BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: My Batman Christmas List

Does Batman celebrate Christmas? I know he's been in Christmas stories over the years, and I'm sure some enterprising fan out there can point me toward an instance where he's been seen reclining next to a little fake tree in the Batcave, sipping egg nog while Dick Grayson runs around with a new puppy. Still, it doesn't seem to fit, somehow.

But that doesn't mean we can't celebrate the season Batman-style! It's not too late for your loved ones to make 2009 a very Bat-holiday. What should the enterprising Bat-fan hope to see under her tree, menorah, or non-denominational symbol of seasonally appropriate joy? Here's a few ideas...

The Batcave Companion
If there is one essential reference-type book on the Caped Crusader's history, this is the one. A terrific TwoMorrows publication in the tradition of their many other comics history and culture volumes, The Batcave Companion dives deep into two of Batman's most popular and acclaimed eras: The "BAM! POW!" sixties and the "Dark Knight" seventies. Co-writers Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg clearly know their stuff and provide tons of fun and juicy background details, along with an issue-by-issue overview of every Batman comic published during the timespan covered. My favorite parts were the in-depth Q&As with key figures such as Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, and Dennis O'Neill. I've been meaning to write a true full-length review of this great book for a while but in all honesty, I'm still reading it, and I've had it a month. That should give you an idea of the depth and breadth of the information covered. (FYI, it's also a terrific companion read to the Showcase Presents: Batman series, which starts off right where Batcave Companion's coverage starts and tracks pretty much right alongside the book.)

Batman: The Brave and the Bold Action League Toys
I'm pretty much out of the whole toy collecting scene; too expensive and requires way too much space. But every once in a while, something in a Target toy aisle will grab my eye and tempt me to uncork my wallet. I haven't broken down over these AWESOME minifigs from the new Brave and the Bold cartoon series, but it's just a matter of time. They're small and slightly poseable in the style of the Marvel Superhero Squad figures and feature characters who've been depicted on the show. Since the series is plenty quirky, this means you can actually own a GENTLEMAN GHOST ACTION FIGURE. This is an astonishing fact.

An "Official" Burt Ward-Authorized Batman Googaw
The sixties Batman TV series is a controversial era for some, but as I've probably mentioned, I grew up on it and totally bought it as "serious" drama until I got older and started to recognize the camp. I sorta love it for both reasons. Anyway, Burt "Robin" Ward has his own extensive website and collection of Batman-related merchandise. You gotta love some of the splashy bright pop-art images selected for these items, most of them taken from the show's opening and closing credits. Honestly, the items are a bit pricey, but there's no denying their coolness. Well, their relative coolness, as compared to other ceramic coffee mugs depicting comic book characters and sold by aging teen idols from sixties-era television shows.

The Batman Annuals, Vol. 1 (DC Comics Classics Library)
There's gotta be at least one actual honest-to-goodness Batman comic book on this list, right? I've been slowly working my way through this volume of classic Batman reprints, and it's a technicolor high-contrast jolt of pure pop effluvia, bringing together the first three Batman annuals which themselves reprinted a bunch of classic stories from the forties and fifties. This is full-on Batuniverse expansion time, with all the crazy alternate costumes, the full Bat-family in effect, and the occasional bodily transformation, I expect. The reproduction is magnificent and it really has the feel of a nice archival volume. Plus Amazon will knock a few bucks off the cover price and throw in free shipping.

The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told
If you or your loved ones are invenerate cheapskates, what better way to shop than through Amazon's authorized used booksellers? This is an even BETTER sampler of Batman comics than the Annuals volume above, and if you're okay with a used copy, it's available for 79 CENTS plus shipping. That's under five bucks, folks. I read the covers off this thing when I was thirteen. Its initial release was right around the first Batman film, and it's packed with good stuff--not just stories from every era of the Batman's career, including the critical members of his supporting cast and rogues gallery, but informative essays detailing the key points in Batman's history and discussing some of the stories that didn't quite make the cut.

The Hero Initiative
Batman would no doubt highly approve of a donation to The Hero Initiative, the first-ever federally chartered not-for-profit corporation dedicated strictly to helping comic book creators in need. Even better, buy a T-shirt and get sweet threads AND help others. I myself am hoping Santa brings me this Tom Scioli winner.

