbacks, published by DC Comics, which nowadays is a division of the Warner empire. Most are in the $12.95 range. For the truly devoted, however, DC has such hardbacks as the "Dark Knight Archives."
In these books you can revisit classic adventures from the Golden Age. Or you can encounter long-running stories from recent issues, as Batman battles everything from alien headhunters to drug addiction. The lot of the man in the bat suit is not an easy one. It's a jungle out there. That's why they call them heroes.
Michael Sims writes about everything from "Batman" to the platypus in his new book, "Darwin's Orchestra" (Henry Holt).
©1997, ProMotion, inc.