Batmonth: Earning Your Wings, Part 1

Batcave File #0001

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It's a fluke at worst, an anomoly at best. How does a splash of ink and a few pencil scratches become such an icon, an earworm in the head of pop culture?

I can't tell you exactly how, but I sure know where to start. A full on autopsy of the biggest icon. You're about to earn your wings, and bear witness to the dissection of the Batman.

It all starts with a man named Bob Kane in 1939. Hot off the heels of the sucess Superman, National Comics, now DC Comics, wanted a new costumed hero. In comes Bob Kane. His prototype was a tad different than the one we are familiar with today. First of all, instead of the "cape and cowl" look that he has today, he had more of a domino mask like the one that's traditionally associated with, say, the Riddler or Robin. Secondly, his costume was actually purple. I guess that was changed because the editor thought the criminals would find purple more hilariously weird than scary. The traditional "bat symbol" with the insignia of a bat in a yellow circle on the chest didn't come about until Dennis O'Neil's tenure as Batman writer in the '70's. The most notable difference between our modern day Batman and Kane's prototype was that instead of a cape, Batman had DaVinci style flight machine paper-mache-esque wings instead of the sleeker cowl.

So, who brought the changes that made this prototype into the character we love today? That credit goes to a man named Bill Finger. Bill took Kane's prototype, axed the huge wings and domino mask for the now traditional cape, and made what would eventually turn into the original incarnation of the Joker. In essence, if Finger had been taken out of the equation, Batman would have faded out of the public eye like all of his other counterparts at the time. And yet, Finger received no byline in the title or credit from Kane himself. This caused somewhat of a feud between the two that sadly was never resolved before Finger's passing. To this day, although Kane always receives credit (contractually mandated, I might add) on all Bat-related projects, it appears that Finger's influence has been taken to the grave. I have no idea whether or not Kane has left us yet, but I doubt he'd set aside any time to acknowledge Finger as more than a partial insignificant influence, even if he was.

The origin of Batman and the stories themselves were actually pretty dark for their time. In case you don't know the classic origin of Batman, it goes a little something like this: Bruce Wayne heir to the rich fortunes of his dad, Thomas, and mother, Martha, a doctor and a socialite respectively, went to see a movie one night with his parents. Coming back from the movie, his parents were gunned down in front of his eyes. Taken in by his parents' butler, Alfred, he trained for many years in different disciplines to eventually be able to fight crime for himself and avenge his parents in his own way.

Usually the stories would involve mainly street criminals, your garden-variety muggers. But, as time went on they gradually expanded their horizons to include more off-beat costumed villians like the Joker and Catwoman. I'll be delving more into them in a future post. Tomorrow we'll look at Batman's transition into a lighter age of comics called the Silver Age in which he loses some of his edge, but gains a side-kick in the process. I'll see you then!

Thanks,
Tomato