Giving is truly what the holidays are all about, and not just for Batman, but for everyone who wears T-shirts. Merry Crimble and have a gear new year!

Alan Moore Month: Batman Always Wins

For a writer largely credited with revolutionizing the superhero comic book, Alan Moore has written precious few mainstream superheroes.

He's written plenty of his own heroes, and then there's that Watchmen thing everyone keeps telling me about, which I simply MUST get to one of these days, after I've finished reading the Twilight saga for the forty-seventh time. (Whooooo will Bella chooooooose???)

But time spent clocking in and out at the Big Two Spandex Adventure Factory? Very little. He wrote a few legendary Superman tales, and a scattered assortment of one-offs and back-ups and fill-ins for titles across DC. He's never written ANY major Marvel character, except those that appeared in his Captain Britain run back in the day.

And he's written Batman. Or rather, he's written stories in which Batman appears. He's never actually written a Batman story.

What's that? Yes, you there in the back, with the fake dreadlocks and the soft-serve ice cream cone. The Killing Joke, you say?

That's a Joker story. Batman's a supporting character at best. And that happens to be true of Moore's two other Batman stories, one of which has never even been printed here in the United States, and isn't comics at all.

"The Gun" appeared in a 1985 UK Batman annual. It's a prose short story by Moore and featuring spot illustrations by Garry Leach, who draws a pretty sinister Batman in spite of the garish coloring that really emphasizes the bright blue of Batman's classic blue and grey outfit. The titular weapon is (SPOILER) the gun that shot young Bruce Wayne's parents, and it's being utilized by Johnny Speculux, a graffiti-tagging thug with the most eighties british nickname in the history of the planet.

It's basically one of those things where the weapon carries all this anger and rage which it then somehow mystically ejaculates through a variety of emissaries, including Joe Chill, before meeting its own demise eventually along with Mr. Speculux. Batman's hardly in it, and when he is, it's not a very distinct or inspired Batman. He has a nice short moment with a little girl who saw her own parents murdered by Speculux at an only-in-Gotham art exhibit of gigantic home furnishings (nice Dick Sprang homage there).

Like Moore's Star Wars stories for the UK Empire Strikes Back magazine, "The Gun" is clever and short. It's one of those fast in-and-out blunt quickie type stories like you'd read in 2000AD or even the EC books. It's even got a "creepy" twist ending that brings the central theme of revenge back to its logical starting point, with Bruce Wayne as just another casualty caught in the crossfire. I very much liked this bit about Batman:

"He was staring at Johnny Speculux, and there was something familiar in his eyes...They had all of the seething, emotional intensity of a child's eyes, but they were set into an adult's face and the effect was terrifying."

There's something about little Bruce Wayne's eyes living on in the visage of Batman; it's a unique evocation of a theme that has since become trite, which is that Batman is little more than the seething wound left open by the death of Thomas and Martha. Back then, it wasn't quite as overdone, and drawing that line through Batman's eyes puts us squarely in Johnny Speculux's shoes, because while we don't know that much about Johnny, we know everything about Batman's vengeance, and we know it is a terrifying thing, even through the eyes of a child.

Moore's other significant Batman story is from Batman Annual 11, "Mortal Clay," with art by George Freeman. This one is a Clayface tale focused on the third villain to claim the title, Preston Payne. It's a full-length comics story, not a four-page prose story, so Moore stretches out a bit and offers a glimpse inside the mind of a man obsessed with a mannequin. His "lover" is "Helene," and the entire story is told from his point of view, so it becomes a series of cuckoldings in which a security guard and Batman both become "the other man" in his twisted brain.

Payne's interior monologue is what provides the thruline for "Mortal Clay," and there's moments where he definitely lets the character ramble on, but it's still a compelling narrative technique, especially since the comics format is so uniquely suited to utilizing voiceover and image to comment on each other.



All you really need to know to get that he's crazy is that Preston Payne is in love with a mannequin. Seeing it laid out as above, with his "...and neither of us said a word" as counterpoint to the dead chilling face of "Helena," is Moore mining the potential of comics for its full potential.

