The Many Faces of the Batman

Cafe Society
1

Sherlock Holmes is always Sherlock Holmes. He’s a longstanding icon of fiction, and most interpretation of the character (such as the novels of Nicholas Meyer) stay reasonably true to the core of the character.

Batman, on the other hand, gets no respect. He’s generally written consistently for an abritrary period of time in a medium, and then poof! He’s somebody else. Some elements remain the same, but others… vanish.

There’s the Golden Age Comic Batman. Fighting Gangsters and weird criminals, occasionally killing, and quite the bon vivant - grinning in almost every panel one sees him.

In the 50’s, he mutated. No more killing, and lots of wacky scifi and time travel adventures.

In the 70’s he mutated again, probably as a backlash from the campy television series, into an actual detective. He became somewhat brooding. He was now an angry, angry man.

Post-Crisis, he’s darkened further, and become a borderline paranoid schizophrenic.

Of course, there’s the TV-Batman - completely goofy; there’s Movie-Batman-1 (AKA Edward Bataranghands), Gotham’s Gothiest; there’s Movie-Batman-2 (AKA Joel Schumacher’s leather fetish-boy) who’s just a lighter version of Movie-Batman-1.

There’s Animated-Batman-1, perhaps most like the 70’s Comic Batman, and Animated Batman 2, who’s similar, but a good bit lighter.

Now there’s Movie-Batman 3, also quite resembling the 70’s Batman.

Argh.

I feel the Batman portrayal we got from the 70’s and 80’s was the truest. He was the World’s Greatest Detective. He could legitimately rub shoulders with Superman, and take him down with Kryptonite boxing gloves should the need arise. He was capable of trusting people, though - and he was dark and brooding, but had lighter moments as well. He didn’t kill, and he didn’t like guns. Two other subsequent Batman interpretations have stuck most closely to this incarnation, as well.

I bring this up because a friend and I watched Batman Begins last night, and he (seeing it for the first time) commented that this version of Batman must not be a master scientist like the comic version, as Lucius was doing all the organic chemistry work.

2

You left out a crucial period – in the early 1960s there was the “New Look” Batman, where he got away from the science fiction stuff and got more into his “detective” mode. Carmine Infantino drew him and they slimmed down the Batmobile into a sporty, fast car instead of the behemoth it had become. It was good stuff – until the stupid “camp” TV series came along and the comic followed suit.
(Even in the 1950s, though, it wasn’t all SciFi – thyere were some good detective stories from back then. I think the goofy SF stuff was a reaction to the crackdown on “horror” and “crime” comics brought on by Wertham and others’ criticism of early 1950s comics.)
A big element in the darkening of Batman recently has to be Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, although others have softenmed him up relative to that brooding work.

3

Thanks, Cal. Even I can’t be comprehensive about all the Bat-incarnations without ‘Tales of the Dark Knight’ in front of me.

But your note about Dark Knight reminds me - there’s also Miller’s Batman. The Psychotic. Seen in the pages of All-Star Batman and Robin.

4

These were two distinct changes – only the very early Batman stories (1939-1940, IIRC) have him killing opponents or using a gun.

5

Hey, let’s not forget to give props (cheap backlot cardboard props!!!) to the Serial-Batmen, Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery. Both were fine as Bruce Wayne, but their paunchs and the ill-fitted uniforms and goofy cowls did them in as heroes of action.

Sir Rhosis

6

I can’t help but like Val Kilmer’s Batman best (probably due to the excellent script, cast, and personal development), though the newest Batman animations did have a nice sense of style too.

7

I think it runs just a little longer than that, but you’re essentially correct.

One of the things that reminded me of that early Batman was Batman Begins’ car chase sequence, in which Batman displays a casual disregard for life, if not actually killing Gotham cops.

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They chickened out and gave Alfred a “Fortunately, no one was killed,” line, remember.

Sir Rhosis

9

Not my point. Just saying that Batman’s disregard for human life in that scene reminded me of the early Batman’s willingness to kill.

10

“truest”? I can’t get behind that.

But you shouldn’t be surprised about this. Sherlock Holmes was written by one man, and pastiches 1) don’t really count, and 2) need to ensure they fit the canon or people will say they don’t count. Batman, OTOH, has appeared in at least two stories every month for 65 years, and much more than 2 for most of those months. Over that amount of material, of course there are going to be changes. Plus, because of the dreaded deadline doom, you’ve got to have someone write your Batman story even if you don’t have anyone available who is prepared to stick to the established protrayal. Plus, because of the way serial publication works, you’ve got to respond to the market’s changing tastes quickly in a way that you don’t have to with occasionally-published works which just don’t find an audience if the market has moved on since the last one.

