August 15, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Batman has worn many faces, but his shadow has never faded. From gritty detective tales to cartoon camp, billion-dollar films, and everything in between, the Dark Knight has reflected the fears, hopes, and styles of every era. Batman wasn’t always a global icon, but decade by decade, he became a mirror of what audiences wanted in a hero and what they feared in a villain. Andrew Farago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum and author of Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight, explores how one character moved from pulp pages to the center of pop culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people. Nowadays,
Batman is a household name his list of comic issues,
let alone live action movies, animated films and TV shows,
video games, you name it, well, it's nothing short of astounding.
(00:30):
But this wasn't always the case today. Andrew Farrago, curator
at the Cartoon Art Museum, an author of Batman, The
Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and beyond,
is here to tell us the story of the Dark Knight.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I suppose it's appropriate for a character whose secret identity
is a millionaire and later a billionaire. But money was
kind of the driving force behind Batman at the beginning.
So as struggling and fairly undistinguished cartoonist named Bob Kane
(01:11):
was working for National periodical publications doing funny animal comics,
he was doing adventure comics. He was doing anything he
could to try to make a name for himself, try
to just make a living. And he heard that Jerry
Siegel and Joe Schuster, who were the co creators of Superman,
(01:32):
were making a really nice living. Hundreds of dollars a week,
you know, just out of the Great Depression tail into
the Great Depression from their creation.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
He talked to his editor, and editor said.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, you bring me another Superman and this will be
lucrative for you. And he said, you know, I'll do
it over a weekend. He basically went home and tried
to come up with his version of Superman. And initially
the character he came up with was really nothing like
(02:05):
the Batman that we all know. He looked more like
a circus acrobat with a Domino mask, blonde hair, Leonardo
da Vinci inspired black batwing cape. He's possibly going to
be a flying superhero. But thankfully, Kane was in touch
with a very talented, very inventive writer named Bill Finger,
(02:29):
and Bill Finger saw the raw potential there. He took
Kane's ideas, he refined it. He gave Batman the cape
and cow and outfit really close to what we know,
know and love today. Yeah, he took Kane's concept and
turned it into something that, eighty years later still energizes
(02:50):
and excites fans everywhere. Batman made his debut in a
publication called Detective Comics, and Detective very much spun out
of the pulp magazines that have preceded it, So they
were raw, edgy, dark stories. The good guys were very good,
(03:11):
the bad guys were very bad. Bad guys often met
very gruesome fates. And detective comics, as the title indicates,
every month had detective stories, and Batman the earliest stories,
and actually, throughout his history, you know, they have been
detective stories. He's one of the people who claims the
title the world's greatest detective. So each story had to
(03:34):
have at least some hint of a mystery to justify
Batman's inclusion. The early Batman comics did have stories like that.
They did have mysteries involving political corruption and gangsters, and
you know, the kind of stories one would say were
ripped from the headlines. And prior to that it had
(03:56):
been police officers, it had been private investigators, a lot
of square jawed guys wearing suits punching gangsters on the cover.
So obviously Batman wearing his incredibly dark costumes swooping out
of the night sky grabbing criminals energized audiences the same
way that Superman the year before really energized readers, and
(04:21):
very soon Batman became a staple. He appeared every month
in that magazine, and Detective Comics circulation went through the roof,
and he was awarded his own solo magazine. You know,
in the late thirties. This was very forward thinking on
the part of the publisher that's now known as DC Comics.
(04:45):
So Caine and Finger knew we need colorful villains, we
need eye catching covers, we need dynamic storytelling.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They really were going that direction very early.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Within about a year of Batman's debut, we had the
introduction of Robin the boy Wonder again, bright red, yellow
green costume.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
They called him the laughing young Daredevil.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Would I would say, that's why we're still talking about
Batman today in the present tense, instead of some interesting
pulp inspired character whose time came and went immediately. I
think for the better. Changed the tone of the stories.
It made Batman a father figure, gave him someone to
talk to when he was his way through a case,
(05:31):
and that gave the readers a surrogate, a stand in
where they could feel like, hey, I could do that,
I could take part in these adventures. At partnership really
pushed Batman even farther into the superhero territory. Than he'd
been before, and that pushed the villains that much farther
(05:52):
into extremes, because right after Robin's debut, you had Joker,
who was evil and dangerous a villain as there was.
