WI Batman Less Popular

I know that it has been a few days, but I was thinking of other possible divergences. Batman went through at least two distinct crisis of popularity. One was in the period after the Adam West show ended. He was retooled as a character and successfully saved. The Dark Knight Returns was the end result of a two decade effort in the comics to divorce him from the show's dated camp. So you could abort that effort by having Denny O'Neil stay away from him for whatever reason and have D.C. decide rescuing Batman from identification with West's show is a lost cause. The other moment of cultural unpopularity was after Batman and Robin. As happened in the 1970's there was a great effort to divorce him from camp. So another divergence could be keeping plans for a new Batman film trapped in development hell after 1997, no Batman Begins, and have another franchise take Nolan Batman's cultural space. Of course killing Batman Begins could have a more wide ranging impact. I don't have the background to say precisely how this is the case, but I see the fingerprints of that movie on almost all the Superhero franchises that followed it. Arguably, it was Batman Begins, not it's more successful sequel, that had the most influence on the genre. If I'm right preventing it may have considerable effect on Superhero films generally.
 
Anything that's bad for Batman is bad for the entire superhero genre and therefore leads to a crisis for the comics industry. This is because a lot of people who aren't interested in superheroes are interested in Batman, because they see a character without superpowers as more realistic, and a character whose costume isn't really brightly colored as less silly. People take a liking to Batman, and they start going to comic book stores. Occasionally they try other superhero comics, which makes the genre viable for movies.
If Batman doesn't have a boost in popularity in the 60s and fails to win audiences over later, the rest of the industry will struggle unless the companies pump out a lot of characters without powers or silly costumes. If the comics industry is to survive without Batman it would have to push a lot of its characters that don't have powers and silly costumes. I hope they could find a wide variety of superheroes to keep the genre going. The one silver lining is that if the superhero genre struggle even worse than it has in OTL, the comic book industry would diversify and rely on multiple genres, which would be a good thing.

Why don't they just rename DC Comics into "Batman Comics" while they're at it?:D
DC was originally National Comics, the name "DC" was the title of their first Batman comic. So, they pretty much already did.
 
It depends on what you mean by the American Way. By the 1970's blind deference towards the "establishment" had fallen out of cultural fashion. To the extent Superman was associated with the attitude that everything in society was just fine and what mattered was the maintanance of the social order above all else, he was going to struggle as the popular outlook on American society and Government became more cynical. To have him adjust, you have to make him a character who can acknowledge the imperfection of public institutions, even as he struggles to save individual lives. You have to adapt him for a more cynical age. To an extent, his comics went in this direction with Luthor's reinvention in the late 1980's.

TJ&AW became outdated after Vietnam, and more recently after Iraq. The whole idea, to use the links words, that a person who "didn't have the insecurities of flaws" would "always be able to do the right thing" became revealed to Americans as fundamentally flawed; that we don't just "know" what is right and wrong, and fail to do right by weakness of character, but that the world, and people in general, including us, are too complex to fix with easy answers. They also killed the idea that there are "pure" motives; that not only are there no pure "good" people, but there are no psychological motivations or attributes that cannot be corrupted for evil purposes. Superhero stories, in light of these revelations, had to distinguish between characters "being right" and "doing right", who required compelling psychological reasons for their larger than life acts.

And to be clear, Batman's "grim dark" approach to this wasn't the only way comics incorporated these lessons, just the most (over) imitated. Marvel, IMHO anyway, "flawed" heroes way more right on the whole than DC ever did OTL. So the evolution of TTL's Superman could be less towards "moral grey" and more the "learning curve" approach of Marvel heroes like Spiderman, Thor, etc.

That's the odd thing - you'd think Superman, being the champion of the the little guy, and idealism, could have very easily stayed relevant the way Captain America did, where he was this champion of truth and justice dismayed by the forces that be that abandoned those ideals. It would have been very easy to accomplish, I always wondered why DC never did that.

If anything, Superman would have been far easier than Batman to make the anti-establishment figurehead. Seriously, the one thing that separates Bruce Wayne from Lex Luthor after Luthor's transformation into the corporate overlord he is today is the Batman persona - and the darker versions of Batman almost do cross the line into villain territory.

Anything that's bad for Batman is bad for the entire superhero genre and therefore leads to a crisis for the comics industry. This is because a lot of people who aren't interested in superheroes are interested in Batman, because they see a character without superpowers as more realistic, and a character whose costume isn't really brightly colored as less silly. People take a liking to Batman, and they start going to comic book stores. Occasionally they try other superhero comics, which makes the genre viable for movies.
If Batman doesn't have a boost in popularity in the 60s and fails to win audiences over later, the rest of the industry will struggle unless the companies pump out a lot of characters without powers or silly costumes. If the comics industry is to survive without Batman it would have to push a lot of its characters that don't have powers and silly costumes. I hope they could find a wide variety of superheroes to keep the genre going. The one silver lining is that if the superhero genre struggle even worse than it has in OTL, the comic book industry would diversify and rely on multiple genres, which would be a good thing.

