So Batman’s great we all agree on that don’t we? Everyone loves him, his movies gross loads for Warner Bros, I myself have heard people say “I’m a Marvel fan but I like Batman”. Batman is easily the flagship hero for DC Comics, whats the problem? Well thats it really, DC overuse him. You look at DC Comics any month he has about 8 new books being released, if theres a new movie it’s usually Batman (in either Animated or Live Action). The surprising thing is that Batman has spent a good chunk of his publication history as DC’s second-banana.
So why is Batman now so popular? Well it’s because Batman actually stands for nothing. Seriously Superman “Truth, Justice and The American Way”, Wonder Woman “a Champion of Peace and Love” (except in more modern times). Batman has been able to satiate para-military niche (like in Batman vs Superman) but can also be an outspoken pacifist like in Death of Innocents the Horror of Landmines. He can moodily declare “I work alone” meanwhile having more sidekicks than any other Superhero those being; Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Carrie Kelly and Damian Wayne who all used the name Robin (at some point, some have used other codenames), Betty Kane, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain who also use the name Bat-girl, Kathy Kane as Batwoman, Ace the Bathound, Bat-mite, The Huntress, Bat-Wing and others that are more questionable like Catwoman, Talia Al Ghul, Clayface and Azrael (all who are often written as villains) or support players who don’t help out in the “Field” like Commissioner James Gordon (who gives Batman cases) or Lucius Fox (who supplies Batman with Gadgets) or Alfred Pennyworth (Batman’s Second Butler, his first was conveniently called Alfred) and of course he works with all these people while being on multiple Super-teams like The Justice League and The Outsiders, He’s truly a loan wolf. The only thing thats consistent about Batman is he doesn’t have superpowers, but wait he managed to make a Sinestro Corp Ring fly away scared. So he has no powers other than being Supernaturally scary that he can make a ring that feeds off fear runaway and there was that time he got shot by Darkseid and started reincarnate into former family members or when he had the Black Glove break him mentally and through Buddhist meditation he created a second personality that believed he was from the planet Zurr-En-Al. How could I forget the time he managed to by to perform an indian rope trick to escape a basement (although that was the last season of Batman ’66). Not to mention the ability to simultaneously convince a city your an urban legend and appear on TV with the rest of the Justice League or be able to come up with unescapable death plans for each member of the Justice League (see Tower of Babel) something that Darkseid, Brainiac (a Super-intelligent android with an IQ in 4 digits) or Maxwell Lord (a telepathic billionaire who knows the league intimately).
Now the whole not having Superpowers thing is weirdly how he was originally second-banana and how he stopped being the companies number 2 hero (at times). DC’s original flagship hero was Superman, the original Superhero. When Superman first emerged he literally built the comic up, now a common misconception is that DC stands for Detective Comics. That is completely false and one of those things people try to pass off as facts to look clever, in fact DC was originally National Comics and took the name DC after their first acquisition (which was All Star) and at this point the brag “our comics are read countrywide” was no longer a unique selling point, so they took the name DC to try and convince people that their comics where more relevant as they came from Washington which is where the President lives (this was completely untrue). Superman spent most of their shared publication history as top-dog, but Batman first got his taste of being numero-uno in 1966 with the rise of Batmania when after being 4th choice for William Dozier’s comedy superhero kids show, after Dick Tracy and of course Superman which could not be sold to 20th Century Fox due to the TV rights to Superman being sold to the makers of Superman The Musical. Now it was time for the Caped Crusader to outshine the Man of Steel but this infatuation was fleeting by 1972 Batman’s comics sales they where being outsold by Aquaman (so Aquaman’s recent movie success should feel a bit like Deja Vu) and it was even being threatened with cancellation. At this point DC also had the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Super-Friends and if you’ve ever seen that show Superman is the man, there’s a clear Hierarchy, Superman, Guest Hero, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman and Robin (who are so codependent I’m sure they have to go to toiler together in this series) and the Junior members (Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog in Season one or The Wonder Twins and Gleek in later seasons). Now humiliated and desperate to separate him fro past success DC editorial changed Batman’s creative team to writer Dennis O’neil and Artist Neal Adams. Under these two gone where the days of goofy gadgets and cries of holy, Batman was different a swash-buckling adventurer ladies man able to seduce women like Augustus St Cloud and Talia Al Ghul. O’Neil was a former Newspaper investigative journalist added this experience to his writing and Batman was given more realism than his previous incarnations and with Adams pencil Batman finally had an artist who could rival Supermans, no more of Bob Kane’s chicken scratches or Dick Sprang’s cartoonish characteurs. The creative team increased Batman’s sales so much that they could overturn Editor Julie Schwartz longtime no rogues policy reintroducing Batman’s Rogues first with the Joker in “the Jokers Five Way Revenge”. Although it would take longer for Catwoman to return to the pages of Batman, but she was later in O’Neil’s run on Wonder Woman used as one of her Villains. But even with this new direction it was not enough for The World’s Greatest Detective to get the advantage over the Man of Tomorrow.