We had Catwoman, two Face, and the Penguin and the Riddler,
who are just as iconic as any heroes from that era.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
They really tapped into something.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
They knew what would be popular, they knew what would sell,
they knew what the kids liked. They did pay incredibly
close attention to their competition, so they paid attention to
what kind of numbers is Superman doing, what's going on
in Captain Marvel this month, who's the big new character
on the stands, And if there was a way for
them to tap into an audience, even if it was
(06:35):
taking away readers from other books that were coming out
from the same publisher.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Then they had tapped into that.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And the first year before Robin was introduced, the stories
were very grim, they were very dark, and very quickly
the publisher realized, you know, we're reaching hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of kids with these comics. Maybe we have
a responsibility here to be a better example. So they
(07:01):
decided early on Batman doesn't carry a gun. Batman doesn't
use lethal force. He tries to find a better way
to solve his problems. If he can solve a problem
without violence by using his intellect and using his detective skills,
that's even better.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And you've been listening to Andrew Farrago tell the remarkable
story of Batman's history. When we come back, Batman through
the years here on our American Story, lie h Habib here,
and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our
American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or
wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or
(07:42):
want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we're
(08:09):
back with our American Stories and the story of Batman.
Andrew Farrago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, was just
telling us how Bob Kane and Bill Finger not only
created the character, but paid close attention to what the
audience wanted, with the idea that children were their primary audience.
The publisher as well as the creators, made it clear
(08:32):
early that Batman didn't use lethal force, but rather his
intellect to defeat his foes.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Back to Andrew, so Batman was fighting murderers, he was
fighting killers. He was fighting really the lowest of the
low as far as the villains went. And as more
children were reading these books, as DC Comics was increasingly
concerned about setting a good example, they realized, why don't
(09:00):
we tone him down a little bit, why don't we
have him do funny crimes and zany crimes? And by
World War Two, especially when kids wanted lighthearted entertainment, these
adventures were becoming.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Outrageous, more over the top.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
He had another artist by the late forties early fifties
come on who really redefined Batman, an artist named Dick Sprang.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
He had a more cartoony art style.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And Batman was this big, barrel chested, smiling adventurer. Robin
started cracking puns and wacky jokes. They would have crazy
adventures that involved things like giant oversized prop typewriters, or
blimp chases or time travel. Bad guys that he's fighting
(09:47):
during that time include aliens, They include mad scientists. You
may have a criminal where Batman is trying to uncover
his identity, and they'll realize that the criminal is spelling
out his name one crime at a time, and they
went from being let's be just a little bit different
than the real world to let's go totally nuts and
have a.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Crazy, fun adventure story.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I would imagine anybody who read the first issues in
nineteen thirty nine and then took a break and came
back around nineteen fifty two would not have.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Recognized the character. And actually this was totally.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Fine with the audiences, because up until that point there
was constant audience turnover in comic book readership. You did
have some diehard fans who started reading in the thirties
and kept reading, but generally speaking, kids would read from
about eight until maybe twelve or so, dropout, and then
a new batch of eight to twelve year olds would
(10:47):
come in. So stories didn't have to be particularly sophisticated.
They didn't really need continuity that carried over from one
month to the next. Stories could repeat themselves every few
years because they assumed that the reader were new and
hadn't seen them before. Characters like Batman and Superman, they
were seen as very safe, very respectable books that any
(11:08):
kid could read. You knew you were getting a good, reliable, adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Story every month.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
By the early sixties, Batman was actually in danger of cancelation.
You know. It may have been that they weren't challenging
their audiences. They had competition from publishers like Marvel, who
were really winning the hearts and minds of younger readers.
They were seen as more dynamic, more fun, more challenging stories.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
At this point, they actually turned.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
To some creators who had recently revitalized one of their comics,
The Flash. They took a character from World War Two
era and came up with a new version of him
that really engaged readers. It was exciting, it was more modern,
it was more dynamic, where as Batman in the early
(12:01):
sixties like a throwback kind of a relic. So they
had creators like writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine and
Fantina come along, and this is this is really what
ultimately say Batman.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They did an era called the New Look. They modernized him.
He was not the barrel.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Chested, grinning kind of Superman knockoff character that he was.
They made him more streamlined, They made him a modern detective.
They gave him computer equipment and modernized everything about the character.
And that was, you know, that was a signal to
readers that hey, take a look, we're changing things. We
are aware that Marvel Comics exists and that that's the
(12:41):
comic of choice for young readers and teens right now.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But you know, we can be cool, we can be hip,
we can be with it.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And right around that time, executives at ABC were looking
at bringing they wanted to bring a comic strip to television.
They wanted to take advantage of things like technicolor, and
they wanted to take advantage of nostalgia that people had
for popular characters. So some producers, including a man named
(13:10):
Bill Dozier, were determined to bring comics to television.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Somehow. That was going to be it. That was going
to be the kind of.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Thing that they could put toe to toe with shows
like The Adams Family and The Munsters that were winning
over young audiences. Those really coveted young audiences and their families,
and they had all grown up raating Batman. They had
fond memories of him, and they thought, we can do this,
We can make this a fun television show. The TV
(13:42):
show and a debut in nineteen sixty six was an
immediate sensation. It was a huge hit in the ratings
and really nothing would be the same for the character
after that.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It was just a smash in every sense.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You had Adam West as Batman on the cover of
Time magazine, Life Magazine, TV Guide, You had fashions inspired
by Batman, you had catchphrases, you had every possible kind
of merchandise under the sun coming out. It put the
comic books back toward the top of the sales charts.