–Cliffy

11

Don’t forget SuperFriends-Batman, who was a cross between TV-Batman and 50s-Batman.

My favorite remains Animated-Batman-1, who IMO nicely balanced being a skilled professional without dipping into brooding Angry White (Rich) Guy. Having nice Bruce Timm art and quality Paul Dini writing certainly didn’t hurt any.

12

gasp

I didn’t totally dislike that BUT the fact that the only difference between the Kilmer Wayne & the Kilmer Batman was the costume really put me off. After his Doc H, Kilmer really raised my expectations to take the two personalities of BW & BM to the next level past Keaton. I was terribly disappointed.

I was not disappointed by the George Clooney version as I didn’t expect much. Indeed, the only thing that disappointed me about the movie was that it didn’t have the real Batgirl, Barbara Gordon.

13

Fair enough - It’s not really unexpected, but their have been some radically different Batmen out there. The same character inspired Adam West’s TV career and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. That’s a pretty wide gulf.

And Meyer’s work on Holmes is excellent! :slight_smile:

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Does Wertham-Batman count?

15

Batman is inherently different from the other pop culture icons in that he is the one created without an identity. Sherlock Holmes is an upper class Englishman of the late Victorian era, which gives him some definition from the the start. He’s a thinking machine, he’s an consistent eccentric, he has catch phrases and habits that identify him immediately. Philip Marlowe is an educated man who sees the corruption of a sugarcoated world, and pledges his honor to save the honor of others. Even a comic book character like Superman has an identity: he’s a Boy Scout with the power to right wrongs. You can only alter these icons so far before they lose their identities and you lose your audience. Altman’s Marlowe, for example, is an abomination because he took the honor out of the character and that left nothing at all.

But Bruce Wayne is nothing more than a guy who goes out at night dressed up like a bat. Well, he fights crime, but so do these other types. What is he? A detective? A dark avenger? A figure of fun? He can be any or all these things without damage because there’s nothing solid to him. He doesn’t have an era or a catch phrase (Robin’s Holyisms don’t count*). He’s a total derivative as well, his parts taken from a hundred characters from Holmes to the Shadow.

Batman is just a costume. And you can fill a costume with anybody.
*although how can you not love “Holy Priceless Collection of Etruscan Snoods, Batman”?

16

I don’t know a lot about Batman, not having followed any of the comics (ever, unfortunately) but I’d hate not to be part of a Batman thread. My favorite, after re-watching Batman Begins this weekend, has to be the Michael Keaton.

There may be some disgust about this, and at first I didn’t think he was right myself. But as time went on and I became more familiar with him and read more stuff and watched a hell of a lot more stuff, I realized I enjoyed him more and more. Possibly because the second movie was my favorite. I like my Batman *very *dark, *very *brooding, and possibly just a *bit *psychotic. Not killer-psychotic, just a little obsessed.

Anyway, I liked Aliens 4. And that definitely seems to make me weird around these parts. :slight_smile:

17

Agreed. He was serious but not too broody. He even tossed out a quip every now and again

Anaamika, I’ll take it a step further and say that I liked the Michael Keaton Batman from the second movie. The exchanges between him and Selina Kyle were perfect in my opinion.

As for the Batman Begins character, pretty durn good. Nearly as much as Batman:The animated series. I think he wasn’t as good of a detective because he simply hadn’t had time to go learning the science end yet. We saw him learning how to kick ass, but no hard core book lurnin’.

18

In the Late 70’s, Batman acquired a populist “we’re so fed up with crime” edge, and dealt with ordinary people & their problems as much as he did supervillains.

19

I disagree - Bruce Wayne is a wealthy American, a potential playboy billionaire traumatized at a young age by the murder of his parents. He doesn’t have a lot of set quirks, but there are some - his apparent inability to keep himself from acquiring a sidekick; his disappearing-act schtick that he always uses on Gordon; and his all-pervasive bat-motif. Do his boomerangs really need to be in a bat-shape? No. Just one of his obsessive-compulsive eccentricities. And of course, his central theme is that dedication to justice.

You mention Superman, but he’s had some different incarnations as well - not as extreme in the shifts of personality as Batman, of course, but some variation.

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Batman is a kind of social barometer, responding to changes in crime & American society.

Og help us for what the current trend may mean.