There is a certain hierarchy regarding my list of favorite superheroes. As those in the comics world might tell you, there are 3 distinct classes of comics fans. There are “DC” fans, “Marvel” fans, and “Independent” fans. Based purely on sales, most comics fans apparently fall within one of the first 2 categories. I have always considered myself a DC fan, and I think that this has something to do with the influence that a certain DC character had on me from a very young age.
As a youngster, I was a fan of Batman comics. As I read the comics, I realized that the world of Batman was not all fun and games as it was on the campy 1960s TV show. I remember reading and re-reading the few issues of Batman comics my parents purchased for me. These issues sustained me for 8 years, for when I turned 13, the comics bug bit me hard. It was a great time to be a comics fan. Much of the detritus of the 1970s era DC comics was starting to fall away, and in 1985, the DC universe changed forever with the introduction of the miniseries “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, a series that “ret-conned” much of DC’s comics history up to that point. During the next few years, DC started cleaning up the origin stories of many of their heroes, starting with Superman in the miniseries “the Man of Steel.” Among all of the ret-conning, however, the powers-at-be refrained from resorting to wholesale changes to the origin of their then-second (now first) most popular character, Batman. There was simple reason for this: the origin worked. There was little about the origin of Batman that did not continue to resonate 50 years after the creation of the character. Young Bruce Wayne watched his parents’ murder at the hands of a nameless, faceless thief. He dedicated his life to his parents’ memory, forsaking a normal life out of a desire for vengeance. This was not the typical “happy” origin of a comic book hero (Oooh! Some chemicals spilled on me and I am fast! I am the Flash!). When one compares the duality of Bruce and Batman to that of
But I digress. Although the origin story of Batman is well known, it has seldom been depicted in cartoons and motion pictures. The reasons for this are pretty obvious. I mean, Batman is considered a super hero, but his parents were murdered at gunpoint. What cartoon or movie aimed at children would allow such a traumatic and disturbing act to be shown on screen? Comics remained the only medium through which the story of the origin could be given the proper treatment. No where was this more apparent than upon the publication of the 4 issue “Batman: Year One”, a harsh and unyielding look at the birth of the Batman written by Frank Miller. Miller updated the origin and brought his trademark grittiness to the story. The story recounts the first year of Bruce Wayne’s crusade on crime and his battles against the corrupt
Yes, for a while, it seemed as if Batman was undergoing a renaissance. There was talk of a feature film, something that Warner Brothers had been trying to get off the ground for 8 years. Script after script was rejected until Sam Hamm, a young writer and a graduate of the
Now, when “Batman” was released in the theaters, I had just graduated high school. I had a summer job managing a comics store 2 days a week and working in a clothing store 3 days a week. It was probably the best summer of my life. “Batman” was HUGE and a big movie in a summer full of big movies. Its opening weekend gross surpassed anything else up until that time. There was so much to see that summer. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, “Parenthood”, “License to Kill”, “Lethal Weapon 2”, “Batman”…the hits just kept on coming. Batman, however, was the king that summer. I think that I saw it something like 10 times in the theater. I could not get enough. There was Danny Elfman’s music, Ringwood’s costume design that made skinny Michael Keaton look as if he had muscles, Anton Furst’s visionary image of
Umm…yikes. Where do I begin? Jack Nicholson’s performance, which was hailed as “visionary” at the time, now looks like the template for all of the overacting villains to follow. The “timeless” feel of the film called attention to itself as the schizophrenic sense of style was constantly shifting between the 1940s and the 1980s. Keaton was WAY OFF as Bruce Wayne. Music by Prince? Really? Prince? There was so much not to like about this film, and it was only going to get worse. “Batman Returns” started the death knell (except for the single bright spot of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman), and Joel Schumacher and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (he of "Hancock" fame) killed the franchise with “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin”. Nipples on the batsuits? Really? Wow.
Out of all of the problems (and there were many) that were typified by these earlier films, none was more glaring to me than the issue of the origin of the Dark Knight. In Tim Burton’s “Batman,” a young Jack Napier, the man who would be the Joker, is seen as the murderer of Batman’s parents. Why? This was completely unnecessary and made for one of the more confusing parts of the film (“I made you, you made me first”). Huh? I always thought that one of the most resonant aspects of the origin was the fact that the
There was one sole bright spot in all of this. Warner Brothers Animation commissioned the creation of the visionary “Batman: the Animated Series”, a very mature and faithful adaptation of the Batman mythos. Other than that, however, at the time I feared that Batman would forever be remembered for Batnipples and Arnold Schwarzenegger intoning “Eye will kill you, BAHT-MUN!” *shudder*. Thankfully, however, I was wrong. Who knows? Without the debacle that was “Batman and Robin”, we might never have had the ultimate superhero masterpiece of “Batman Begins.” But that is a story for tomorrow, I think…
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