(14:17):
You know, even though the show was campy, it was comedy,
it was humor, but it really wasn't far off from
the source material. Adam West was perfect as a stoic,
square job, very sincere hero and crime fighter, and you
had Burt Ward as his plucky, inquisitive, excitable sidekick. You know,
(14:38):
if you look at the if you look at the roster,
if you look at the cast list in the second
and third season, you'll see that Hollywood A listers were fighting.
They were begging to be on this show because they
wanted to be a Batman villain or make a cameo appearance.
It was the cool hip thing to do at the time.
(15:02):
You know, all good things must come to an end,
and the ratings came tumbling back down to earth very
quickly in the third season, but the damage had been undone,
and Batman would have his ups and downs in the
years since, but there was never any danger of him
going away once the television show hit. The Batman TV
(15:27):
show came to define the character for a long time,
for a good twenty years as far as the public
was concerned, and in a way, it came to define comics.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
So you could not.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
See a newspaper headline from nineteen sixty six through maybe
even the early two thousands that didn't have Biff, Bam
Pau superheroes in the headline. And not too long after
that final episode aired, the show started up again and syndication.
So much like Star Trek had this incredible shelf life
(16:05):
after its cancelation, so to Batman, because almost the minute
the new episode stopped, UHF stations picked it up and
kids could still watch Batman every day after school. So
as a as a kid in the eighties, that's how
I was introduced to Batman, So this really loomed large.
This was as far as the public is concerned, This
(16:27):
was Batman, but that actually didn't sit well with.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Some of the comic book creators.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
They looked at this campiness, they looked at the silliness,
and they realized, you know, if we try to do this,
if we try to translate this exactly how it is
on the screen to the comics, you know, we're gonna
look like dinosaurs. The TV show had its chance.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It came.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
It went, we want to do modern comics. We want
to do things that again can go toe to toe
with Marvel comics and with the other comics.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That are on the rack.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And we've been listening to a remarkable story about Batman.
And it all started with money as the driving force.
Bob Kane had found out that the people making Superman
were making a couple one hundred bucks a week in
the Great Depression, and he thought, oh, I can come
up with my own character. He and his partner Bill
Finger did just that. By the end of the nineteen thirties,
they had their own book. World War Two came, people
(17:26):
were looking for an escape, and a different version of
Batman formed. And then came the early sixties. Batman's popularity
was waning, and in came the TV show, and soon
every a lister wanted to be a part of it.
Urgess Meredith, Frank Gorsh and Eartha Kit, Jerry Lewis, Auto Preminger,
Sammy Davis Junior, and the list goes on. When we
come back, more of the story of Batman through the years,
(17:48):
here on our American stories, and we're back with our
(18:09):
American stories and the story of Batman. Despite the widespread
praise of the nineteen sixties live action Batman's show starring
Adam West, the comic book writers felt the show was
too campy. They didn't want that reflected in the print
version because they would rather compete with what was going
on over at Marvel and other competitors. Andrew Farrago tells
(18:31):
us how instead the writers sought to pursue a darker tone.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Prior to the sixties, comic books were, whether stereotypically or
just traditionally, there was something that a reader outgrew. The
cliche is it's something that boys are into until they
discover girls.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
But with Marvel comics.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
In the early sixties, you know, they had stories that
were more geared toward the older audience. They were geared
toward teenagers. They had storylines that continued from one month
to the next, and they encourage readers to come back.
With creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and stan Lee,
Marvel felt like a clubhouse, and stan wrote columns and
(19:18):
he answered letters in the books that encouraged a dialogue
between him and the readers. So the Marvel Comics creators,
instead of being faceless, uncredited people behind the scenes, they
were upfront. They had stan Lee's name, they had Jack
Kirby's name, they had Steve Dicko's name prominently displayed in
the books, and readers responded.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
To that in a huge way.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
DC As they lost more and more of their market
shared to Marvel, they realized that they needed to catch up.
They realized, if the audiences are sticking around, if we
want them to stick around, this is how we have
to tail our storytelling. This is what we have to
do to keep these readers here, keep them coming back.
I give a lot of credit to Dennie O'Neil. He
(20:03):
was very smart, he was very well read. His formal
training had actually been in journalism before getting into comic books.
