Batman

By Liam Burke

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-017-7

Contents

Foreword WILL BROOKER,
Introduction LIAM BURKE,
A Fan’s History LIAM BURKE,
FAN APPRECIATION (INTERVIEWS),
Paul Levitz,
E. Paul Zehr,
Josh Hook and Kendal Coombs,
Dennis and Elijah Vasquez,
Travis Langley,
Seamus Keane,
Kim Newman,
Michael E. Uslan,
Contributor Biographies,
Image Credits,
Part 1: BEING BATMAN,
Dark Hero Rising: How Online Batman Fandom Helped Create a Cultural Archetype JENNIFER DONDERO,
Heroes with Issues: Fan identification with Batman ANNA-MARIA COVICH,
Being Batman: From Board Games to Computer Platforms ROBERT DEAN,
Part 2: EMBRACING THE KNIGHT,
The Passive Case: How Warner Bros. Employed Viral Marketing and Alternate Reality Gaming to Bring Fandom Back into the Culture Industry MARGARET ROSSMAN,
Canonizing The Dark Knight: A Digital Fandom Response TIM POSADA,
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: The Nolan/Ledger Joker, Morality, and the Hetero-Fictional Fan Impulse LESLIE MCMURTRY,
Part 3: REPRESENTATIONS OF FANDOM,
Inspired, Obsessive and Nostalgic: The Facets of Fandom in ‘Beware the Gray Ghost’ JOSEPH DAROWSKI,
Villainous Adoration: The Role of Foe as Fan in Batman Narratives TONY W. GARLAND,
Part 4: INSPIRATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS,
“Elementary, My Dear Robin!”: Batman, Sherlock Holmes, and Detective Fiction Fandom MARC NAPOLITANO,
Dark Knight Triumphant: Fandom, Hegemony and the Rebirth of Batman on Film WILLIAM PROCTOR,

CHAPTER 1

Batman: A Fan’s History

Liam Burke

[right arrow] It is difficult to remember a time when the world was not in a perpetual state of Batmania. Today, Batman is the basis of a blockbuster film series, a universally-adored video game and a host of other media and entertainments. However, like the penniless Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012), the character has experienced many hard times, including the post-World War II decline in superhero popularity, the camp hangover from the television series that prevented mainstream audiences from recognizing the renewed complexity of the comics, and the mid-1990s’ film adaptations that pushed the Dark Knight back into the neon mire he had spent decades clambering out from. Yet, throughout, Batman fans have kept their hero at the forefront of popular culture. What follows is a history of Batman from the point of view of those who know him best – the fans.

It is appropriate, given the important role that fans have played over Batman’s undulating career that the creation of the hero was, in itself, an act of fandom. Bob Kane was already an established cartoonist in 1939 when editor Vin Sullivan tasked him with creating a character to complement DC Comics’ already soaring star, Superman. Kane’s first attempt was the red unitard and domino mask-wearing ‘Bird-Man’, but fortunately for Kane (and legions of future Bat-fans), the cartoonist had enlisted the services of his frequent collaborator Bill Finger. On Finger’s advice Bird-Man’s colour scheme shifted to black, his mechanical wings became a scalloped cape and his domino mask morphed into a cowl with pointed ears – Batman was born.

Kane shrewdly ensured that his was the only name that would appear on Batman comics, even if he was not directly involved in the particular issue’s creation. This saw many of the early innovators of Batman, including Finger, go unrecognized during the first decades of the hero’s comic book career. Kane was equally as astute when it came to developing Batman, with the cartoonist, and his growing roster of ghost artists, cherry picking from the best of pulp magazines, novels and the movies. Before Batman, Zorro featured a nobleman who emerged from a subterranean lair to right wrongs, while another darkly-clad pulp hero, The Shadow, was one of the first to use theatricality and deception ‘to cloud men’s minds’. Stretching back before pulp magazines, Batman’s analytical mind is indebted to the world’s first ‘greatest detective’, Sherlock Holmes, while the hero’s style draws on cinematic representations of Dracula and the caped killer of the 1930 mystery film, The Bat Whispers (dir. Roland West). This defanged Dracula with The Shadow’s style and Zorro’s toys may have ‘borrowed’ from pulp, film and literary precursors, but Batman blossomed in the superhero genre. By serving as the golden halo around the darker figure of the bat, Superman’s example lifted the nocturnal vigilante out of the gutter and placed him into a new genre populated by modern mythological icons.

