| Posted: 22 September 2019 at 11:08am | IP Logged | 5
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ITEM: Wallace S. queried: "How old should Batman be now?" My wife posited that, chronologically, he should be 104. Myself, I think Batman should be 30. I think Bruce Wayne should be around 104. I'm pretty much basing this on Batman Beyond's logic. Bruce Wayne simply cannot physically be Batman any longer - if he's even still alive. But I believe that there will be successors to Batman.
ITEM: The initial question, do I like Batman, is a tricky one. I haven't read new Batman in so long that all I know is what i read in the papers. But I hate the psychotic Batman. Can't stand him. There are limits to what makes a hero, and when those are exceeded, I'm out. At one point in the mid-80s, Luthor and Brainiac were changed to somewhat psychotic villains, and I thought that there time was up. During Identity Crisis, a lot of super villains found out that their memories were affected, and they thought, "That's it! Now I'm REALLY out to get Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/the Creeper/the Inferior Five/Shade/etc." Yes, I know that a lot of them weren't involved in the memory wipe, but crazy writers will rationalize that villains don't need a reason.* And some of the heroes started down those roads as well... forget it. These are comic books, not vengeance-porn for why some writer got bullied in fifth grade.
ITEM: I started becoming aware of Batman from the Justice League of America, and from the Batman TV show. That TV show was my first exposure to the Caped Crusaders, so that tempered my first impression of them. When I finally got over that, I found that I liked a little less camp. When I really got going on Batman, I found that the 40s and early 50s stories appealed to me. Then the 70s versions of Batman got me too. Thus, those are the version I like best... and I feel that Batman works best with Robin.
ITEM: There are other brief periods of Batman I liked. I kinda enjoyed Batman and the Outsiders, but he was still too much a bully, with very few redeeming qualities. I liked Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis' span on Batman. And I have Batman and Captain America on my top five list of Batman stories... but I don't know if that counts as a 90s era Batman or a 40s era Batman. That led into Generations, which is also a favorite.
ITEM: I hated The Dark Knight Returns and all its associated stories. The art was muddy, the stories were about a crazy Batman - acceptable in TDKR Return specifically because it's Batman in the future - I could understand him being nuts because of encroaching senility. But when Miller and DC made it part of his "real" origin, that was the breaking point.
So I liked the World's Greatest Detective, Disguise Artist, Escape Artist, etc. A rational and likable character - friend of Gotham's decent citizens, and terror to Gotham's villains.
*Why, I wondered, would enemies of Batman or Green Arrow want to give them reason to really take off on them? Batman vs the Joker, for example, was quite a conflict as is; but when Batman got pushed too far and the Joker returned to Arkham missing several teeth, a badly broken jaw, and a pair of ruined legs, perhaps that might have beena bit of a lesson.
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