DBWI: No Orson Welles "The Bat Man"

This is aimed at all you comic book and film buffs out there.

I was just wondering how both these media would have been affected
if the 1947 Orson Welles classic had never been released.
Might this had led to a decline in comic book sales and superhero type movies?
Even if it hadn't, some say that it was Welles's performance that
influenced how that character was portrayed subsequently in both
film and print.

Just imagine, if you will, the effects on popular culture for the past half
century if say, this film was nothing more than a few minutes of footage
cobbled together on youtube as an April Fool's joke.
 
Quite honestly, I'd expect the comic industry itself would be much better off. I mean, as beneficial as Orson's film was for Batman himself, it took comic books decades to dig themselves out of the plothole-ridden mess of a Dark Age that followed. It wasn't until Alan Moore and Frank Miller that we started to see good guys who are purely and unambiguously good again.
 

The Vulture

Banned
It's interesting to look at the Batman comics before Welles made the changes that we all recognize. Before the movie, Batman was a big, physically fit, proactive crime fighter rather than an anonymous bat-themed detective. While the version we know could certainly handle himself in a fight, he's a lot more cerebral and depends more on wit than the old version, who would go pick fights with criminals.

So we might have a Batman that just runs around beating people up as opposed to doing actual detective work. That's a lot different.
 
Well looking at Septimus's post on Moore's unambiguously good heroes I have this to say.

Yes the depths they sunk to from the early 50s to the late 60s were pretty grim as far as comic book characterisation is concerned, but the real tragedy is that by the late 80s they had actually got the hang of the whole darker and edgier ambiguous antihero schtik. The unambiguously good (some might say sacharine flavoured Mary-Sewage)
characterisation of the Watchment etc and the early 90s was the real lowpoint, although it seems there might finally be some kind of equalibrium emerging.
 
Well looking at Septimus's post on Moore's unambiguously good heroes I have this to say.

Yes the depths they sunk to from the early 50s to the late 60s were pretty grim as far as comic book characterisation is concerned, but the real tragedy is that by the late 80s they had actually got the hang of the whole darker and edgier ambiguous antihero schtik. The unambiguously good (some might say sacharine flavoured Mary-Sewage)
characterisation of the Watchment etc and the early 90s was the real lowpoint, although it seems there might finally be some kind of equalibrium emerging.

The Watchmen really weren't the problem. I mean, why on Earth would you expect Ozymandias to be anything but good? Similarly, Miller's Knight in Shining Armor was the best thing that ever happened to Superman books. Both works were excellently written and the stark contrasts present within them made for a great view.

The problem was that a bunch of writers decided this had to be the new formula, and so they took heroes who were supposed to be dark and completely messed around with their entire characterization just to fit the unambiguously pure mold.

Of course, I'm not excusing Miller's more recent work, such as All-Star Superman. I'm a fan of goodness-and-light heroes, but even I have to agree that Superman really should be doing something other than using his powers to find homes for orphaned kittens. Much as I hate to admit it, some level of actual conflict is essential. I think many of the 90s writers missed that.
 
Then again, the film adaptations of Superman by Billy Wilder(1957) and John Ford (1962) served to inspire many Americans, especially with epic scope to their stories and the grand-sweeping vistas. Who can't think of George Reeves as the symbol of American strength and values during the turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s? For everyone who mentions Orson Welles, consider that George Reeves served as a beacon of hope....
 
Well the dark age was inevitable in the couple of years between the movie and the end of WWII Super heroes suffered a major backlash lacking a good ennemy to fight like the nazi, but horror comic became all the rage. It was clear that if they wanted to survive the super heroes had to go darker
 
OOC:
picard-facepalm.jpg
http://icrontic.com/uploads/2009/08/facepalm.jpg


'nuff said
 
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OOC: It says Double Blind what if in the title and if you'd read the opening
post it near enough spells out the situation IRL

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OOC: I'm well aware of what a DB is. There's a whole running joke about me posting DB challenges and attracting clueless noobs. I. Fucking. Get. It. And I never saw any YouTube video about the hoax or knew that it had anything to do with April Fools' Day, so that comment means nothing to me. None of that changes the fact that, with no evidence of Orson Welles even being aware of Batman, this is as plausible as speculating on what Zorro would have looked like under D W Griffith. Which is fine with me, but people should know the odds they're dealing with. Also, you're a prick.

Edit: And editing your post doesn't put you in a better light.
 
OOC: None of that changes the fact that, with no evidence of Orson Welles even being aware of Batman, this is as plausible as speculating on what Zorro would have looked like under D W Griffith. Which is fine with me, but people should know the odds they're dealing with.

OOC: Welles lived in Hollywood for a good ten years after Detective Comics began to come out and they were quite popular amongst the youth, so I think it's a safe bet that he might've been vaguely familiar with the the name "Batman."

The point of the DBWI seems to be creating a much earlier dark Batman film and the effect that would have on society (in a fun way). I was unfamiliar with the Mark Millar hoax, but Welles is probably the best early director to choose from, given his experimental style in other films and his already innovative adaption of an H.G. Wells novel. The idea that he might grab a comic book one day in the '40s in search of a new movie idea doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.

