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Batman@75

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    Batman@75

    Apparently, Batman turns 75 today. I know we're all supposed to be working longer, but you'd think that an exception could be made for the Caped Crusader.

    http://www.historytoday.com/richard-...akes-his-debut

    #2
    Batman@75



    I'm Batman!

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      #3
      Batman@75

      Batman is a horrible, horrible Tory bastard. A fascist prick. A vicious wanker propping up a system of inequality to protect his billions. But I still kind of love him.

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        #4
        Batman@75

        Plus Arkham Asylum's a great game.

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          #5
          Batman@75

          The problem with Batman in recent renditions is that the greater the insistence that it is all incredibly serious and none more dark, the sillier it seems.

          For reasons of age and frivolity, he'll always be Adam West to me.

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            #6
            Batman@75

            You're all wrong. Very very wrong and if there's anything I am right about in this shitty world it's The Batman.

            Pound for pound, the best version of Batman ever committed to screen is the early 90s animated show. The Christian Bale version comes in second, I guess. DC/Warner have also made some direct-to-DVD animated movies that are very good, including adaptions of Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight trilogy. Well worth it.

            Insofar as it even counts as Batman, I no longer rate the Adam West version at all. It served a purpose but the world doesn't need any more irony, cynicism, and people too cool to take anything seriously. Fuck that. Fuck that straight back to Brooklyn.

            Batman's main trouble is that too many of the writers don't really get it. They think the villains are more interesting or, like Frank Miller, they indulge the fascist psychopath angle (he didn't do that in Year One, but sort of did in TDK).

            What they don't get is that while villains are more colorful and entertaining, heroes are ultimately more interesting characters because it's way harder to be a hero. A psycho is just a psycho, really. Anything goes. They can't really screw up. At worst, they fail to take over the world today and can just try again tomorrow.

            But being the good guy is very hard. It's much harder to always try to do the right thing than just indulge your basest instincts. It's much harder to win a fight in the middle of a crowded metropolis if you have to care about civilian casualties. It's much harder to stay committed to the cause and not get cynical when the bad guys are always breaking out of Arkham and America votes in Lex Luthor as president.

            (This is also why hardly anybody understands the merits of Superman as a character.)

            Bob Kane is credited for creating Batman but Bill Finger came up with all of the good ideas. Bob Kane was actually very fond of the fantasy of being a rich guy in a smoking jacket, which validates EIM's criticism, but in all of the modern versions of the story, Bruce Wayne's extreme wealth is just a way to fill in what would otherwise be a gaping plot hole - how else could somebody do what he does without all of that gear, and how else could they get it without a ton of money. That formula was replicated with Tony Stark and Oliver Queen (in some versions, at least). It also helps his secret identity. To most of the world, Bruce Wayne is a trust-fund douche who couldn't possibly do what Batman does.

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              #7
              Batman@75

              I could never understand the need to create the fictional city of Gotham. What was wrong with New York, which it seems to be based on?

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                #8
                Batman@75

                I just wrote a great reply to that question and it got deleted.

                Here's a start

                http://batmangothamcity.net/gotham-city-map-archive/

                Bill Finger said he wanted a made up name so anybody in any city could feel they related to it. I suppose in the 1940s, when the country was less connected and identities were more provincial, hat made sense.

                Making it fictitious gives the authors more latitude to incorporate elements from different places - Chicago, London, etc. Also, the DC universe has Metropolis, which is a different take on New York. This way they can imagine very different histories and storylines for each place but keep them in the same world. The DCU also has a few other made up cities plus all the real ones, including New York. It's never explained how that can all be true. If America had three cities in the northeast with over 8 million people each, the US would be very different.

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