Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
(... but, then... he'd HAVE to be in order to handle HER, wouldn't he...?)
... the Batman!
Part 3
After a few
years of rotating the heroes who teamed up with one another each month
in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, it became evident to the editorial brain trust
at DC that the Batman not only lent himself more readily to these sorts
of stories -- being more easily adaptable to a wider range of story-"types"
(super-hero adventure; mood-drenched mystery; "human interest" drama; etc.)
-- but his prominent presence on the coover meant significantly greater
sales, as well.
[At times
-- in the wake of this welcome discoverry -- DC's cover artists so clearly
begrudged the Caped Crusader's monthly guest-stars a significant portion
of the cover space, it often proved impossible to determine just who was
doing the guest-shot honors that month without referring to the stylized
logos at the top of the book.]
A word or three about Robin ("the Boy Wonder"), since it was at approximately this point in the Bat-chronicles that he finally graduated from the apple-cheeked, relentlessly-annoying pre-adolescent given to be-bopping around Gotham in his mentor's wake -- exclaiming "Holy [Fill-In-the-Blank], Batman!" at the slightest provocation -- into an interesting and valid character in his own right.
Part of the impetus behind this welcome transformation, doubtless, was DC's
obvious shock over the more-than-respectable sales figures on the early issues
of the just-released TEEN TITANS comic, in
which Robin was a central character (and a prominent figure on those early TITANS
covers)... but an even better reason (from a pure storytelling point of view)
was that the character leant himself so readily to fruitful explication of his
mentor's personality, as well. (Those of you who marvel that it
took DC approximately thirty years to make this fateful discovery need
to bear in mind that -- at this point in the field's history -- mainstream adventure
comics were still, by and large, written, penciled and edited by men in their
fourties and fifties.) 
Another addition to the ever-swelling ranks of the extended Bat- "family was "Batgirl"... in reality, the mousy librarian daughter of Gotham City Police Commisioner James Gordon.
While there is certainly a valid argument to be made,
re the inherent chauvinism of a crime-fighting super-heroine who lugged
her gadgetry and whatnot around in a fetching little "Bat-purse" -- go ahead;
just try saying "Bat-purse" without snickering; I'll wait -- the fact
remains that the Batman's distaff counterpart quickly became something of a
"favorite" amongst the readership. Never quite popular enough to
garner her own ongoing monthly title, mind... but enough to have warranted more-or-less
regular inclusion in the bevy of Bat-titles for the next twenty years or so.
Which was more, certainly, than could be said of Bat-Hound.
Still and all -- and aside from the occasional "Bat-purse" here or there -- the tone and tenor of the various Bat-books grew increasingly suspense-laden and ominous. Indeed, Gotham City itself -- little different, during the placid and sterile Bat-run of the 50's -- practically became a supporting character itself, as the series began to retrace its wayward steps back towards something resembling its original mission and method.
Alleyways became grimier, and more claustrophobic;
the rooftop architecture in Gotham began to resemble something out of some mad
Carpathian monk's most fevered night sweats -- all jutting parapets and tangles
of television ariels, with industrial smokestacks warring with elegantly chiseled
gargoyles for sky space. Current writers and artists on the Bat-books
have taken the imagery further still; at times, it almost seems as if Arkham
Asylum (the mental hospital where most of the Batman's foemen bide their time
between increasingly manic [and bloodthirsty] capers) is little more than a
particularly exclusive suburban bedroom community, in comparison.
It wasn't
until the advent of the writer/artist team of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams,
however, that the Batman was finally allowed to return to anything like
his "roots," story-wise.
Really,
one cannot laud enough praise on these two gentlemen. When they were
first bequeathed custodianship of the Bat-franchise, it was undergoing
one of its (then-)cyclical "... We Can't Give This Book Away" fallow
periods, sales-wise. Indeed, none less than Carmine Infantino (now
ex officio, but then-DC Editor-In-Chief) has stated, of those days "... I told them [O'Neil and Adams] that they had ten, twelve months to
turn [sales] around on the book, and then we'd probably end up having to
cancel it. Sales were that bad; we were actually thinking about cancelling
BATMAN."
Of course, DC never did get around to cancelling BATMAN (or DETECTIVE COMICS, for that matter). And that's because a near- fledgling comics scripter (O'Neil's only previous comics credits had been for the now-defunct Charlton Comics company) and a hotshot tyro artist (Adams had only recently walked away from the artistic chores for the syndicated BEN CASEY newspaper strip) took a long, flinty-eyed look at the character... noticed that, concept-wise, he had more barnacles on him than the Andrea Doria... scraped off everything that didn't look, sound or smell like something the Kane/Finger/Robinson troika would have done, if they'd created the character in the late 60's, rather than the late 30's... and resurrected the entire Bat-franchise.
That's all they did, really. They simply brought back what is now universally recognized as one of the two or three greatest creations in the history of the medium from the brink of death...
... and made it possible for the character to still survive today, as one of the most artistically (to say nothing of renumeratively) successful comics characters of the last thirty years (rivaled, perhaps, only by Marvel's X-MEN; the latter sell more books, all told... but taking big- budget movies and video sales and subsidiary items such as cards and toys and kid's clothing into account...? Please.).
Today's Batman, God bless him, is -- in every important respect -- the character as first envisioned by the Three Wise Men, nearly sixty years agone. He's obsessive... hag-ridden... a black and implacable engine of remorseless vengeance. He doesn't trade "cute" quips while BOPPing tame mickeymouse gunsels on the chin; this Batman comes roaring out of the fell Gotham night like God's own bullet train of Judgement.
When the bad guys see this Batman moving towards them... they whimper.
And then -- if they know what's good for 'em -- they crawl.
He is -- in short -- nobody you wanna mess around with.
He's "...
the Most Dangerous Man On the Planet."
Happy days are here again.
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