He actually got into them kind of by accident because
he was interviewing Roy Thomas, who was.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
A writer and editor at Marvel Comics, and.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Roy suggested, hey, we need we need more. We need
smart guys like you writing comic books, and Denny went
that direction.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
He was a hippie, so.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, he brought kind of a more adult, mature
sensibility to the comics compared especially compared to what had
gone before. And they brought that sensibility over to Batman.
Their signature villain was a shadowy ancient criminal mastermind named
ros al Gul who planned to actually exterminate up to
(20:52):
ninety percent of the Earth's population because he felt that
eco terrorism was necessary to restore balance to the earth.
So this was very heady stuff compared to two Face
robbing the Second National Bank at two pm on Tuesday.
(21:13):
They also had Robin grow up and start going to college,
so he had solo adventures, so he had Batman throughout
almost the whole decade of the seventies. He had Batman
as this solo adventurer and Robin. So after about ten
years of solo adventures, there was kind of a half
(21:34):
hearted attempt to bring him back into the Batman stories.
The problem was he was now an older teenager, so
the solution was to have Dick Grayson, the original Robin,
grow up a little bit and take on a new
superhero identity. So he did that and became a character
called Nightwing, and they introduced a new sidekick for Batman
(21:54):
named Jason Todd. And then in the mid eighties, DC,
to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary publishing, decided to kind of
start everything from scratch. They were worried that new readers
may have been put off by having fifty years of
history to all these characters, so they wanted to do
a fresh start with their comics. And with this fresh start,
(22:17):
they decided that Jason Todd, instead of having an origin
that was directly cribbed from Dick Grayson's, they decided he
should have a new origin. They reinvented him as a
street kid, a tough kid who actually met Batman because
he stole the Batmobiles tires. Readers didn't really like this
(22:42):
new version of him.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
They thought he was kind, he was kind of a punk,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
He was not properly deferential to Batman. He was written
especially by the next writer of the Batman comics, Jim Starlin.
He was written as kind of a hot head, Yeah.
Starlin actually did not like Jason Todd or sidekicks and principle,
so he kind of wrote a version that he knew
would be unlikable, that he knew readers wouldn't warm too,
(23:11):
and kind of brought everything to a head with a
storyline called a death in the family. They wanted to
do a big publicity stunt draw attention to their comics,
and they wanted to take advantage of then modern telephone technology,
(23:32):
and they wanted to do a call in poll. This
was in part inspired by a Saturday Night live call
in poll where you determined whether a lobster named Larry
the Lobster would be boiled on air or set free
at the.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
End of the night.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So they wanted to apply the same thing to a
DC Comics publication, and they said, we need.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
To make it big.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
We need to make it life or death for readers
to care enough to spend fifty cents to call in
and make this phone call. Decided I did, We've got
this Jason Todd character. Let's put it to a vote.
Does he delive or does he die? By a narrow,
very narrow margin, by about seventy two votes, readers said yeah.
The Joker should kill Jason Todd, so they killed him
(24:18):
off in this violent storyline.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It got national headlines.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, Danny O'Neil, who's the editor of those books, I
was able to talk to him about this, and he
said they had the fortune or misfortune of it hitting
on a slow news day, so the comics sold out nationwide.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
They rushed them.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
He caught grief from friends, neighbors, the local deli, everybody
was upset at him for allowing this to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
It really indicated that the public.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Was ready for a much darker take on Batman, and
that's really what we got. But those darker comics paved
the way for Tim Burton Batman movies.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
It really was.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Tapping into what this older readership was seeking. We're now
into at least the second generation, maybe third generation of
creators who grew up on Batman comics and Batman movies
and Batman television shows, who have their own vision for
the character.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
They know what kind of stories they want to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
They know the best way to tell them, and whether
that's in comics or movies or television or video games,
we're getting some truly incredible stories. It's a testament to
the original core concept of Batman, that he's more widely
known than ever. You can barely say that about any
(25:43):
other character from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You can maybe say that about Superman.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Mickey Mouse doesn't have the cultural relevancy today, Popeye doesn't.
Batman is such an ageless, timeless concept. It's you know,
child suffers and unspeakab tragedy and then transforms himself into
a protector, someone who whose mission is to make sure
no one, no kid anywhere, has to go through what
(26:13):
he did. And that's a story that you can tell today.
It's a story you can tell one hundred years from now.
Batman is a wonderful vehicle for telling all manner of stories.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
You can tell Batman.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Stories about street level crime, fighting Nazis during World War Two,
fighting Fifth Colonists, fighting Communists in the nineteen fifties. And
I think that's going to be true ten years from now.
