If Hitchcock did Batman...

Well, if Alfred Hitchcock directed a Batman movie, it would be something like The Batman.  Bart and I just returned from seeing it, and I like it better than any of the Christopher Nolan movies. Like the superb Daredevil TV show, it takes familiar figures from the comic books and moves them several degrees closer to reality without sacrificing their essence (the cast includes an unrecognizable Colin Farrell). 

The movie offers actual mystery and suspense, and builds in its three-hour running time to a spectacular, exciting finish. Robert Pattinson makes an excellent Batman (he certainly has the jawline for it).

As with Zorro (a name Batman is called, ironically, at one point in the movie), the film gives us a somewhat credible reason why Bruce Wayne must dress up. Virtually the entire city of Gotham is corrupt. Only a man in a mask may act freely there.

Agatha Christie Meets the Incredible Hulk

The arrival of Batman’s New Look in May 1964 cleared away not only the alien invaders he’d been fighting in recent years, but deemphasized his colorful rogue’s gallery of costumed villains as well.

Under editor Julius Schwartz instead of Jack Schiff, Batman was back to fighting gangsters and criminal masterminds with his wits and his fists.

The clean-lined yet elegantly moody New Look really did get my attention as a 9-year-old, and the full-page ad in Detective Comics 327 also caught my eye.

“Be first in your neighborhood to read each issue of Detective! Special Subscription Offer – 10 issues of Detective only $1.00. Just 10 cents each instead of 12 cents — like finding an extra 20 cents!”

I wrangled a dollar from my mom and bought my first comic book subscription (and was disappointed to see the issues arrive folded down the middle — a terrible thing to do to a young comic book lover).

Batman’s archenemy the Joker was still around, but new heavies included the mysterious, super-powered Outsider (really a resurrected, mutated and deranged Alfred Pennyworth) and the Blockbuster, Batman’s answer to the Incredible Hulk.

Chemist Mark Desmond increased his own size and strength at the price of his sanity, and was manipulated into committing crimes by his brother Roland.

Introduced in Detective Comics 345 (Nov. 1965) by writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino, Blockbuster returned in Detective Comics 349 (March 1966) and then in Justice League of America 46 and 47 (Aug.-Sept. 1966).

Obviously Batman, a costumed acrobat and detective, would have a hard time handling a Hulk, so the conflict intrigued me from the start.

The satisfying story might have been written by Agatha Christie, with her famous surprise twists. Blockbuster turned out to be the super-villain that Batman couldn’t defeat, but Bruce Wayne could! Having saved the Mark’s life when he was a child, Wayne’s presence could put a halt to his rampages.

 I loved the irony of the setup — Blockbuster was the one foe whom Batman defeated not by assuming his secret identity, but by exposing it.

The grunting, irresistible bruiser also served the interests of the storytelling elements required for the New Look.

“Since Batman had no super powers to play variations upon, Schwartz asked his writers to supply more fisticuffs — not wild Kirbyesque brawls, but choreographed gymnastics cleverly exploiting props and settings,” noted Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs in their book The Comic Book Heroes.

Blockbuster filled the bill.

Ant Man and Robin to the Rescue!

In June 1963, in Batman 156, DC Comics decided have a little joke at the expense of that upstart superhero publisher, Marvel Comics.

In Batman’s absence, writer Bill Finger and artist Sheldon Moldoff had Robin team up with the shrunken superhero Ant Man. What th--? This was months after Marvel’s diminutive superhero Ant Man first donned his shrinking super-suit in Tales to Astonish 35 (Sept. 1962).

DC’s Ant-Man was a one-off, a fraud, a cheap crook who posed as a hero but failed to fool the Boy Wonder.

Maybe DC regarded the joke as a justifiable act of revenge. After all, in Showcase 34 (Sept.-Oct. 1961), DC had introduced its real shrinking superhero in Gil Kane’s elegant feature The Atom. Of course, Marvel could claim to have introduced Hank Pym at virtually the same time — Tales to Astonish 27 (Jan. 1962) — albeit in one of their “monster” stories, The Man in the Ant Hill, and not a superhero story.