DC was originally National Comics, the name "DC" was the title of their first Batman comic. So, they pretty much already did.

Again though, dozens of Superheros were popular for years - it wasn't until the late 80s when Batman became the cultural monstrosity that he is today, thanks to a combination of the Dark Knight Returns, the Burton films, and the Batman Animated Series. Batman's popularity doesn't have to do with the color of his costume, or 'darker/edgier' themes, but due to his near onmi-present pop cultural presence for the last 25 years. Again, since 1989, there have been eight theatrically released Batman movies - that ties him with James Bond and Harry Potter for most film releases in that period, and made him a household name for the same reasons.

If instead, for example, we'd seen Aquaman or Wonder Woman get that level of attention and pop culture presence, we might live in a world where Aquaman has become a cultural meme while most folks write off Batman as 'that loser who hangs out in a cave with little boys'.
 
That's the odd thing - you'd think Superman, being the champion of the the little guy, and idealism, could have very easily stayed relevant the way Captain America did, where he was this champion of truth and justice dismayed by the forces that be that abandoned those ideals. It would have been very easy to accomplish, I always wondered why DC never did that.

If anything, Superman would have been far easier than Batman to make the anti-establishment figurehead. Seriously, the one thing that separates Bruce Wayne from Lex Luthor after Luthor's transformation into the corporate overlord he is today is the Batman persona - and the darker versions of Batman almost do cross the line into villain territory.

It's not just a matter of being "anti-establishment" -- it's a matter of having a more complex character motive than "always is in right"; sure, you could take from Vietnam that the establishment is among the cartoonish villains of the world that our heroes have to stand against, but for the vast majority of Americans, it was really a huge lesson in "moral grayness". You are, however, right that the "dark anti-hero" route Batman took in the late 80's is hardly the only way to achieve this, and Superman does have potential to fill deal with this kind of moral complexity (possibly more than Batman, but that's another matter).
 
That's the odd thing - you'd think Superman, being the champion of the the little guy, and idealism, could have very easily stayed relevant the way Captain America did, where he was this champion of truth and justice dismayed by the forces that be that abandoned those ideals. It would have been very easy to accomplish, I always wondered why DC never did that.

If anything, Superman would have been far easier than Batman to make the anti-establishment figurehead. Seriously, the one thing that separates Bruce Wayne from Lex Luthor after Luthor's transformation into the corporate overlord he is today is the Batman persona - and the darker versions of Batman almost do cross the line into villain territory.



Again though, dozens of Superheros were popular for years - it wasn't until the late 80s when Batman became the cultural monstrosity that he is today, thanks to a combination of the Dark Knight Returns, the Burton films, and the Batman Animated Series. Batman's popularity doesn't have to do with the color of his costume, or 'darker/edgier' themes, but due to his near onmi-present pop cultural presence for the last 25 years. Again, since 1989, there have been eight theatrically released Batman movies - that ties him with James Bond and Harry Potter for most film releases in that period, and made him a household name for the same reasons.

If instead, for example, we'd seen Aquaman or Wonder Woman get that level of attention and pop culture presence, we might live in a world where Aquaman has become a cultural meme while most folks write off Batman as 'that loser who hangs out in a cave with little boys'.


Regarding Superman, I think one of his problems is that he drifted too far from his roots, he was always a more interesting character when he was the defender of the little guy against unfathomable odds, a character capable of admitting to the uglier face of his community even while defending individuals within it. In short from a character stand point I think he needed the same back to basics approach that Batman had. And to an extent that happened. But it didn't stick culturally speaking. Though a successful film that takes that approach and actually gives him a decent villain to stuggle against would go a long way in solidifying that shift. Such a film never happened, though Donner's film came close. But Superman may simply be too iconic to divorce him from his silver age image.
 
It's not just a matter of being "anti-establishment" -- it's a matter of having a more complex character motive than "always is in right"; sure, you could take from Vietnam that the establishment is among the cartoonish villains of the world that our heroes have to stand against, but for the vast majority of Americans, it was really a huge lesson in "moral grayness". You are, however, right that the "dark anti-hero" route Batman took in the late 80's is hardly the only way to achieve this, and Superman does have potential to fill deal with this kind of moral complexity (possibly more than Batman, but that's another matter).