I think it'll be true hundred years from now.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And it is so true, Batman will be around for
a very long time. A terrific job by our own
Monty Montgomery and Robbie Davis, and a special thanks to
Andrew Farrago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum and author
of Batman, The Definitive History of the Dark Night in Comics, film,
and beyond. Get the book at the Usual Suspects online,
(27:06):
and my Goodness. The major decision made was to stop
catering just two young kids who would grow out of
the comics, and instead choose adult themes so that adults
too could enjoy these remarkable stories and characters. Batman through
the Year is here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people. Nowadays,
Batman is a household name his list of comic issues,
let alone live action movies, animated films and TV shows,
video games, you name it, well, it's nothing short of astounding.
(00:30):
But this wasn't always the case today. Andrew Farrago, curator
at the Cartoon Art Museum, an author of Batman, The
Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and beyond,
is here to tell us the story of the Dark Knight.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I suppose it's appropriate for a character whose secret identity
is a millionaire and later a billionaire. But money was
kind of the driving force behind Batman at the beginning.
So as struggling and fairly undistinguished cartoonist named Bob Kane
(01:11):
was working for National periodical publications doing funny animal comics,
he was doing adventure comics. He was doing anything he
could to try to make a name for himself, try
to just make a living. And he heard that Jerry
Siegel and Joe Schuster, who were the co creators of Superman,
(01:32):
were making a really nice living. Hundreds of dollars a week,
you know, just out of the Great Depression tail into
the Great Depression from their creation.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
He talked to his editor, and editor said.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, you bring me another Superman and this will be
lucrative for you. And he said, you know, I'll do
it over a weekend. He basically went home and tried
to come up with his version of Superman. And initially
the character he came up with was really nothing like
(02:05):
the Batman that we all know. He looked more like
a circus acrobat with a Domino mask, blonde hair, Leonardo
da Vinci inspired black batwing cape. He's possibly going to
be a flying superhero. But thankfully, Kane was in touch
with a very talented, very inventive writer named Bill Finger,
(02:29):
and Bill Finger saw the raw potential there. He took
Kane's ideas, he refined it. He gave Batman the cape
and cow and outfit really close to what we know,
know and love today. Yeah, he took Kane's concept and
turned it into something that, eighty years later still energizes
(02:50):
and excites fans everywhere. Batman made his debut in a
publication called Detective Comics, and Detective very much spun out
of the pulp magazines that have preceded it, So they
were raw, edgy, dark stories. The good guys were very good,
(03:11):
the bad guys were very bad. Bad guys often met
very gruesome fates. And detective comics, as the title indicates,
every month had detective stories, and Batman the earliest stories,
and actually, throughout his history, you know, they have been
detective stories. He's one of the people who claims the
title the world's greatest detective. So each story had to
(03:34):
have at least some hint of a mystery to justify
Batman's inclusion. The early Batman comics did have stories like that.
They did have mysteries involving political corruption and gangsters, and
you know, the kind of stories one would say were
ripped from the headlines. And prior to that it had
(03:56):
been police officers, it had been private investigators, a lot
of square jawed guys wearing suits punching gangsters on the cover.
So obviously Batman wearing his incredibly dark costumes swooping out
of the night sky grabbing criminals energized audiences the same
way that Superman the year before really energized readers, and
(04:21):
very soon Batman became a staple. He appeared every month
in that magazine, and Detective Comics circulation went through the roof,
and he was awarded his own solo magazine. You know,
in the late thirties. This was very forward thinking on
the part of the publisher that's now known as DC Comics.
(04:45):
So Caine and Finger knew we need colorful villains, we
need eye catching covers, we need dynamic storytelling.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They really were going that direction very early.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Within about a year of Batman's debut, we had the
introduction of Robin the boy Wonder again, bright red, yellow
green costume.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
They called him the laughing young Daredevil.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Would I would say, that's why we're still talking about
Batman today in the present tense, instead of some interesting
pulp inspired character whose time came and went immediately. I
think for the better. Changed the tone of the stories.
It made Batman a father figure, gave him someone to
talk to when he was his way through a case,
(05:31):
and that gave the readers a surrogate, a stand in
where they could feel like, hey, I could do that,
I could take part in these adventures. At partnership really
pushed Batman even farther into the superhero territory. Than he'd
been before, and that pushed the villains that much farther
(05:52):
into extremes, because right after Robin's debut, you had Joker,
who was evil and dangerous a villain as there was.
We had Catwoman, two Face, and the Penguin and the Riddler,
who are just as iconic as any heroes from that era.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
They really tapped into something.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
They knew what would be popular, they knew what would sell,
they knew what the kids liked. They did pay incredibly
close attention to their competition, so they paid attention to
what kind of numbers is Superman doing, what's going on
in Captain Marvel this month, who's the big new character
on the stands, And if there was a way for
them to tap into an audience, even if it was
(06:35):
taking away readers from other books that were coming out
from the same publisher.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Then they had tapped into that.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And the first year before Robin was introduced, the stories
were very grim, they were very dark, and very quickly
the publisher realized, you know, we're reaching hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of kids with these comics. Maybe we have
a responsibility here to be a better example. So they
(07:01):
decided early on Batman doesn't carry a gun. Batman doesn't
use lethal force. He tries to find a better way
to solve his problems. If he can solve a problem
without violence by using his intellect and using his detective skills,
that's even better.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And you've been listening to Andrew Farrago tell the remarkable
story of Batman's history. When we come back, Batman through
the years here on our American Story, lie h Habib here,
and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our
American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or
wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or
(07:42):
want to hear again can be found there daily again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we're
(08:09):
back with our American Stories and the story of Batman.