And escalating the name-calling doesn't help anybody.
 
OOC: And a bit off topic. I edited the post because, as you point out, the ascii image looks out of shape when you copy and paste.

Back to business now, you make a very good point about the whole plausibility of Welles even knowing about Batman (and I completely missed the point of your post.) The reason I didn't put this in the ASB section was I thought we might have some fun with the leadup to what influenced Welles to make The Batman movie in the first place in this scenario.

And yes I am an obsessive/compulsive editor of my own posts, but I'm getting therapy for that.
 
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OOC: And a bit off topic. I edited the post because, as you point out, the ascii image looks out of shape when you copy and paste.

Back to business now, you make a very good point about the whole plausibility of Welles even knowing about Batman (and I completely missed the point of your post.) The reason I didn't put this in the ASB section was I though we might have some fun with the leadup to what influenced Welles to make The Batman movie in the first place in this scenario.

And yes I am an obsessive/compulsive editor of my own posts, but I'm getting therapy for that.

OOC: OK, escalation off. I don't actually have an opinion on the subject, I just read the title and figured this was someone else unfamiliar with the Millar hoax, and from the OP it wasn't obvious to me that this was not the case. Even if I did have an opinion, the ATL in this thread has already gone in a direction I don't like - 6 years before Alan Moore was even born and there's still a Watchmen?
 
What I find quite interesting is the fact with the publicity that came with the 1947 film Superheroes as such (i.e. people with superpowers) barely got a look in in print for decades afterwards. I remember reading some contemporary scaremongering about how Welles was harming the moral health of the US by encouraging a new generation of costumed vigillantes.

But then again it's amazing how the hypodermic needle theory of media consumption refuses to die even to this day. Reading some of the reviews of contemporary material I'm buggered if I can tell the difference between them and the original criticism of The Bat Man.

OOC: Still a Watchmen? I found that a bit bizarre too but hey ...
Pervez man, you know a lot more about the
subject(s) than I do so feel free to pitch in,
I'd imagine you already had a few good ideas up your sleeve
about the effects of the Welles Bat Man on pop culture etc.
 
Pervez man, you know a lot more about the
subject(s) than I do so feel free to pitch in,
I'd imagine you already had a few good ideas up your sleeve
about the effects of the Welles Bat Man on pop culture etc.

OOC: I couldn't say if I know more about the subjects, but here goes: The Welles Batman film would, if successful, be bad news for comics IMO. Mixing Hollywood and comics this early is gonna turn the latter into an extension of the former. As soon as film studios realize there's money to be made from comics they'll start buying up publishers, and it won't be long after the first comics adaptation tanks that they get the idea that it's safer to make comics out of films than the other way around. It will only take a generation until most people will forget that the Batman film came after the Batman comic. I don't expect a very good creative environment, but I might be wrong. All of this could, however, turn up to be good news for the pulps, if they survive long enough to start attracting those writers whose originality doesn't fit in well in an industry focused on adaptations of existing works. Sorry for calling you a prick.
 
OOC: Making the latter into an extension of the former ... forgetting that the comic came before the film, I like that, maybe we could weave that into the scenario, if you have a good hand, play it that's what I say.

P.S. Why do I get the impression that you're gunning for some kind of cultural dystopia in this ATL?
This should be good for a few laughs.
About calling me a prick, don't worry about it, I didn't even notice until your last post so I was a bit baffled about the whole
namecalling business.
 
P.S. Why do I get the impression that you're gunning for some kind of cultural dystopia in this ATL?

OOC: I didn't have that in mind, honest. The film adaptations don't have to universally suck, just look at the Star Wars comics (never read them, but I understand some are pretty good). If there's something that I would be interested to see it's comics writers working for pulps. Just imagine Stan Lee working for Argosy.
 
OOC: I think this scenario is going to need some extra work. Some of Pervez's ideas are intriguing but we need some more contributors with the knowledge, especially a discussion on the effects on the Pulps. Anyway heregoes.

I've tried posing this question with some friends in the pub and (after several pints) we've come to the conclusion that even without the Welles adaptation the takeover of the comic books companies by film studios could only have been averted by the intervention of the Astonishing Alien Space Bats (I paraphrase). In hindsight it was probably a shrewd choice by MGM to choose a non "Super" Superhero as it were (1940s SFX etc) but then again that feeds into my previous point, it could easily have been The Shadow that could have started this craze.

It's a shame that the "Indie Heroe" comic book movement got off to such a rocky start back in the 80s. The successful ones were often doomed by their own success and the film companies bought the rights etc. And the ones the studios weren't interested, well with a few rule proving exceptions, neither were most of the readership, hence the essentially Cult following of the various obscure Indie heroes etc during the 90s. Things might be changing but I'm not holding my breath, either they make a movie or it flops, but still I think a lot of people unfairly blame Orson Welles for having killed the independent Comic Book industry, but personally I don't think it could possibly have lasted, the chances of a studio not stumbling across material like The Batman etc and passing up an opportunity to make money are astronomical.

Keep in mind that not all Superheroes were depicted as having obviously superhuman powers like flight etc and there were enough normalish superheroes in print whose powers could easily have been adapted to the late 40s/early 50s big screen without much trouble.
 
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