Batman 1

Batman

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"Bruce Wayne" redirects here. For the planned TV series, see Bruce Wayne (TV series). For the Amalgam Comics character, see Bruce Wayne (Amalgam Comics).

This article is about the superhero character. For other uses, see Batman (disambiguation).

Batman
Promotional art for Batman #608 (October 2002, second printing) Pencils by Jim Lee and inks by Scott Williams
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Detective Comics #27 (May 1939)
Created by	Bill Finger[1](developer, uncredited) Bob Kane (concept)
In-story information
Alter ego	Bruce Wayne
Team affiliations	Batman Family Justice League Wayne Enterprises Outsiders Batmen of All Nations Batman Incorporated
Partnerships	Jim Gordon Robin (various) Batgirl (various) Nightwing Oracle Catwoman Superman Huntress Wonder Woman Green Arrow Zatanna Bluebird
Notable aliases	Matches Malone,[2] Sir Hemingford Grey, Mordecai Wayne, The Insider, Lefty Knox,[3] Minuteman[4]
Abilities	Genius-level intellect Peak physical and mental conditioning Master martial artist,acrobat, detective, escapologist, strategist, swordsman, tactician, and marksman Use of high-tech equipment, weapons, armors, & gadgets Master of stealth Master of disguise Advanced scientific and technological proficiency Excellent observational skills Access to vast wealth and criminal records Trained computer hacker Photographic memory

Batman is a fictional superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics, as well as in a number of movie, television, and videogame adaptations. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Originally named "the Bat-Man", the character is also referred to by such epithets as "the Caped Crusader",^[5] "the Dark Knight",^[5] and "the World's Greatest Detective".^[5]

Batman is the secret identity of Bruce Wayne, an American billionaire, industrialist, and philanthropist. Having witnessed the murder of his parents as a child, he swore revenge on criminals, an oath tempered with a sense of justice. Wayne trains himself both physically and intellectually and dons a bat-themed costume to fight crime.^[6] Batman operates in the fictional Gotham City, assisted by various supporting characters including his crime-fighting partner, Robin, his butler Alfred Pennyworth, the police commissioner Jim Gordon, and occasionally the heroine Batgirl. He fights a large assortment of villains, often referred to as the "rogues gallery", which includes the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, Ra's al Ghul, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman. Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess any superpowers; he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, martial arts skills, an indomitable will, fear, and intimidation in his continuous war on crime.

Batman became popular soon after his introduction and gained his own comic book title, Batman, in 1940. As the decades wore on, differing interpretations of the character emerged. The late 1960s Batmantelevision series used a camp aesthetic which continued to be associated with the character for years after the show ended. Various creators worked to return the character to his dark roots, culminating in 1986 with The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, followed by Batman: The Killing Joke byAlan Moore and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth byGrant Morrison. The success of Warner Bros.' live-action Batman feature films have helped maintain public interest in the character.^[7]

An American cultural icon, Batman has been licensed and adapted into a variety of media, from radio to television and film, and appears on a variety of merchandise sold all over the world such as toys and video games. The character has also intrigued psychiatrists with many trying to understand the character's psyche. In May 2011, Batman placed second on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time,^[8] after Superman. Empire magazine listed him second in their 50 Greatest Comic Book Characters of All Time. The character has been portrayed in films by Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, Adam West, Michael Keaton, Kevin Conroy, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and by Ben Affleck in the 2016 movie, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Publication history
  • 1.1 Creation
  • 1.2 Subsequent creation credit
  • 1.3 Early years
  • 1.4 1950s and early 1960s
  • 1.5 "New Look" Batman and camp
  • 1.6 The Dark Knight Returns
  • 1.7 The New 52
• 2 Fictional character biography
  • 2.1 Golden Age
  • 2.2 Silver Age
  • 2.3 Modern Batman
• 3 Personality
  • 3.1 Bruce Wayne
  • 3.2 Dick Grayson
• 4 Characterization
  • 4.1 Skills and abilities
  • 4.2 Costume
  • 4.3 Equipment
  • 4.4 Bat-Signal
  • 4.5 Batcave
• 5 Supporting characters
  • 5.1 Robin
  • 5.2 Villains
  • 5.3 Others
• 6 Cultural impact
  • 6.1 In other media
  • 6.2 Gay interpretations
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 References
• 10 External links

Publication history

See also: List of Batman comics

Creation

In early 1939, the success of Superman in Action Comics prompted editors at the comic book division of National Publications (the future DC Comics) to request more superheroes for its titles. In response, Bob Kane created "the Bat-Man."^[9] Collaborator Bill Finger recalled "Kane had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN."^[10] The bat wing like cape was suggested by Bob Kane; who was inspired by seeing Leonardo Da Vinci's sketch of an ornithopter flying device as a child.^[11]

