12:04PM, Oct 23, 2008
Rob Daniel takes a look through the history of the Caped Crusader. From comic to camp, via World War II...
Year One:
"There is no one definitive account of Batman's origins," says The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan.
"But through the interpretations of his character over the years there are key events that make Batman who he is and make his story the great legend it's come to be."
Who’s the man behind the Bat? According to the comics and movies Batman (or the Bat-Man as he was originally monikered) was created by Bob Kane, inspired by a Leonardo De Vinci sketch of a birdman with bat-like wings, a silent movie villain - The Bat Whisperer - and Zorro’s masked heroes. .
But, this is because Kane, a canny businessman even at the age of twenty-two, signed away character rights in return for, among other things, a mandatory byline taking full creator credit.
In reality writer Bill Finger is the Dark Knight’s co-creator, taking Kane’s original sketch and replacing a domino mask with the cowl, changing the red and black costume to a more foreboding charcoal, adding gauntlets and gloves (to avoid fingerprints) and, after discussion with Kane, changing two stiff batwings into a long black cape.
And seven issues in to the character’s run, Finger wrote Batman’s origin story of millionaire Bruce Wayne who, traumatised after witnessing the slaying of his parents, avenges their deaths by bringing baddies to book.
An expert in criminology, with a tough exercise regime that gives him “muscles on top of muscles” (according to a character description in the script for 1989’s Batman), Wayne also uses his fortune to acquire hi-tech vehicles and weaponry.
Batman first swooped upon the world in May 1939, in Detective Comics issue 27 story ‘The Case of the Chemical Syndicate’. A tough Batman for tough times, this noir figure was not above killing criminals, (although Tim Burton’s Batman shares the earlier incarnation's disregard for criminal life).
Robin, The Boy Wonder, was introduced not as comic relief but to give Batman someone to interact with, but post-WW2 DC Comics (the DC named after Detective Comics) lightened their strips.
After establishing himself as a comic book and radio hit, Batman - played by Lewis Wilson, father of Bond producer Michael - made his screen debut in 1943 with a 15 episode serial.
Due to the World War 2 strictures, Batman and Robin were portrayed as costumed FBI agents and didn't even have a Batmobile (they were chauffeur driven), but the serial established the Batcave and the image of Alfred the butler as slim, urbane and moustachioed .
SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL
By the 1960s Batman’s popularity was on the wane, with DC on the verge of cutting their losses and killing him off. An overhaul did the caped crusader some good, but the 1966 TV show (and film) had such a profound impact that arguably it was the image of Batman the general public held up until Tim Burton’s 1989 re-imagining.
With the clarion call "Same Bat time, same Bat channel" ABC launched the Dynamic Duo onto the small screen, racking up 120 episodes and a budget reputed to include £500,000 for the Batcave alone.
Camp, kitsch and wonderful in its day-glo way, the series' masterstroke was the casting of a seismically self-mocking Adam West as a not-so-Dark-Knight and Burt Ward as a gee-whizz, palm-thumping Robin.
The series heralded the debut of the red-finned Batmobile (a Ford Futura customised in just four weeks Bat-fact fans), a four-wheeled marvel whose iconic status remained unchallenged until Burton’s sleek, stealth missile dragster was unveiled.
Fans typically dislike the pop-art camp of the TV series that kept any serious screen adaptation in the darkest corner of the Batcave for two decades (despite the success of DC’s Superman in 1979), and the 'Zap!' and 'Kapow!' title cards are still employed to kick comic-book movies.
But, the pun-heavy dialogue boasting more “Holy’s" than a Catholic mass is frequently hilarious, and the guest star villains including Burgess Meredith’s Penguin and Julie Newmar’s purr-fect Catwoman are proof that pop-panto occasionally touches the sublime.
Even if Cesar Romero’s Joker had to be reduced to a mischievous clown rather than Heath Ledger’s Clockwork Orange inspired psycho because TV bosses grumbled that only a rubbish superhero would let such a lethal nutter continually escape justice.
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS
Legendary DC comicbook writer Dennis O’Neill attempted to return Batman to his dark roots in the 1970s, but Batman languished in poor sales and public indifference until Frank Miller’s 1986 masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns.
Miller aged Bruce Wayne to a retired, embittered fifty-something, who brings the Bat costume out of retirement when a crimewave sweeps Gotham.
Casting a long shadow over Batman movies and comics ever since, The Dark Knight Returns has direct links to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
Firstly, Miller reinvented the Batmobile as a formidable tank, much like the new “Tumbler”. Then Nolan and writer David S. Goyer picked up on Miller’s idea that citizens could see Batman as big a menace as those he fights (the Joker emerges from a catatonic state upon hearing the Bat is back) while Batman often pushes legal limits to the edge, a dominant theme in The Dark Knight.
Other key comic books Nolan’s movies lift from is Alan Moore’s Joker “origin” story The Killing Joker, Grant Morrison’s nightmarish Arkham Asylum, Miller’s Batman: Year One, Batman’s origin story that served as Batman Begins' template (including using bats as back-up against SWAT), and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween.
“The Long Halloween was one Batman story that really drew me in in terms of cinematic potential,” Nolan has stated.
Batman played as The Godfather, The Long Halloween is a crime epic that encompasses mafia rule, Harvey Dent’s justice crusade, plus a public holiday serial killer, and grounded the exotic villains in a recognisable world.
Writer and artist Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale provided Nolan with a “How-To” on making Batman believable, something they also did as key consultants on TV’s Heroes.
NOIR-TOON
Overlooked by mainstream press, Batman: The Animated Series kept Batman creditable while Joel Schumacher was taking a wrecking ball to the franchise, and whose critical acclaim (the series picked up two Emmys) matches that of Nolan’s movies.
Running from 1992-95, the series borrowed Tim Burton’s noir-carnival approach, with stunning “Dark Deco” set design.
The Animated Series was most notable for its unusually psychologically probing scripts (the Two-Face two-parter is forty-four perfect minutes of television) that sparkle with imagination and character depth, sometimes out of necessity due to the kid-friendly timeslot– Bruce Wayne had to shed his playboy image and became a socially conscious head of Wayne Enterprises, much like Christian Bale’s character at the close of Batman Begins.
Although Nolan and Bale are remaining tight-lipped about a (presumably closing) third Batman movie, The Dark Knight will return to the silver screen again and again, and as he approaches his 70th birthday possibilities for the character’s future are more open than ever before.
Rob Daniel