In any case, it’s interesting to compare the static art of Sheldon Moldoff to the dynamic art of Jack Kirby on the same idea. Marvel was on the way up, while Batman was on the way out. Threatened by cancellation, the Batman title would only be saved by Carmine Infantino’s “New Look” in 1964 and the popular TV show in 1966.

The sudden resurgence of the shrinking man concept in comics in the early 1960s certainly owes something to the fact that the long-running Quality superhero Doll Man had ceased publication in 1953, leaving a popular gimmick unused.

But the talented writer Richard Matheson probably also deserves some of the credit. Matheson’s innovative 1956 science fiction novel The Shrinking Man had become the critically acclaimed 1957 hit film The Incredible Shrinking Man. So we can probably thank Matheson for, among other things, Ant-Man, the Atom and the current popular culture plague of zombies (all direct descendants from his 1954 novel, I Am Legend).

People always wonder where a writer gets his ideas. In this case, we know. Matheson said he found the spark of The Shrinking Man in the film Let’s Do It Again, a 1953 remake of the stage and screen comedy The Awful Truth.

“I had gotten the idea several years earlier while attending a movie in a Redondo Beach theater,” Matheson recalled. “In this particular scene, Ray Milland, leaving Jane Wyman's apartment in a huff, accidentally put on Aldo Ray’s hat, which sank down around his ears. Something in me asked, ‘What would happen if a man put on a hat which he knew was his and the same thing happened?’”

When Batman Battled Superman Back in the Day

Having Batman battle Superman is not a new idea. The teammates clashed at various times during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

In stories like those in World’s Finest 95 (Aug. 1958) and World’s Finest 109 (May 1960), the creators sensibly realized that A) to credibly fight Superman, Batman would require super powers like the Man of Tomorrow’s and B) Batman would have to be deranged.

In other stories, when Superman, Batman and Robin plotted against each other, it was almost always for the purpose of protecting each other from some secret threat. The superheroes — being mature, responsible adults — weren’t given to murderous rage then, and their deep concern for each other was a running theme of World’s Finest.

Each decade had its super-team. In the 1940s, we had DC’s groundbreaking Justice Society of America and, all too briefly, Marvel’s All-Winners Squad. In the superhero-rich 1960s, we had the Justice League of America, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the X-Men.

And in the superhero-poor 1950s, we had the minimalist team: just Superman, Batman and Robin. And we were glad to get them.

When Batman Really Sprang Into Action (Comics)

Dick Sprang, the best of the early Batman artists, once said something heretical: that what he liked drawing best were the World’s Finest stories involving Superman.

Why? Because the soaring, science fictional exuberance of Superman’s challenges expanded what he could play with in his art.

Sprang got more of what he wished as the 1950s wore on, because Superman — now a television star — was the dominant figure at DC Comics, the template for success. Even the most unlikely characters temporarily gained powers identical to the Man of Tomorrow’s — not just Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, but also Batwoman, Blackhawk and even the 18^th century pioneer Tomahawk.

Batman acquired his pal’s powers several times, notably in Batman: The Superman of Planet X (Batman 113 Feb. 1958). Teaming with the Batman of the planet Zur-En-Arrh to repel a enemy invasion, the Caped Crusader luckily finds he has super powers there. What are the odds?

The issue also offered a parody Batman (“Fatman”) and the first appearance of a Batman villain who would appear on TV a decade later (False Face, played by Malachi Throne). That was a lot of value for your dime. 

Batman: An Echo of 'The Bat Whispers'

The 1930 film even has a Bat Signal

Watching the expressionistically filmed, Art Deco-ish opening to The Bat Whispers (1930), it’s easy to see how this could have inspired the Batman. Here we have a mysterious. masked, black-cloaked, roof-stalking, rope-swinging “Bat Man” who, like the Joker, taunts the police before pulling off his daring crimes.

Oddly enough that would be the same year that young Philip Wylie published his science fiction novel Gladiator, the direct inspiration for Superman.

Here are scenes from this film, itself a remake of a silent melodrama.