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Batman: Through the Years Essay example

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Batman: Through the Years

The Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne, these are all aliases for an enigmatic character in popular culture most commonly known as Batman. While having his humble origins in the pulp magazines of the late 1930’s, over the span of his existence, he has expanded into a full-blown franchise. There have been 3 TV shows on him, 4 movies (1 more still in the making), various videogames, and over 20 comic book series that currently feature his name. Even after 60 years of being in print, it was a Batman issue that was the highest selling comic book of the last week of November, 2004. It is the aim of this project to explore the reasons why this one particular comic book superhero has managed to keep his …show more content…

However, this was a program that reached millions of people, and if someone were to build their opinion solely on the depiction this tubby, good-natured Batman, they would be shocked to learn that the original Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939 “…was portrayed as a relentless manhunter dedicated to the eradication of crime [who] would play on criminals’ fear of the night and exploit his batlike appearance. He could be vicious – he shot more than one man – and his amazing abilities overwhelmed the common hoodlum. In short, The Batman was an avenging vigilante” (Horn, Maurice).

Clearly the TV networks deemed it necessary to clean up the image of the angry crime fighter in order to placate the censor boards and parents, so the image of Batman that they put out was one that did not correspond at all to what he started out as. Yet, this show was able to attract its own audience, just like the darker comic book version had its own fan base. Batman would not have been able to be as successful as he was if he depended solely on his comic book image, because it would have limited his audience and eventually, he would have been phased out of the collective mind of society. By appearing in film and TV, Batman was able to transcend the conventional borders that limited normal comic book heroes.

Batman to me:

In all honesty, the first time I read a Batman comic, I thought he was kind of lame. The guy was supposed to be a superhero, but he didn’t

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