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.
Labels: Batman Always Wins, Posts by Matt Springer
posted by Matt at
12:01 AM
4 Comments:
Great post, and now that I think of it I do agree with you that Batman may be the most interpereted modern character. He really can be whatever you want him to be. I think that's why quite possibly my favorite Batman story is the PLANETARY/BATMAN one-shot. It manages to pack in several different portrayals of Batman, but make them all true to his core. And the final moment with Batman still makes me tear up. Also, Bat-Female-Villain-Repellent...AWESOME.
Great intro, Matt. Since Batman resonates with me far more than any other superhero, and since -- with a few notable exceptions -- I've always been a Batman fan first and a comic-book fan second, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for further posts.
I'm not quite sure I understand the wording that, "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's all been published, the various different interpretations across the decades and the various media, so it's all "out there" and open to analysis, but that doesn't make any of it "true" in any real sense.
(It almost sounds like Morrison's idea that all of it -- at least the DC comics, or those "mainstream" non-Elseworlds comics that weren't tie-ins to movies or animated TV series -- actually happened to one character, but that too is just one meta-interpretation of all those stories. Compared to stories that aren't beholden to decades of continuity -- such as Nolan's films or the Black & White short stories -- I'm not sure Morrison's approach brings much that is unique and worthwhile.)
"There is no such thing as a 'definitive Batman.'"
That's absolutely true, though some interpretations are more grounded in (parts of) the character's published history than are others.
I would also say that -- if Beauty is objectively true, and I believe it is -- some interpretations are more beautiful than others.
Nolan's films, Timm and Dini's Batman: The Animated Series, Year One, and Ted McKeever's B&W short story "Perpetual Mourning" are probably among the very best. And, frivolous as it can be, the new Brave & The Bold cartoon is probably more beautiful in Plato's sense than Miller's corrosive All-Star title or (arguably) the camp of the 60's TV series.
And it's probably the case that some interpretations are more resonant than others -- that they "strike a chord" far more fully than others.
If you show someone the intro to Adam West's show, the recent anime-esque "The Batman", or the Brave & The Bold cartoon, and I doubt many would ever understand why there are some comic fans -- and even those who (otherwise) hardly ever touch a comic book -- who find this character so uniquely compelling.
But show them opening to Batman: The Animated Series, and they'll understand.
Thanks for the comments guys!
Jason: I haven't read the Batman/Planetary one-shot; must track that down. Thanks for the tip.
Bubba: What I was trying (and clearly failing!) at getting at was that you're right, from a character fictional history perspective, it's not all "true" (unless as you point out, you're Grant Morrison). but from a cultural history perspective, Batman has had so many interpretations, several of them being significant cultural touchstones in their own right, not just for comics but for pop culture period, that you can't ignore the pop camp Batman any more than you can ignore the square Superfriends Batman or the Keaton broody Rubber Batman--to the culture, and to many people who follow it, they're all Batman.
and yeah, there are certainly some Batmen that are better than others, but even the shitty ones will hopefully be a little fun to poke around a bit, and see why they were even created in the first place. :)
Yeah, Batman's probably been stretched far more than any other character, especially in terms of interpretations that actually had any real impact on the popular culture.
That's certainly true in comparison to his fellow superheroes -- or those "pulpy" characters who either inspired the character or share certain aspects, like Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, or James Bond.
It may even be true in an absolute sense, as -- and I say this as an small-o orthodox Christian who believes Jesus Christ is much more than a mere literary character -- I don't think even Christ has been given so many truly different, high-profile re-interpretations: they've all been either reverent or subversive, but that's the only spectrum that's been thoroughly explored.
(The same can be said about Superman, where you only get to a wide array of interpretations when you include psuedo-Superman. It is stunning that all of these different versions of Batman have been official.)
I'd be interested to see how many poles the character has been pulled between -- noir vs. action, realism (or near-realism) vs. the bizarre, sincerity vs. camp -- and see if some sort of taxonomy could be produced.
I'd also be interested to see any theories for why this character in particular supports so many wildly different interpretations, and (perhaps more importantly) why the culture accepts so many of them.
My initial theory has been that Batman is both prominent enough for pop-culture shorthand, and his character embraces more archtypes than anyone else: there's the generic pulpy superhero which can be lampooned in the campy 60's show, the detective, the scary "dark avenger", the playboy with the secret identity, the spy with all his "wonderful toys," etc.
Why the darker Year-One/Nolan interpretation really resonates with so many is another question entirely, answered (I think) in part by the primeval fear of losing your parents, combined with the visceral reaction of the iconic image of the dark, caped figure looming over the nightmarish landscape of the city.
--
And if anything else is worth adding in response to this initial thread, it's my general complaint that, by making all the (major) Bat-titles cling to one continuity, there's less room for these different interpretations. That was less of a problem even a couple years ago, when (in 2006-07) there were remarkably different interpretations in Morrison's Batman, Dini's Detective, and Waid's Brave & The Bold. They were the same basic character in the same continuity, but they could be enjoyed independently -- and I think they were sometimes BEST enjoyed as completely independent works.
Oh, and there's this:
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1543
My wife doesn't understand how fully that last line of dialogue applies to me...
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