I think so much of the appreciation of Moore comes down to his exceptional ability to pull off moments just like that one. He is a supreme master of comics as a storytelling vehicle and an art form for exploring themes. Whether it's a minor moment of Clayface hugging a mannequin or the virtuoso construction of Watchmen's fifth issue, where Moore and Gibbbons together build a "Fearful Symmetry" into the DNA of the page layouts themselves, Moore is so completely comfortable with the multiple levels on which sequential art can operate that his stories always redeem multiple readings. Even when he's just telling a Batman story that's not much about Batman for a random annual, meant to do little more than pile onto the limitless and ever-growing mountain of ongoing superhero fiction.

Batman himself doesn't appear significantly until the final sequence of "Mortal Clay," when he shows up to capture Clayface and is mistaken for the latest lover to steal the heart of "Helena." clayface and Batman fight, until Clayface collapses in a distressed heap before his mannequin, and Batman...offers his hand to the villain.

We then learn that while Clayface has been restored to Arkham Asylum, thanks to Batman's intervention, he's been allowed to live in relative happiness with "Helena." It's a side of the Caped Crusader we don't see very often these days, but it's welcome when it does appear; Batman has pity and mercy for many of his sickest adversaries.

These handful of stories don't give us a great idea of Moore's vision for Batman, but they do seem to indicate that like many Batman writers, Moore seems far more interested in the Dark Knight's rogues gallery than in the hero himself. Of course, we could spend some time dissecting the elements of Batman that clearly inspired aspects of Rorschach from Watchmen. That's the thing with Batman: Even if you're Alan Fucking Moore, Batman's never really far away.

Batman Always Wins: Stop The Press! Who's That?

Picture a Pre-Pubescent Mattie (PPM), acne sprouting up like weeds across the oily plain of his face, visiting his local comic book shop.

PPM's eyes dart across the racks. His heart starts to race. His hand adjusts the trucker cap perched awkwardly atop his enormous head, back when those were worn only by actual truckers and the hopelessly unfashionable.

PPM picks up every Batman comic he can find; later that day he devours them voraciously, laying on his bed beneath his Batsignal poster, his Bartman poster, and the poster he took from an old comic book magazine of Adam West and Burt Ward in their Dynamic Duo garb from the sixties.

Yes, little Pre-Pubescent Mattie had Bat-fever.

Considering my sentimental attachment to the Caped Crusader, and of course the fact that this is a BATMAN THEMED COLUMN IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED YOU FACELESS RANDOM CLUELESS PERSON I AM JUST NOW MAKING UP TO JUSTIFY USING ALL CAPS AT THIS POINT OKAY ENOUGH OF THAT, I hope you’ll forgive my waxing poetical on the first Batman film.

To describe this film as “seminal” in my development as a geek, a movie fan, and even a HUMAN BEING is to understate its importance. I was absolutely fucking OBSESSED with Batman in 1989. Totally out of my goddamned head. I still remember the exact date that Batman premiered in theaters: June 23, 1989. I remember it because throughout the last half of my seventh grade year, I lived for that date. I. Absolutely. Could. Not. Wait. For. This. Movie. And so the Tuesday after the film came out, my dad took an afternoon off from work and we went to see Batman at the once-beautiful River Oaks Theaters in Calumet City, IL.

My Trapper Keeper the next school year was covered in stickers from the Batman trading cards. My sister and I obsessively collected each and every one of the cards to form a complete set. In art class, I devised ways to incorporate the classic oval Bat-symbol into my projects. That aforementioned trucker-style hat had a Bat-symbol stitched in fluorescent yellow on the front, and I took to decorating it in buttons from the comic book and sci-fi conventions I started to attend in high school. (My favorite? The “Kirk/Spock in ’92” button.)

As a phenomenon, Batman in 1989 was the first time I was aware of a massive pop culture event and decided of my own volition to fully join in, to stand alongside the seething masses in our Bat-signal T-shirts jamming to “Batdance” on our Walkmen headphones. It was everywhere, and so was I, slurping it all up without hesitation and loving every second of it. It was my awakening to the power and potential in films, music, television, stories; it guided me into comics. It kinda made me a geek. (Okay, a BIGGER geek. Happy, grade school playground tormentors?)

