Book explores both Batman’s campy and brooding sides
Author shows reverence for the character, but keeps it fun
Batman is a brooding night stalker, grim and remorseless. Also, he’s a guy who might break into the Batusi on the dance floor.
While Superman has barely veered off his flight path over the decades, Batman’s image has swung back and forth since the superhero’s creation in 1939. The night detective of early comics was soon brightened up with the addition of a young sidekick, Robin. By the 1960s, Batman was a camp icon thanks to a hit TV show where he got to show off his dance moves and gravely intone ridiculous lines like: “Well, well. We’ve come a long way from the prime minister’s exploding cake ... Or have we?”
The TV show inspired a return in the comics to a darker Batman, one familiar to a new generation of fans weaned on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie trilogy. Even then, there have been fluctuations along the way. In 1986, writer and artist Frank Miller portrayed Batman as an ill-tempered middle-aged man. In 1997, George Clooney put on the cowl in a widely panned movie remembered mostly for a Batsuit with nipples.
In The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, Glen Weldon tracks Batman’s evolution and how the changes played among his hardcore fans. The “nerds” went from being a subculture with hand-copied fanzines to Internet-era kingmakers with influential websites and comic-cons that attract top sci-fi stars.
Batman provides the better story. He could have been a forgettable knock-off character inspired by The Shadow. But his creators developed a comic-noir style and a compelling origin story with a young Bruce Wayne vowing to fight criminals after one guns down his parents. And he’s vulnerable in a way superpowered heroes like Superman are not.
Writing about Batman is tricky. He is a cultural icon deeply meaningful to many because his story touches on themes of loss, adversity and perseverance. Also, he is an implausible character who defies laws of physics and common sense every time he swoops in on gun-blazing lunatics. Weldon successfully walks the tightrope, showing reverence for the character but keeping it fun. Plus, he loves Batman, and the nerds who love him.
There is a certain type of nerd who thinks anything less than a dark Batman is a travesty. Weldon is not that nerd. He cops to waiting in line for a Batmobile model and gives an eloquent appreciation of Adam West’s faux-weighty portrayal of the hero in the ’60s TV show.
Batman is 77 years old and ubiquitous as ever, starring in yet another big-budget movie, this time with Superman. Trailers show Ben Affleck playing Batman as an ill-tempered middle-aged man, proving we’ve finally left behind the dancing Batman of exploding cakes … Or have we?