Since he made his debut nearly 70 years ago, Batman has generated nine movies, three TV series, and hundreds of comic books and graphic novels that run the gamut from cartoonish sci-fi to stark social drama. As Les Daniels documents in his book Batman: The Complete History, the Caped Crusader’s story has proved extremely plastic. Created by comic-book artist Bob Kane, he began as a grim vigilante who sometimes killed criminals on the spot, but by the 1950s he’d become a strapping father figure whose nuclear family included not only Robin the Boy Wonder but Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Hound, and the elfin Bat-Mite. Over the years the Batman saga has drifted toward foolishness again and again, periodically corrected by young artists and writers who restored the character’s seething anger and devilish appearance.
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The Batman creation myth dates back to November 1939, when Kane and story man Bill Finger used it as the two-page preface to an adventure called “The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom.” Young Bruce Wayne and his parents are confronted by a stickup man while walking home from a movie, and both parents are murdered. Wayne pledges to spend the rest of his life fighting crime, and 15 years later he’s ready to begin. But he needs the right costume. “Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot,” he reasons. “So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible.” As if in answer, a bat flies through his window, and in the next panel his serrated black cape billows out behind him as he perches on the edge of a rooftop.
Sophocles it’s not, but it gave Batman enough of an inner life to distinguish him from his predecessors (Superman, Zorro, the Shadow), and it came at the end of a decade in which urban crime, fueled by prohibition and then the Depression, seemed to be devouring civilized society. At first the Batman stories were set in New York, but Finger changed that to the more universal Gotham City. Skyscrapers and shadowy rooftops became a primal backdrop for Batman’s adventures, a world where thugs ran wild and larger-than-life masterminds like the Joker and the Penguin were the logical extension of celebrity criminals such as John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. As the writers ran out of ideas, Batman and Robin began hooking up with Superman to battle villains from outer space, but in the noirish early stories their enemies were often the cigar-chomping crime bosses who owned the city.
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Nolan and David S. Goyer
With Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, and Morgan Freeman