Batman would finally beat his rival in 1986 when DC decided to make more “Adult” comic books like the Killing Joker by Alan Moore and Year One and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, the latter which would have Batman symbolically reject Superman and his ideologies. The message was sent, the sun-god was banished to the underworld by the Dark Knight. Gone was the Bat-tusi and major ret-cons had to be made to reflect the new cynical world view the new Robin Jason Todd had to have a major retcon to his back story. Instead of a rehash of Dick Grayson’s origin, Todd was made to be a tough street-kid who stole a wheel from the Batmobile and with this his personality started to change. Todd went from Dick 2.0 to a brutal coldhearted killer and violent sociopath. Around this point we also had Batfans working on revisionist history which continues to today, the myth that Batman was always “Dark and Gritty” then Adam West came along ignores many facts like the Clock King episode of Batman 66 was written by Bill Finger the same guy fans who dislike Bob Kane claim is the real creator of Batman.
Now I said this new direction was more “Adult” but thats what the marketers would prefer you to think of them as but a better word is Cynical, and this cynicism isn’t limited to just the Bat-titles. This new ideology of course stripped many heroes of their powers, in the name of “relatability” but this new weaker Superman was less popular and less likeable as a character. Stripped of his smile now forced to scowl and to be more edgy and grow a mullet. The Big blue boy-scout wasn’t the only victim Wonder Woman has in the years since Batman’s rise to top dog has been stripped of her compassion even losing her power of Super-Empathy (easily the most underrated Super-power of all time) and been turned into a Xena knock off. Her origin story has been written so many times it’s hard to find a Wonder Woman Graphic Novel that isn’t a retelling of her origin story, many of which rejecting the ideas of her creator. Of course this isn’t the first time Wonder Woman has suffered the most from Batman’s rise in popularity as her ABC pilot was basically Batman now as a woman where she is the CEO of a major company, reliant on gadgets and isn’t from a magical island populated entirely by women who where victimised by Zeus and Diana being an ambassador for them into the modern world. The only powered character who has benefitted from this mass-nerfing of heroes is Green Lantern as under this new direction his ring can’t just grant any wish to it’s wielder but can make a replica of it from Green Light. Lets not forget the boon it’s given to Green Arrow he now is no longer restricted to being a poor substitute for Batman on the Comic page he gets to do it in his own TV show where he fights Batman’s C-List villains, has an ever growing ensemble of sidekicks and sits in his basement brooding.
The biggest problem is this cynicism doesn’t really extend to Batman himself, the average Batman story has him getting knocked out at some point, and being rendered unconscious is really bad for you. If we where to adhere to the same rules that says we can’t have a man in red tights run faster than the speed of light well, getting knocked out as much as Batman would mean that after a couple weeks of nightly patrols he’d be a brain damaged and would be lucky if he could count to ten. After a few months Bruce Wayne would be confined to a wheel chair being fed soup by Alfred babbling about how he had to stop the Penguin.
DC’s current Alum seem to have no quibble with the current status quo, looking at the “Black Label” DC’s line of creators passion projects, it’s all Batman stories, even Batman stories like White Knight where Batman and The Joker switch roles (a story we’ve actually seen a few times before). The only exceptions of new stories being Kelly Sue Deconnick doing a history of the Amazons (which may be cancelled), the confirmed cancelled “Other History of the DC Universe” and Frank Miller/John Romita Jr. doing Superman Year One which doesn’t fill me with hope as it’s written by a man who has publicly said “I Hate Superman”.
The worst part of all of this whole idea that Superman is unrelatable is that the concept of somebody who can solve all the world’s problems, somebody who could enslave the entire human race but doesn’t because he believes in freedom is hard to believe in is really depressing.