Andrew Farrago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, was just
telling us how Bob Kane and Bill Finger not only
created the character, but paid close attention to what the
audience wanted, with the idea that children were their primary audience.
The publisher as well as the creators, made it clear
(08:32):
early that Batman didn't use lethal force, but rather his
intellect to defeat his foes.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Back to Andrew, so Batman was fighting murderers, he was
fighting killers. He was fighting really the lowest of the
low as far as the villains went. And as more
children were reading these books, as DC Comics was increasingly
concerned about setting a good example, they realized, why don't
(09:00):
we tone him down a little bit, why don't we
have him do funny crimes and zany crimes? And by
World War Two, especially when kids wanted lighthearted entertainment, these
adventures were becoming.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Outrageous, more over the top.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
He had another artist by the late forties early fifties
come on who really redefined Batman, an artist named Dick Sprang.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
He had a more cartoony art style.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And Batman was this big, barrel chested, smiling adventurer. Robin
started cracking puns and wacky jokes. They would have crazy
adventures that involved things like giant oversized prop typewriters, or
blimp chases or time travel. Bad guys that he's fighting
(09:47):
during that time include aliens, They include mad scientists. You
may have a criminal where Batman is trying to uncover
his identity, and they'll realize that the criminal is spelling
out his name one crime at a time, and they
went from being let's be just a little bit different
than the real world to let's go totally nuts and
have a.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Crazy, fun adventure story.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I would imagine anybody who read the first issues in
nineteen thirty nine and then took a break and came
back around nineteen fifty two would not have.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Recognized the character. And actually this was totally.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Fine with the audiences, because up until that point there
was constant audience turnover in comic book readership. You did
have some diehard fans who started reading in the thirties
and kept reading, but generally speaking, kids would read from
about eight until maybe twelve or so, dropout, and then
a new batch of eight to twelve year olds would
(10:47):
come in. So stories didn't have to be particularly sophisticated.
They didn't really need continuity that carried over from one
month to the next. Stories could repeat themselves every few
years because they assumed that the reader were new and
hadn't seen them before. Characters like Batman and Superman, they
were seen as very safe, very respectable books that any
(11:08):
kid could read. You knew you were getting a good, reliable, adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Story every month.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
By the early sixties, Batman was actually in danger of cancelation.
You know. It may have been that they weren't challenging
their audiences. They had competition from publishers like Marvel, who
were really winning the hearts and minds of younger readers.
They were seen as more dynamic, more fun, more challenging stories.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
At this point, they actually turned.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
To some creators who had recently revitalized one of their comics,
The Flash. They took a character from World War Two
era and came up with a new version of him
that really engaged readers. It was exciting, it was more modern,
it was more dynamic, where as Batman in the early
(12:01):
sixties like a throwback kind of a relic. So they
had creators like writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine and
Fantina come along, and this is this is really what
ultimately say Batman.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They did an era called the New Look. They modernized him.
He was not the barrel.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Chested, grinning kind of Superman knockoff character that he was.
They made him more streamlined, They made him a modern detective.
They gave him computer equipment and modernized everything about the character.
And that was, you know, that was a signal to
readers that hey, take a look, we're changing things. We
are aware that Marvel Comics exists and that that's the
(12:41):
comic of choice for young readers and teens right now.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But you know, we can be cool, we can be hip,
we can be with it.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And right around that time, executives at ABC were looking
at bringing they wanted to bring a comic strip to television.
They wanted to take advantage of things like technicolor, and
they wanted to take advantage of nostalgia that people had
for popular characters. So some producers, including a man named
(13:10):
Bill Dozier, were determined to bring comics to television.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Somehow. That was going to be it. That was going
to be the kind of.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Thing that they could put toe to toe with shows
like The Adams Family and The Munsters that were winning
over young audiences. Those really coveted young audiences and their families,
and they had all grown up raating Batman. They had
fond memories of him, and they thought, we can do this,
We can make this a fun television show. The TV
(13:42):
show and a debut in nineteen sixty six was an
immediate sensation. It was a huge hit in the ratings
and really nothing would be the same for the character
after that.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It was just a smash in every sense.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You had Adam West as Batman on the cover of
Time magazine, Life Magazine, TV Guide, You had fashions inspired
by Batman, you had catchphrases, you had every possible kind
of merchandise under the sun coming out. It put the
comic books back toward the top of the sales charts.