Again, it's never been an issue for Captain America. If anything, it gave some brilliant ways for him to play foil against the morally grey world.

Plus, I'm calling bullshit on the idea that America "prefers" morally grey heroes. All of our biggest cultural heroes - from fictional ones like Rocky Balboa or Luke Skywalker to real ones like Abe Lincoln or Audey Murphey - have been largely died in the wool good guys without a drop of moral grayness. The very origin of the superhero is rooted in this - it was American hero worship taken to its logical extreme.

I'd wager that's part of the reason Man of Steel suffered such a backlash - people don't WANT to see Superman as this dark, brooding unpleasant figure, and seeing him literally kill millions of people in a fist fight caused system shock for some folks.
 
KG, I think we're talking past each other a little here -- by "moral grayness", I was talking about the world the superhero inhabits (something Marvel knows how to do well). What this means for the heroes themselves is decisive not a need to become existential anti-heroes, but rather a simple need psychologically explain why they do good (or seek to do good), instead of just asserting that they are "good". Does that make sense?

In the case of Captain America, it's because he was originally a scrawny weak kid who desperately wanted to prove himself; he stands for the little guy, because he can genuinely identify with being weak in a cruel world.
 
Again though, dozens of Superheros were popular for years - it wasn't until the late 80s when Batman became the cultural monstrosity that he is today, thanks to a combination of the Dark Knight Returns, the Burton films, and the Batman Animated Series. Batman's popularity doesn't have to do with the color of his costume, or 'darker/edgier' themes, but due to his near onmi-present pop cultural presence for the last 25 years. Again, since 1989, there have been eight theatrically released Batman movies - that ties him with James Bond and Harry Potter for most film releases in that period, and made him a household name for the same reasons.

If instead, for example, we'd seen Aquaman or Wonder Woman get that level of attention and pop culture presence, we might live in a world where Aquaman has become a cultural meme while most folks write off Batman as 'that loser who hangs out in a cave with little boys'.
And why do you think there were so many Batman adaptations? Because after the Batman film in 1989, he was very popular, due to traits Batman has that appeal to the general public. You really think the general public in the 1980s, most of whom haven't read a comic book in years, would have been as interested in Aquaman? I like Aquaman as well, but I don't see much in him that will appeal to people who aren't that into superheroes, or at all into magical characters. Batman's just different enough that he appeals to a broader non-superhero audience. The same is true of the Punisher, which is why the Punisher was huge for a while. The Punisher is exactly like the action heroes you always saw in movies before superheroes dominated the action films.
 
Batman's just different enough that he appeals to a broader non-superhero audience. The same is true of the Punisher, which is why the Punisher was huge for a while. The Punisher is exactly like the action heroes you always saw in movies before superheroes dominated the action films.

He had his first movie the same year as Batman's big one (it was not well received).
 
I'm reading this topic with interest and want to bump it. :D

It really kills me DC's in dire straits, but like thekingsguard I'm so tired of Batman everywhere.

And lord knows, I'd love to see Superman relevant again.

I'll probably add more to this topic tomorrow, I'm tired...
 
KG, I think we're talking past each other a little here -- by "moral grayness", I was talking about the world the superhero inhabits (something Marvel knows how to do well). What this means for the heroes themselves is decisive not a need to become existential anti-heroes, but rather a simple need psychologically explain why they do good (or seek to do good), instead of just asserting that they are "good". Does that make sense?

In the case of Captain America, it's because he was originally a scrawny weak kid who desperately wanted to prove himself; he stands for the little guy, because he can genuinely identify with being weak in a cruel world.

I see what you mean, but again, we had that somewhat with Superman - we saw him struggle with marriage to Lois Lane, deal with the death of his father, at watch Lex Luthor become a nigh-untouchable corporate overlord. Compared to the more black-and-white 'everything sucks, theres no point, im the goddam Batman' nihilistic world of Batman, there's a lot more greyness in Superman.

Good point about Captain America's origin though.

And why do you think there were so many Batman adaptations? Because after the Batman film in 1989, he was very popular, due to traits Batman has that appeal to the general public. You really think the general public in the 1980s, most of whom haven't read a comic book in years, would have been as interested in Aquaman? I like Aquaman as well, but I don't see much in him that will appeal to people who aren't that into superheroes, or at all into magical characters. Batman's just different enough that he appeals to a broader non-superhero audience. The same is true of the Punisher, which is why the Punisher was huge for a while. The Punisher is exactly like the action heroes you always saw in movies before superheroes dominated the action films.

Yes - the reason the 1989 Batman film was successful was that it was the most seriously taken comic book movie of the time. It had a great cast, solid director with vision for the film, and was taken somewhat seriously. Compare that to say, the Supergirl movie, and you'll see why Batman was successful.