Batman mirrored Superman’s success, and quickly annexed anthology series Detective Comics following his introduction in issue 27 (cover date May 1939). By Spring of 1940, Batman was rewarded with his own, eponymous title. Like Detective Comics #27, the cover found the hero swinging across a canary yellow sky, but now Batman was not alone, and he even seemed to be smiling. Premiering one month earlier, Batman’s sidekick was introduced as ‘The Sensational Character Find of 1940 … Robin the Boy Wonder’. Since his addition, Robin has divided fans, with many suggesting that his Technicolour presence diminished the gritty realism of the Dark Knight, while others argue that he introduced necessary warmth to Batman’s brooding austerity. However, in this era before letters pages, fanzines and the Internet, approval was registered through sales, and as Bill Boichel notes, Robin ‘was an immediate success and so widely imitated that the junior sidekick emerged as one of the most important terms in the superhero lexicon’.

In the same month Robin was introduced, Nazis troops invaded Denmark and Norway on their march across Europe. Soon comic books, many of which were produced by first generation European immigrants, joined the war effort; Duncan and Smith identify 61 patriotic comic book heroes that appeared between 1940 and 1944 including The Shield, The Patriot and most famously Captain America. The covers of Batman and Detective Comics during this time found the dynamic duo also doing their part. For instance, in Batman #15 (February–March 1943) the hero waived his ‘no guns’ policy by taking hold of a smoking machine gun as a caption reminded readers to ‘Keep Those Bullets Flying! Keep On Buying War Bonds & Stamps!’ However, Batman did not engage as fully in the conflict as those heroes created in direct response to the war effort. In Batman Unmasked, Will Brooker identifies only four stories during this period that can be described as ‘war-related’. Nonetheless, the war effort had a massive impact on Batman fandom, as many servicemen who missed home comforts and sought escape became avid comic book readers.

While the comic book Batman may not have fully engaged in the jingoism of the time, the hero’s first foray into cinema certainly did. Batman (dir. Lambert Hillyer) was a low-budget serial produced by Columbia in 1943. With hyperbolic chapter titles like ‘Slaves of the Rising Sun’, the 15-part adventure saw the dynamic duo tackling Axis criminal Dr. Daka. Although posters promised that Batman would be ‘[a] hundred times more thrilling on the screen!’ the serial’s paltry budget, with its ill-fitting costumes, cheap effects and basic sets, could not have met reader expectations. However, as Brooker explains, the serial was designed ‘to reach a wider viewing public than the established Batman fan-base’. This desire to target a larger market at the expense of fan interests would be a continual source of contention across Batman’s cinematic career.

A return to peacetime saw a massive lull in superhero popularity. Fortunately, as Batman was not as fully entwined with the war effort, he persevered while his Timely (today Marvel) Comics’ equivalents like Captain America were cancelled. Nonetheless, Batman still had to compete for fans with the variety of genres that filled the shelves, including Westerns, romance, horror and crime books. However, soon Batman would face a greater threat than Archie or the Rawhide Kid.

In 1954 psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent in which a post-World War II rise in juvenile delinquency was linked to comic books. Despite his later vilification, many acknowledge that Wertham, however misguided, was well intentioned, with former Spider-Man editor Danny Fingeroth describing Wertham as a ‘reform-minded progressive who was responsible for many positive changes in the psychiatric care system’. Nonetheless, the doctor made a number of assumptive leaps. Chiefly, he concluded that comic book fandom was a harmful activity after noticing that many of the troubled children he interviewed read comics. The focus of Wertham’s campaign was the now popular horror and crime comics. Nonetheless, superheroes did not escape the good doctor’s scorn with Wertham describing Batman and Robin’s relationship as ‘the wish dream of two homosexuals living together’.