(14:17):
You know, even though the show was campy, it was comedy,
it was humor, but it really wasn't far off from
the source material. Adam West was perfect as a stoic,
square job, very sincere hero and crime fighter, and you
had Burt Ward as his plucky, inquisitive, excitable sidekick. You know,
(14:38):
if you look at the if you look at the roster,
if you look at the cast list in the second
and third season, you'll see that Hollywood A listers were fighting.
They were begging to be on this show because they
wanted to be a Batman villain or make a cameo appearance.
It was the cool hip thing to do at the time.
(15:02):
You know, all good things must come to an end,
and the ratings came tumbling back down to earth very
quickly in the third season, but the damage had been undone,
and Batman would have his ups and downs in the
years since, but there was never any danger of him
going away once the television show hit. The Batman TV
(15:27):
show came to define the character for a long time,
for a good twenty years as far as the public
was concerned, and in a way, it came to define comics.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
So you could not.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
See a newspaper headline from nineteen sixty six through maybe
even the early two thousands that didn't have Biff, Bam
Pau superheroes in the headline. And not too long after
that final episode aired, the show started up again and syndication.
So much like Star Trek had this incredible shelf life
(16:05):
after its cancelation, so to Batman, because almost the minute
the new episode stopped, UHF stations picked it up and
kids could still watch Batman every day after school. So
as a as a kid in the eighties, that's how
I was introduced to Batman, So this really loomed large.
This was as far as the public is concerned, This
(16:27):
was Batman, but that actually didn't sit well with.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Some of the comic book creators.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
They looked at this campiness, they looked at the silliness,
and they realized, you know, if we try to do this,
if we try to translate this exactly how it is
on the screen to the comics, you know, we're gonna
look like dinosaurs. The TV show had its chance.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
It came.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
It went, we want to do modern comics. We want
to do things that again can go toe to toe
with Marvel comics and with the other comics.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That are on the rack.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And we've been listening to a remarkable story about Batman.
And it all started with money as the driving force.
Bob Kane had found out that the people making Superman
were making a couple one hundred bucks a week in
the Great Depression, and he thought, oh, I can come
up with my own character. He and his partner Bill
Finger did just that. By the end of the nineteen thirties,
they had their own book. World War Two came, people
(17:26):
were looking for an escape, and a different version of
Batman formed. And then came the early sixties. Batman's popularity
was waning, and in came the TV show, and soon
every a lister wanted to be a part of it.
Urgess Meredith, Frank Gorsh and Eartha Kit, Jerry Lewis, Auto Preminger,
Sammy Davis Junior, and the list goes on. When we
come back, more of the story of Batman through the years,
(17:48):
here on our American stories, and we're back with our
(18:09):
American stories and the story of Batman. Despite the widespread
praise of the nineteen sixties live action Batman's show starring
Adam West, the comic book writers felt the show was
too campy. They didn't want that reflected in the print
version because they would rather compete with what was going
on over at Marvel and other competitors. Andrew Farrago tells
(18:31):
us how instead the writers sought to pursue a darker tone.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Prior to the sixties, comic books were, whether stereotypically or
just traditionally, there was something that a reader outgrew. The
cliche is it's something that boys are into until they
discover girls.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
But with Marvel comics.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
In the early sixties, you know, they had stories that
were more geared toward the older audience. They were geared
toward teenagers. They had storylines that continued from one month
to the next, and they encourage readers to come back.
With creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and stan Lee,
Marvel felt like a clubhouse, and stan wrote columns and
(19:18):
he answered letters in the books that encouraged a dialogue
between him and the readers. So the Marvel Comics creators,
instead of being faceless, uncredited people behind the scenes, they
were upfront. They had stan Lee's name, they had Jack
Kirby's name, they had Steve Dicko's name prominently displayed in
the books, and readers responded.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
To that in a huge way.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
DC As they lost more and more of their market
shared to Marvel, they realized that they needed to catch up.
They realized, if the audiences are sticking around, if we
want them to stick around, this is how we have
to tail our storytelling. This is what we have to
do to keep these readers here, keep them coming back.
I give a lot of credit to Dennie O'Neil. He
(20:03):
was very smart, he was very well read. His formal
training had actually been in journalism before getting into comic books.
He actually got into them kind of by accident because
he was interviewing Roy Thomas, who was.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
A writer and editor at Marvel Comics, and.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Roy suggested, hey, we need we need more. We need
smart guys like you writing comic books, and Denny went
that direction.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
He was a hippie, so.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, he brought kind of a more adult, mature
sensibility to the comics compared especially compared to what had
gone before. And they brought that sensibility over to Batman.