As a movie, it’s a simple story, and that’s one of the big reasons it works. Director Tim Burton and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren don’t clutter their film with extraneous villains who are more a lampoon than a serious threat; there’s no Ahnold muttering idiotic quips with his face painted blue, or Danny DeVito limping around with fins over his arms. (Though I do think Batman Returns is largely underrated...more on that in a future column, for sure.) It’s lean storytelling that focuses on what’s important, which is the duality of Bruce Wayne and the viciousness of the Joker.

But it's not watchable because of its awesome story; it's more about a mood, a feeling, all atmosphere. It's really a triumph of style over substance, which is something that can be said about many of Tim Burton's films...and frankly, about many Batman stories over the years. Burton's Gotham is a city on its last legs where nothing but evil seems to exist in primary colors. His Joker is a horrifying lampoon of a circus clown who gets off on combining pure naked bloodlust with his playful exterior. And his Batman is an unrelenting force of justice, consumed by revenge against an enemy he can never defeat. Production designer Anton Furst creates a twisted nightmare version of New York where every corner seems to end in a dark alley and criminals rule the streets.

And yet...there's a distance to it all, a theatricality and artifice that seems rooted in the halting rhythms of comics, not as they had evolved in 1989 but as they were in their birth in the thirties. Burton's Batman emerges from a spiritual connection with the early, primal Batman tales. Plot is largely meaningless; atmosphere trumps all. Images stand out beyond story...Michael Keaton stretching his batwings out over a couple of thugs, the Batmobile snaking its way down a leaf-covered forest road...they live in the mind like that ghostly, silent image of The Bat-Man sneaking into a palatial estate, or the iconic cover of Detective Comics 27, Bat-Man swinging down onto hapless criminals, justice raining down from on high.

This staged feeling, almost as though the characters themselves are performing and not just the actors, fits with the whole identity-as-mask theme that's central to the film, and that's always been a core part of Batman's appeal. As his character has developed, so also has a simple question with no easy answer: Is Batman Bruce Wayne, or is Bruce Wayne Batman? Which is the reality, and which is the disguise? Burton dives more directly into these issues with his second Batman film but it's there in the first film too, in the overall unreality Burton and his crew create--the heightened, yet darkened, sense of drama and action.

My love affair with the Bat didn’t start with Tim Burton’s film...but in a way, my whole lifelong desperate romance with the minutiae and ephemera of pop culture started with the 1989 incarnation of Bat-mania, and the film that inspired it.

So thanks, Jon Peters, for snorting blow and fucking hookers with Jack Nicholson back in the late eighties. If not for that, I might not be the nerd I am today.

BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: Englehart & Rogers

We started our exploration here of all things Batmanish with a simple statement of purpose: There is no "definitive" Batman. It follows, then, that all Batmen are worth our time, whether wacky or gritty or remarkably sane.

That doesn't mean I don't have a favorite Batman, or several; for the longest time, one stood pretty clearly in the lead, and that's Frank Miller's Batman, as depicted in The Dark Knight Returns. Easy answer, but I gotta keep it real.

That's from a character perspecive. Based on visuals alone? Jim Aparo, followed closely by Norm Breyfogle.

After I finally got off my duff and read the legendary Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run of Detective Comics, it dawned on me that maybe the EngleRogers (does that work, like a "Brangelina" kinda thing? Maybe yes?) version of the Caped Crusader is now my favorite.

Because frankly, Batman's been depressing as hell for a really long time, and EngleRogers' Batman is actually (gasp) FUN.

***
We all know why Batman is. One minute, he's an eight-year-old skipping out of a screening of The Mark of Zorro; the next, he's kneeling in a pool of his parents' blood, which usually also contains bits of pearl necklace and movie theater popcorn as well.

