The dark knight evolves
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He’s been the world’s greatest detective, following trails of clues through the grimy underworld of his city. He’s been a lighthearted crusader of good, battling gimmicky crooks. He’s been an adventurer and a hero, a vengeance-seeker and a father figure. And yet through everything, he’s been the same character. He is Batman.
Earlier this year, Detective Comics #27, the first appearance of Batman, turned 80 years old. In that time, Batman has ascended from a prominent pop-cultural figure to nothing short of an icon. However, unlike other characters such as Superman, who has more or less remained static since his debut, Batman has been subjected to constant reinterpretation. This is similar to various other pop-culture figures, such as King Arthur, or Robin Hood. But why Batman?
Batman is a relatively simple concept. For contrast, take Superman, an alien from a dying planet sent to Earth and granted various powers by his alien anatomy. He was raised by Kansas farmers to be the embodiment of goodness. Aside from basic setting adjustments, if you take away any one of those aspects, you have a character who is no longer Superman. However, Batman has just a few basic rules. As a child, he watched his parents be shot and killed. He swore vengeance, and trained for years to be a vigilante, taking the mantle of Batman. Because of his parents’ fate, he doesn’t kill or use guns. This is a very basic character concept, and variations are inevitable. His demeanor doesn’t matter, as long as he has ultimately good intentions. His job doesn’t matter, as long as he’s rich. His exact types of training don’t matter, as long as he’s well trained.
Additionally, Batman has changed because the world has changed. Here are a few examples. In the late ‘30s, Batman was a gritty vigilante who killed and occasionally carried a gun. His depiction was far more similar to a pulp hero of the ‘30s than to a modern superhero. Eventually, Batman was given a young sidekick, Robin, in order to reveal a softer side to his personality and to make the book more marketable to children. In the ‘50s, the comic book industry began a campaign of strict censorship of comic books, and Batman was required to become more unambiguously heroic, and, eventually, goofier.
This depiction of Batman was the norm until the early ‘70s, when Neil Adams and Dennis O’Neil took over Batman’s main title. Though the plots of these comics seemed to continue the goofy camp of the ‘60s, the tone of the book became closer to gothic horror. Adams and O’Neil returned Batman to his dark and gritty past, reflecting the general ‘70s trend toward realism and forming the foundations of his modern incarnation. The trend toward gritty realism in Batman comics was continued by Frank Miller in the 1987 storyline “Batman: Year One,” which told the story of Batman’s first year as a vigilante. “Miller… had a gritty and grounded take on Batman… “Year One” set the bar for Batman and Gotham City… [and] introduced the idea of [Gotham as] a corrupt, lawless city… Contemporary writers like Tom King still use the concept,” says Chris Gaikwad, 12 on Miller’s Batman.
So, which of these is the true Batman? Which of these gets to the heart of the character? “[My favorite version of Batman] is Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle’s version… Grant wrote Batman comics darkly and with a sense of verisimilitude [realism]... Combine that [with] Norm Breyfogle’s dramatic, exaggerated art and you have a masterpiece,” says Chris.
Perhaps the best answer to the Batman question comes from writer Grant Morrison. In his mid-2000s run on Batman, Morrison proposed that everything that had ever happened in a Batman comic was canonical: a part of the character. Yes, Batman had been briefly turned into a baby, and yes, he had also faced down mobsters with Tommy guns in the dead of night. In the end, every interpretation of the character is valid, so long as it understands the heart of the character. To paraphrase Batman: The Animated Series, “He is vengeance. He is the night. He is Batman.”