Their signature villain was a shadowy ancient criminal mastermind named
ros al Gul who planned to actually exterminate up to
(20:52):
ninety percent of the Earth's population because he felt that
eco terrorism was necessary to restore balance to the earth.
So this was very heady stuff compared to two Face
robbing the Second National Bank at two pm on Tuesday.
(21:13):
They also had Robin grow up and start going to college,
so he had solo adventures, so he had Batman throughout
almost the whole decade of the seventies. He had Batman
as this solo adventurer and Robin. So after about ten
years of solo adventures, there was kind of a half
(21:34):
hearted attempt to bring him back into the Batman stories.
The problem was he was now an older teenager, so
the solution was to have Dick Grayson, the original Robin,
grow up a little bit and take on a new
superhero identity. So he did that and became a character
called Nightwing, and they introduced a new sidekick for Batman
(21:54):
named Jason Todd. And then in the mid eighties, DC,
to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary publishing, decided to kind of
start everything from scratch. They were worried that new readers
may have been put off by having fifty years of
history to all these characters, so they wanted to do
a fresh start with their comics. And with this fresh start,
(22:17):
they decided that Jason Todd, instead of having an origin
that was directly cribbed from Dick Grayson's, they decided he
should have a new origin. They reinvented him as a
street kid, a tough kid who actually met Batman because
he stole the Batmobiles tires. Readers didn't really like this
(22:42):
new version of him.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
They thought he was kind, he was kind of a punk,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
He was not properly deferential to Batman. He was written
especially by the next writer of the Batman comics, Jim Starlin.
He was written as kind of a hot head, Yeah.
Starlin actually did not like Jason Todd or sidekicks and principle,
so he kind of wrote a version that he knew
would be unlikable, that he knew readers wouldn't warm too,
(23:11):
and kind of brought everything to a head with a
storyline called a death in the family. They wanted to
do a big publicity stunt draw attention to their comics,
and they wanted to take advantage of then modern telephone technology,
(23:32):
and they wanted to do a call in poll. This
was in part inspired by a Saturday Night live call
in poll where you determined whether a lobster named Larry
the Lobster would be boiled on air or set free
at the.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
End of the night.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So they wanted to apply the same thing to a
DC Comics publication, and they said, we need.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
To make it big.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
We need to make it life or death for readers
to care enough to spend fifty cents to call in
and make this phone call. Decided I did, We've got
this Jason Todd character. Let's put it to a vote.
Does he delive or does he die? By a narrow,
very narrow margin, by about seventy two votes, readers said yeah.
The Joker should kill Jason Todd, so they killed him
(24:18):
off in this violent storyline.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It got national headlines.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, Danny O'Neil, who's the editor of those books, I
was able to talk to him about this, and he
said they had the fortune or misfortune of it hitting
on a slow news day, so the comics sold out nationwide.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
They rushed them.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
He caught grief from friends, neighbors, the local deli, everybody
was upset at him for allowing this to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
It really indicated that the public.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Was ready for a much darker take on Batman, and
that's really what we got. But those darker comics paved
the way for Tim Burton Batman movies.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
It really was.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Tapping into what this older readership was seeking. We're now
into at least the second generation, maybe third generation of
creators who grew up on Batman comics and Batman movies
and Batman television shows, who have their own vision for
the character.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
They know what kind of stories they want to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
They know the best way to tell them, and whether
that's in comics or movies or television or video games,
we're getting some truly incredible stories. It's a testament to
the original core concept of Batman, that he's more widely
known than ever. You can barely say that about any
(25:43):
other character from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You can maybe say that about Superman.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Mickey Mouse doesn't have the cultural relevancy today, Popeye doesn't.
Batman is such an ageless, timeless concept. It's you know,
child suffers and unspeakab tragedy and then transforms himself into
a protector, someone who whose mission is to make sure
no one, no kid anywhere, has to go through what
(26:13):
he did. And that's a story that you can tell today.
It's a story you can tell one hundred years from now.
Batman is a wonderful vehicle for telling all manner of stories.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
You can tell Batman.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Stories about street level crime, fighting Nazis during World War Two,
fighting Fifth Colonists, fighting Communists in the nineteen fifties. And
I think that's going to be true ten years from now.
I think it'll be true hundred years from now.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And it is so true, Batman will be around for
a very long time. A terrific job by our own
Monty Montgomery and Robbie Davis, and a special thanks to
Andrew Farrago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum and author
of Batman, The Definitive History of the Dark Night in Comics, film,
and beyond. Get the book at the Usual Suspects online,
(27:06):
and my Goodness. The major decision made was to stop
catering just two young kids who would grow out of
the comics, and instead choose adult themes so that adults
too could enjoy these remarkable stories and characters. Batman through
the Year is here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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