It's an incredibly simple, elegant origin. It's lasted for the better part of seventy years with nary a tweak. It doesn't just work; it RESONATES. You may or may not be the vengeful type, but you can at least understand the cataclysmic event and its emotional fallout. You yourself may not choose to become a Creature of the Night in response to your own parents' murders, but you can sorta see where Bruce is coming from.

The problem with that origin is that sometime round about the emergence of Mr. Miller's vision of the character, the origin stopped being an inciting moment and became far more. Because it's an easily-drawn line connecting li'l Brucie in that alley and Big Bruce dressing up in a bat costume, that line has become everything the character is. The death of his parents grew to be far more than just Batman's origin; it became the totality of his being.

Which is what led us to Bat-Dick, the popular online term for the asshole Batman who prowled the streets of Gotham for something like twenty years, or basically, since the immense commercial and critical success of Miller's Year One and Dark Knight Returns.

There's something about those two stories standing as they do at the dawn and the twilight of Batman's career that underscores the origin-as-essence phenomenon; later creators must have looked at these two towering tales and realized, subconsciously or otherwise, that Miller had already done the heavy lifting for them. Whatever happened to Batman in their stories, it was simple enough to plug it into the template, since the template was not just easy and well-defined, but literally spanned Batman's entire life as a character, as defined by Miller.

So: Miller draws the pearls and the popcorn; a parade of talented creators fall in line; we get two decades plus of angry, vengeful Batman, some of which is perfectly good stuff, but all of which is frankly a fucking downer.

***

Of course, as I do a bit of internet research for my next trick, I discover a far more talented writer has already done an incredible piece on EngleRogers' Batman. Apologies in advance to Peter Sanderson if I eventually follow along the path he carefully cleared through the jungle of Batman, and we'll get back to his essay in a moment.

***

What struck me most powerfully about the EngleRogers Detective Comics run is that their Batman is not a character defined by vengeance. The death of his parents is what drove him to become Batman, but it is not what drives him to continue being Batman.

What keeps him going is a sense of justice, and frankly, a sense of adventure -- you get the sense that the EngleRogers Batman enjoys what he does, and that he's not undertaking some solemn, lonely vocation that would handily destroy most men, and quickly.

There's lots more to love about EngleRogers' Batman; his relationships with Dick Grayson, Silver St. Cloud, and Alfred all seem much more healthy and grounded, and the guy's actually able to deal with police and citizens without terrifying everyone who bumps into him. But it all stems from the central conceit of Batman as dark, heroic adventurer, NOT Batman as brooding, vengeful sociopath.

In interviews just prior to launching his run on Batman, writer Grant Morrison referenced the "Neal Adams hairy-chested love god" version of the character, and that quote certainly stuck in my mind. On reflection, I think Morrison actually aimed for more of an EngleRogers conception of Bruce Wayne, one able to absorb all of the various aspects of the character without becoming too beholden to any of them. Bruce Wayne had an actual healthy romance again (at least, until she went and got evil on him), he had more fully developed relationships with his supporting cast, and he dealt with a wider range of threats than the vicious street scum he would regularly beat to within an inch of their lives as the Deep, Dark Knight.

Then there's the issue of Morrison's run as all-encompassing clearinghouse for ALL of Batman's history -- he's said that he's taking the approach that every adventure we've seen Batman have since 1939 actually happened to this guy over the span of twelve-odd years. That again has echoes of EngleRogers, as Sanderson astutely points out in his essay linked above:

All of this reflects a different mindset than that which prevails in comics today. Englehart believed in drawing from and incorporating the classic stories of the past, presumably not just because they provided him such rich material, but also out of respect for the writers, artists and editors who created those stories. Englehart was presenting his stories as the latest in a long and honorable tradition. How different this is from the current fashion in comics, whereby classic stories are regarded as dated antiques to be superseded by new versions by whoever the current hotshots are considered to be.

Englehart's approach was more of a pick and choose strategy, closer to what Geoff Johns has done with heroes like Green Lantern and now Superman; Morrison's actually dragging it ALL in to see what that does to Bruce Wayne. But the principle's similar.

