How old are you out of interest? If your anywhere near my age... (21), Jesus I didn't realize it was THAT bad. I know Toho relies almost exclusively on Godzilla (about a dozen Godzilla movies since I was born and only three Mothra movies) but the sheer volume of stuff for Batman is absurd. And I expect that while some of it (such as The Dark Knight) is great, other parts aren't good at all.
teg
24 - I was born in 1989, same year the Burton Batman film got released.
Yeah, it's that bad. The worst part is that a lot of times the good stuff feeds into the bad stuff, ie, Batman (1989) gave us Batman Returns, Dark Knight Returns gave us the Dark Knight Strikes Again, Dark Knight gave us Dark Knight Rises. Except Batman the Animated Series - that can do no wrong
The worst part s that the one time that Batman really felt inventive in my lifetime got retconned by the New 52. Before that, the comic was going in the boldest direction it had in years - Bruce Wayne retired as Batman, handing the cowel to Dick Grayson, while Damien Wayne became Robin. You had Bruce gradually getting out of the way, Dick Grayson both struggling to become 'Batman' while giving it his own Nightwing flare, Damien playing the dour straight man to the more easy-going Dick Grayson, and it felt fresh and new. Only to get tossed out with the New 52.
Miller's interpretation of Superman was part of a long cultural shift, the same 1960's cultural shift that lead to generalized distrust of authority and in turn inspired the satiric take on Batman. By the 1970's Superman was seen as a kind of relic character who embodied the ideals of an earlier period. Superman wasn't dead as a character, but he was suffering from much the same problem he does today. The movie and to a lesser extent the musical mitigated his popularity decline somewhat but he had already fallen a great deal since his heyday. Miller's take wasn't the beginning of Superman's decline, it was the end result of a long change that began in the 1960's, or arguably, with the death of George Reeves in 1959.
Without Batman, D.C. doesn't have as easy a way to get out of the cultural shift problem, which means they have to remain a Superman company, which is going to be difficult because of general popular trends in the 1970's and 1980's. They have to figure out a way to bring him out of the 1950's in the popular imagination. That's a difficult task. Not impossible, but difficult.
That's the odd thing for me at least - when did truth, justice and the American way become outdated?
For me at least, Superman is a far more relatable character than Batman because, as Max Landis put it quite well, "
Superman didn't need to watch his parents get shot to realize helping people is the right thing to do."
What makes Superman special isn’t that he’s a nigh-invulnerable bulletproof alien who can defy the laws of physics with powers that quite literally make him a living deity, but that all this power is in the hands of a humble Kansas farmboy who DESPITE all of this power and possessing abilities which literally make him a god amongst men, at the very core of his being, he’s still that good-natured guy from Smallville who in his heart just wants to do the right thing. There are legions of superheros who have the same powers as Superman - what made him special was Clark Kent, who was the kind of guy who, even without powers, would stand up for the bullied or oppressed, or rush into a burning building to save someone, or speak up when everyone else is afraid to. He's the personification of humanity at it's very best, a reminder of who we can be if we aim for such a standard, or why we aim for that standard at all.
You want to be like Batman, you need to become a billionaire. You want to be like Spiderman, you need to be bitten by a radioactive spider. You want to be like Superman, be a good person and stand up for what's right, no matter the cost. Nobody can be like Spiderman, very few can be like Batman, but ANYONE can be like Superman, if only in character.
That's why I think Man of Steel was such a system shock for most people - they turned Superman into another traumatized loner lording over the commoners, and that rips out the very heart of who Superman is. Have we really grown so dark and cynical as a society that trusting someone to always do the right thing is ‘antiquated’ or needs to be ‘modernized’ or made dark and gritty to be relatable? I hope not, for all our sakes.
Sorry for the rant, but I never understood why people say Superman is unrelatable - certainly compared to a sociopath billionaire in body armor who beats up the mentally disabled and the physically disfigured.