Finger offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl instead of a simple domino mask, a cape instead of wings, and gloves, and removing the red sections from the original costume.^{[12][13][14][15]} Finger said he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the character's secret identity: "Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Bruce, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock ... then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne."^[16] He later said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic-strip character with which Kane was familiar as well.^[17]

Kane and Finger drew upon contemporary 1930s popular culture for inspiration regarding much of the Bat-Man's look, personality, methods and weaponry. Details find predecessors in pulp fiction, comic strips, newspaper headlines, and autobiographical details referring to Kane himself.^[18] As an aristocratic hero with a double identity, the Bat-Man had predecessors in the Scarlet Pimpernel (created by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, 1903) and Zorro (created by Johnston McCulley, 1919). Like them, he performed his heroic deeds in secret, averted suspicion by playing the fool in public, and marked his work with a signature symbol. Kane specifically noted the influence of the films The Mark of Zorro (1920) andThe Bat Whispers (1930) in the creation of the character's iconography. Finger, drawing inspiration from pulp heroes likeDoc Savage, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, and Sherlock Holmes, made the character a master sleuth.^[19][20]

In his 1989 autobiography, Kane detailed Finger's contributions to Batman's creation:

One day I called Bill and said, 'I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I've made some crude, elementary sketches I'd like you to look at'. He came over and I showed him the drawings. At the time, I only had a small domino mask, like the one Robin later wore, on Batman's face. Bill said, 'Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look more mysterious?' At this point, the Bat-Man wore a red union suit; the wings, trunks, and mask were black. I thought that red and black would be a good combination. Bill said that the costume was too bright: 'Color it dark gray to make it look more ominous'. The cape looked like two stiff bat wings attached to his arms. As Bill and I talked, we realized that these wings would get cumbersome when Bat-Man was in action, and changed them into a cape, scalloped to look like bat wings when he was fighting or swinging down on a rope. Also, he didn't have any gloves on, and we added them so that he wouldn't leave fingerprints.^[17]

Subsequent creation credit

Kane signed away ownership in the character in exchange for, among other compensation, a mandatory byline on all Batman comics. This byline did not originally say "Batman created by Bob Kane"; his name was simply written on the title page of each story. The name disappeared from the comic book in the mid-1960s, replaced by credits for each story's actual writer and artists. In the late 1970s, when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster began receiving a "created by" credit on the Superman titles, along with William Moulton Marston being given the byline for creating Wonder Woman, Batman stories began saying "Created by Bob Kane" in addition to the other credits.

Finger did not receive the same recognition. While he had received credit for other DC work since the 1940s, he began, in the 1960s, to receive limited acknowledgment for his Batman writing; in the letters page of Batman #169 (February 1965) for example, editor Julius Schwartz names him as the creator of the Riddler, one of Batman's recurring villains. However, Finger's contract left him only with his writing page rate and no byline. Kane wrote, "Bill was disheartened by the lack of major accomplishments in his career. He felt that he had not used his creative potential to its fullest and that success had passed him by."^[16] At the time of Finger's death in 1974, DC had not officially credited Finger as Batman co-creator.

Jerry Robinson, who also worked with Finger and Kane on the strip at this time, has criticized Kane for failing to share the credit. He recalled Finger resenting his position, stating in a 2005 interview with The Comics Journal:

Bob made him more insecure, because while he slaved working on Batman, he wasn't sharing in any of the glory or the money that Bob began to make, which is why... [he was] going to leave [Kane's employ]. ... [Kane] should have credited Bill as co-creator, because I know; I was there. ... That was one thing I would never forgive Bob for, was not to take care of Bill or recognize his vital role in the creation of Batman. As with Siegel and Shuster, it should have been the same, the same co-creator credit in the strip, writer and artist.^[21]

Although Kane initially rebutted Finger's claims at having created the character, writing in a 1965 open letter to fans that "it seemed to me that Bill Finger has given out the impression that he and not myself created the ''Batman, t' [sic] as well as Robin and all the other leading villains and characters. This statement is fraudulent and entirely untrue." Kane himself also commented on Finger's lack of credit. "The trouble with being a 'ghost' writer or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without 'credit'. However, if one wants the 'credit', then one has to cease being a 'ghost' or follower and become a leader or innovator."^[22]

In 1989, Kane revisited Finger's situation, recalling in an interview,

In those days it was like, one artist and he had his name over it [the comic strip] — the policy of DC in the comic books was, if you can't write it, obtain other writers, but their names would never appear on the comic book in the finished version. So Bill never asked me for it [the byline] and I never volunteered — I guess my ego at that time. And I felt badly, really, when he [Finger] died.^[23]