Based on his self-description in The
Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon
and I are close in age. Unlike Weldon, the limited selection of broadcast television
channels in my rural community did not present 1960s Batman series. My childhood impressions of the Dark Knight came
almost exclusively from the comics.
My favorite version of Batman is the “World’s Greatest Detective” (when I came
across his team-up with a very old Sherlock
Holmes in Detective Comics 500, I had to have
it). I’m also fond of the adventure hero who hues close to his pulp
roots—basically the
Shadow or Doc
Savage in a bat suit (I also had to buy Batman
253, in which the awestruck superhero acknowledges the Shadow as an
inspiration).
I suppose that I staked out my position on Batman because that is
partly what Weldon’s book is about, the contradictions between Batman the
character and Batman the idea, and the tension between stories loved by
hardcore fans and stories appreciated by a wider audience who engage with
Batman in diverse ways.
Weldon illustrates this tension, and the character’s shift as the pull
is sometimes stronger in one direction or another, through the history
of the character. He sees a cycle in Batman’s depiction. He starts as a dark
loner. He becomes a father figure (most directly to Robin). He grows
into the patriarch of a family (Robin, Alfred,
Batgirl, and Huntress just
to start a list). Then a desire to revitalize the character, get back to roots,
or satisfy the core fandom returns him to the loner stage.
The hardcore fans Weldon writes of generally conceive Batman as
serious. They want a Batman who is realistic and gritty. In my experience as a
reader of comics, “serious,” “realistic” and “gritty” are often code words for
prurience, grotesquery and gore. I’m not interested in that in comics or any
other media.
These fans have a love-hate relationship with the Batman of other media
(they just hate the Adam West
version). The Tim
Burton films revitalized public interest in Batman when the comics were in
a serious sales slump. (The hardcore fans hate the Joel
Schumacher movies. I’m with them on that.) In the Chris Nolan
trilogy they finally got a Batman who is serious and has acceptance in the
wider culture.
That culture is much wider now than ever, especially due to the Internet.
Comics fandom
was once very insular, and in some ways it still is. In the Internet age, many
people are engaging the character and idea of Batman. Comic book fans,
cosplayers, fan
fiction writers, movie
buffs, fashionistas, retro TV watchers, hipsters and a host of others are interacting
with Batman’s stories, history, image and iconography. It is a world that some
of the old hardcore fans may find discomfiting, but it may be a place where
Batman can have lasting relevance.
Weldon plainly likes that prospect. In his view, the super-straight
Adam West Batman and the grounded, brooding Chris Nolan Batman can coexist.
They are both really Batman. People have always focused on the aspects of the
character that resonated with them. They have also imposed on him
interpretations that the writers and artists that created his stories never
imagined. We do this with every text, but few texts have the longevity of
Batman. That may be the Weldon’s other point. We can take any version of Batman
as seriously as we want, or we can simply enjoy the stories. He is a fictional
character after all.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:
Weldon, Glen. The Caped Crusade:
Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2016.