Despite the outlandishness of Wertham’s conclusions, Americans were eager to challenge any threats to their hard won peace. Ultimately, a Senate subcommittee convened to discuss the comic ‘problem’, prompting the comic book industry to implement the self-censoring Comics Code Authority (CCA). All comics fulfilling the Wertham-inspired criteria would receive the ‘Approved by the Comics Code Authority’ stamp required for comics to be sold through mainstream outlets. Consequently, comics began moving away from crime and horror stories and back to the more widely acceptable action fantasies of superheroes.

Unfortunately for fans, the restrictions of the CCA meant that only the most anaemic stories made it onto the shelf. For instance, to avoid any further questions regarding the appropriateness of Batman and Robin’s relationship, Batman was repositioned as the head of a ‘Batman Family’ with the addition of Batwoman (1956), Batgirl (1961) and Ace The Bat-Hound (1955). However, even before the CCA, Batman comics had been in a creative tailspin, with the 1950s stories becoming an increasingly surreal mix of garish covers, sci-fi clichés and imaginary tales, which reached its apotheosis with the 1959 introduction of Bat-Mite, an imp-like extra-dimensional Batman fan. If fans ever wanted to see a return to the Dark Knight they would need to get organized, gain industry recognition, and demand change – they needed to become a community.

Comic book fandom began in earnest in the 1960s, with many of its developments predicated on narrowing the boundaries between creator and fan. At DC Comics legendary editor Julius Schwartz began printing reader letters, thereby enabling fans to communicate their desires to the creators. It was through these letter pages that the uncredited writers and artists would finally get the recognition they deserved, as devoted readers would make educated deductions as to which writers and artists were responsible for the stories still credited to Bob Kane. Demonstrating the influence fans were beginning to wield, by 1968 DC Comics were including the bylines for all artists and writers.

Letter pages not only fostered dialogue between fan and creator, but also fan and fan, as like-minded readers began to contact each other. These newly-formed networks fostered the wider circulation of fanzines as well as the emergence of dedicated comic book conventions. Mainstream media began to take notice with a 1965 Newsweek article, ‘Superfans and Batmaniacs’ describing ‘comic cultists’ who ‘have the enthusiasm of rare stamp collectors’. Soon this newly consolidated fanbase began to enjoy a ‘New Look’ Batman, which was really a return to the hero’s dark detective origins. However, this revival was to be short-lived.

In the mid-1960s American network ABC was eager to attract a family audience to its lucrative 7:30pm slot. With high production values, committed leads (Adam West and Burt Ward) and A-list guest villains (Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, Vincent Price etc.), Batman the television series was a smash hit when it premiered on 12 January 1966. The series managed to engage adults and children alike by blending self-aware moments with sound effect-punctuated action sequences. Soon, West’s Batman was appearing on the cover of Life magazine, starring in a spin-off feature film and adorning an endless array of merchandise.

Nonetheless, with its canted angles, endless puns and knowing allusions to the ridiculousness of the concept, the Batman series disappointed, if not outright antagonized, comic book fans, particularly as the ‘New Look’ Batman comics began to emulate the show in an effort to entice new readers. However, unlike earlier unfaithful adaptations, fans now had forums where they could voice their discontent. Brooker quotes a letter from Detective Comics #353 (October 1966) which was typical of reader criticism:

‘Camp’ has only been around for one or two years, and already every article on the subject predicts that the fad will vanish in a couple of months. Batman will still be around long after ‘camp’ is gone, unless he starts trying to be so bad he’s good – and winds up so bad he’s gone.