Morrison took Batman on quite a freaky psychological journey in "Batman RIP," and I enjoyed his Batman more than any I've read in years. It's because Morrison's conception of the Dark Knight owes quite a bit to the EngleRogers version of the character. It's a Batman you WANT to read about, that you want to cheer for, and that you want to see happy.

That's right -- a balanced, HAPPY Batman. Shocking, but as Englehart and Rogers demonstrated, quite possible, and endlessly entertaining.

Next time: If all goes well, we'll have an interview with Norm Breyfogle, the iconic Batman artist for an entire generation of fans. If nothing goes well, then we'll talk about Burton's Batman. Either way, we're going back to 1989.

A version of this column originally appeared at Alert Nerd, where I frequently blog as well. Come on over and check it out!

BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: Six Pages

How many Batman stories are there, anyway? I'd be tempted to count, if I could quit my job and get paid handsomely by some eccentric billionaire to do nothing but count Batman stories.

There's at least 690 stories in Batman's eponymous title alone. Of course, some issues had more than one story; others are part of a larger story arc. Detective Comics adds another 858 to the pile. Batman Family, Legends of the Dark Knight, Shadow of the Bat, an endless array of miniseries, one-shots, Elseworlds, guest appearances...like I said, full-time job. And that's just in comics; there's several TV series and movies to consider as well, plus video games, prose adventures, and so on and so on and so on...

Considering the almost unimaginable volume of Batman stories over the past seventy years, it's pretty astonishing to consider it all began with just six pages. Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939, boasted a Batman cover, but only a single six-page interior story devoted to the Caped Crusader. The rest of its 64 pages were filled out by an odd assortment of gag strips, action strips, prose pulp adventures, and some actual detecting here and there too.

So, six pages. Six pages with which to introduce a character who would continue to be published non-stop for the next seventy years. Six pages to spawn a pop culture phenomenon--movies, music videos featuring androgynous pop stars, pillowcases. Six pages that are a landmark in our cultural history.

They're six good pages, scripted by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane. Today Kane is always credited as Batman's sole creator; if Kane created Batman, then Finger brought him to life. It was Finger who became Kane's initial and most influential co-conspirator in building up what we know today as the Batman "mythos," though I'm sure some hate that word. (At least I didn't call it "canon.") "Young socialite" Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon both premiere in this first story, along with the Bat-Man (dash included); it would take several more issues for other bits of Bat-iconography to appear, such as the Batarang and bat-themed methods of motorized conveyance. (In this original adventure, Batman drives a nondescript red car, like he's just borrowing wheels from a particularly boring friend until his pimped-out superhero ride is ready.)

This first story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," reads to today's eyes like warmed-over second-hand crime fiction, something one of the minor Law & Order shows might whip up for a non-sweeps episode. There's four guys and someone dies, and they're in some chemical business together, and one of them wants the whole money for themselves. Or something.

Who cares, really, when the top of the first page gives us our first look at this Bat-Man, framed in silhouette, promising mystery and intrigue and darkness?

The rest is a dull moan, except when this Bat-Man shows up again, and punctuates the proceedings with the physical violence that even in comics' dawning days was already the visceral payoff to whatever convoluted story had to be serviced to get the reader to the good stuff

As a casual fan at best of golden age comics, a few things surprised me. First, the silence. As in, there is some.



I always imagine golden age stories as heavy with text, whether it's dialogue balloons or looming captions that compress the images in each panel down into tiny tableaus. Even in this initial story, Kane and Finger are already experimenting with moments of pure action, minus any text whatsoever; over the first year of Batman in Detective, they'd push this envelope even further to create moments of surprising and quiet mood.

It's also jarring just how unconnected the sequential art is in this story as compared to any modern comics. It may be the influence that film storytelling has slowly gained over comics storytelling that compels creators today to develop more cohesive scenes that spread out over pages, instead of moving a story forward at a more compressed pace; creators today also have far more space to spread out than these six pages, so they decompress, leading to 22 page issues that read more like a chapter in a book than a filling installment of story. In "Syndicate," the panels are less frames from a film than snapshots of a series of scenes, with stray moments of true "sequence," where you can somewhat follow action from one panel to the next.

You probably already know that at this point in his career, Bat-Man had no trouble with criminals meeting their "fitting end" in the course of his pursuit. He'd change that tune quickly, and he'd meet Dick Grayson, and he'd start looking out for the Bat-signal and settle pretty quickly into a Batman (no dash this time) we recognize as the same one we read about today.

In these first SIX PAGES (sorry, I just can't get over it, so so much from so so little), the Bat-Man is still rough around his edges, and raw. Yet even here, the darkness draws in, and this "mysterious and adventurous figure" already begins to fascinate.

Next time: My favorite Batman, by Englehart and Rogers.

BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: All Your Batman Are Belong To Us

Let's start here: There is no such thing as a "definitive Batman."

You may have heard different. Perhaps you're under the impression that the grumble & grimy Batman of the past twenty years is the "definitive Batman." Or maybe you grew up in the fifties, and to you, Batman just ain't Batman without some aliens and rainbow-colored costumes. You may believe the earliest Batman stories are the best and most important, or that Grant Morrison's current run on the character is the greatest interpretation yet created by mankind.

There's a good word, "interpretation." This is a bold statement, but Batman might just be the most interpreted character in pop culture. That's not to say he's the one with the most comics, movies, TV series, childrens' underpants, and so on. But when it comes to the sheer variety amongst the many depictions of this one guy who fights crime in a cape and tights--different and varied views of who the character is, how he operates, and why he does what he does--there may be no single modern character who has been conceptualized in so many divergent ways.

Which is good, because otherwise, this column would be about 50 words long.

On a semi-regular basis, this space will be devoted to discussing Batman. Just Batman. Not superheroes in general, or DC universe superheroes, or even DC universe superheroes who live in Gotham City. JUST BATMAN.

And somewhere tangled above rests our essential thesis--rather than cherrypicking through this character's history and deciding which versions of the Bat we prefer, only to discard the rest, we're going to operate under the assumption that it's ALL TRUE. It all happened, because it did. Maybe it's not all there in the current fictional history of the intellectual property published in modern corporate superhero comics as "Batman," but it's all there in the culture--the comics, the movies, the TV shows, the childrens' underpants. We can look at all of it, turn it over, see what makes it work, or not so much. (FULL DISCLOSURE: We will not be looking at the childrens' underpants. At all.)

Batman has been MY FAVORITEST since I was about four years old. At that age, I simply bought into the adventures of Adam West and Burt Ward as though every cliffhanger death trap had an actual prayer of dicing the Dynamic Duo to paper-thin bits. By the time I was old enough to really nurse a comics habit, Michael Keaton was in theaters slapping around Jack Nicholson. I stuck it out through Knightfall and Knightryder and Knightfever; up until a few months ago, I had every single color variant of Legends of the Dark Knight #1. (I kept the turqouise.)

More recently, I was there opening weekend for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, totally jazzed that somehow, the movies had managed to make Batman awesome again. A variation on the greasy & grubby interpretation, to be sure, but still nuanced in its own ways...just like practically every separate take on the character.

These Batmen scattered across my life, the pop detritus I stumble upon in my brain on a daily basis...they all MEAN something, even if it's dumb. Let's crawl down to the Bat-Cave of the blogosphere, pop some punch cards into the Batputer, and see what we can deduce.

***

Okay, so it's no fun to just have some random blabby "here's what I'm gonna do" intro column and not have at least ONE treat, right?

It seems as though the sixties, in addition to being the most turbulent cultural period in our nation's history, were also the years when every two-bit actor with a role on a TV show thought they could record a pop record. Shatner, Nimoy, Sebastian Cabot, Eddie Albert...the list is endless, and the stars of Batman are no exception.

Brian Heater did a fun write-up on Burt Ward's foray into pop music with none other than FRANK ZAPPA (!!!), so let's give a listen to Adam West's single, "Miranda." Wikipedia informs us that this song was actually performed LIVE by West at personal appearances in the 1960s; I don't think I'll encounter a more pathetic factoid today.

Ward actually acquits himself pretty well on this one, so it's not quite at Shatner "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" stature. It's also catchy as hell. You have been warned.

Next time: We return to where it all began: Detective Comics #27.