Despite initial success, the joke soon wore thin and Batman was cancelled after three seasons. In predicting the faddish nature of camp, the above letter seems incredibly prescient, but what strident comic book fans will often fail to recognize is that despite the innovations of Batman’s ‘New Look’ comics, the books struggled to compete for readers with Spider-Man and the other more grounded superheroes being introduced at Marvel. Without the interest generated by the series there is a chance that Batman would not be the potent pop culture force he is today.

In his autobiography Back to the Batcave, Adam West describes his relationship with the series’ many followers: ‘Batman touched the child in viewers, and that has always made for a very special bond with the people I meet’. As the interviews in this collection attest, many of today’s fans’ earliest recollection of Batman is not the comics, but rather Neil Hefti’s mantra-like theme song, Burt Ward’s spirited puns, and Adam West’s unshakable delivery. In this regard Batman the series was unique; it was the first time that the character had successfully ventured beyond his native medium and gathered groups of fans that had never read comics. For a brief moment in 1966 it seemed as if the entire world became Batman fans. While this ‘Batmania’ was over almost as soon as it begun, it would return.

The quick cancellation of Batman left the comics in a difficult position, with Denny O’Neil noting, ‘when the camp fad was over the comic books weren’t’. As writer, and later editor, O’Neil helped Batman reclaim his mantle as a dark detective. Typical of O’Neil’s approach was, ‘The Joker’s Five Way Revenge’ in Batman #251 (September 1973). During the 1950s, Batman’s villains had been attenuated to colourful pranksters who would occasionally rob banks. O’Neil’s story, with photorealist, full-figure art by Neal Adams, returned the violent, chalk-faced gangster of the Kane-Finger era, and set a template for future interpretations, including the 1989 film.

The 1970s saw further consolidation of comic book fandom as direct distribution through newly-established comic stores meant that older readers could now buy comics without facing derision from supermarket cashiers. Consequently, the average age of readers increased and collecting became commonplace. These bastions of comic book fandom, however, were uninviting to outsiders. Thus, the greater depth and complexity of the 1970s’ comics went unacknowledged by a wider world that still associated Batman with Adam West’s Technicolour pratfalls. By 1985, sales in Batman comics had reached an all-time low. Into that malaise, the landmark graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns would hit like the lightning bolt that crackled across its cover.

In the 1980s, the fan interest in creators had developed into a fully-fledged star system. One of the most popular creators was the noir-influenced writer/artist Frank Miller. Released in 1986, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was a genre redefining four-part limited series that extrapolated from 1980s America a bleak, near-future Gotham mired by unchecked crime and political corruption. Out of this maelstrom rose a 55-year-old Batman who believed that ‘the world only makes sense when you force it to’. Written with a Clint Eastwood drawl, and drawn like a bare-knuckle boxer, this vivid reinterpretation, repackaged as a bookstore-friendly graphic novel, garnered widespread media attention and a darker knight started to supplant the caped crusader in public perceptions.

To motivate further interest, DC embarked on an initiative that took fan participation to a new level. By the 1980s, Dick Grayson (the original Robin) had matured into Nightwing, leader of the Teen Titans. To take over from the grown-up Grayson the publisher introduced streetwise orphan, Jason Todd. However, while some fans never fully embraced Grayson, there was widespread hatred of Todd. In this era of greater reader involvement, Denny O’Neil opted to let the readers decide via a phone poll whether Robin would live following a vicious beating from the Joker. By a narrow majority fans decided that Robin should die in Batman #428 (December 1988). The stunt garnered widespread attention, with USA Today proclaiming ‘The Boy Wonder is dead, and the readers of DC Comics’ Batman want it that way’, as well as much criticism, with Frank Miller suggesting that it was ‘the most cynical thing that particular publisher has ever done’. Cynical or not, Robin’s death further repositioned Batman as a ‘dark’ character, a process that would be completed the following year, the character’s 50th, with the release of Batman (Burton, 1989).

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