If you'd had James Cameron directing an Aquaman movie staring Carrie Elwes and Val Kilmer, it would have been taken seriously too - you have to take a film seriously for audiences to treat it seriously. THAT was Batman's advantage.
 
I think there are two keys to Batman's incredible popularity: longevity, and the Burton films.

Lots of heroes have faded in and out of popularity, more within the comics market itself than within the wider culture, but none of DC's have stayed around long enough to give them the level of recognition that Superman and Batman have. Surviving the landslide of superhero cancellations in the late 40s and early 50s, allowed Superman and Batman to dominate the much-reduced superhero genre in the 50s and (with a little retooling) prosper when the genre became fashionable again in the early 60s. Had Batman not survived that period, later resurrections and reboots would not have stood the test of time - the character would never have achieved the levels of popularity and cultural significance that it has.

Superman was DC's most popular hero for a long time, and that's no surprise given that he was broadly the first superhero and was ubiquitously imitated (even the creation of Batman was originally inspired by Superman). I think his fading popularity in the 70s was as much to do with familiarity (a backlash against him having been too popular earlier on - and the result of that earlier sustained popularity often insulating Superman from the stylistic and thematic changes that affected the rest of the DCU), and with the safe and camp nature of his world ("Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen"). The Donner films gave the character a boost, but not enough. Superman was struggling in the early 80s - and so was Batman (at one point pre-Crisis, Hawkman was DC's best-selling hero). DC itself was struggling in the wake of the 70s implosion of the comics industry from mass-market to niche, and nearly closed down before Crisis on Infinite Earths - there was serious talk of ceasing publication and selling DC's characters to Marvel.

The popularity of Batman as a comic has often put it in danger of cancellation, and conversely DC has often gone to lengths to keep Batman selling. Before the TV series, Batman underwent a soft reboot in the mid-60s (a striking aesthetic change combined with the sidelining of the "family" of characters that had been developed over the 50s - Batwoman, Bette Kane, etc) as it had started to flag in a market over-stuffed with new Silver Age superheroes. After the influx of creatives from Charlton to DC in the late 60s boosted sales of a number of revamped titles (kicking off the Bronze Age), Denny O'Neill was put on Batman for another soft reboot so its sales wouldn't fall behind reinvigorated stablemates. But, for all that the slow darkening of the character was in tune with the general cultural, generational shifts at play, Batman was (still, or once again) struggling in sales by the late 80s. From what I've read, despite the cultural and critical success of TDKR and (to a lesser extent) The Killing Joke, and initial interest generated by the Year One reboot after CoIE, at the time that the first Burton film was made the sales of the two (only two!) Batman titles were so low that the writers weren't actually getting paid; after the movie's release, those sales rocketed and people got rich out of writing Batman monthlies.

For my money, Batman's long history (including then 60s TV series) had given the character a low-level cultural familiarity that left it very well-placed to benefit from mass media attention (that ensured there'd be interest, that audiences would give it a chance); but it was the success of that attention when it came, of the two Burton films, that made Batman into a massive cultural icon, that allowed Batman titles to so dominate the comics market, and led to the character almost immediately ousting Superman as DC's #1. The success of Batman in turn boosted DC (after a long period of struggling) and hurt Marvel for the following decade.

So, a less popular Batman would leave DC still struggling as it entered the 90s, and perhaps the company wouldn't have survived until today (or would have had to go through some major reorganisation). Superman would have remained the company's focus, but on the other hand perhaps the absence (or reduced prominence) of Batman would have lead DC to take more risks with Superman - perhaps, either post-Crisis or in the early 90s, Supes would have been returned to his radical roots (as Morrison tried to do in the New 52) as a last gamble to keep DC going.
 
Now, if Batman had fallen into obscurity, while DC's biggest cash cow would obviously be Superman, I think it'd be pushing a wide variety of its characters.
If you'd had James Cameron directing an Aquaman movie staring Carrie Elwes and Val Kilmer, it would have been taken seriously too - you have to take a film seriously for audiences to treat it seriously. THAT was Batman's advantage.
The best-done Aquaman movie in the world wouldn't attract as many non-superhero fans as a well-done Batman movie. Having a well-done movie wasn't Batman's only advantage. If a 1989 movie were his only advantage, he wouldn't have been one of the most popular superheroes and the 40s and he wouldn't have been one of the three superheroes who made it to the 60s. In 1989 most people weren't into superheroes. Partly due to the success of the Batman movie, now most people are. And while it might be true that in 2014, if you make a good movie about any random superhero, it will be a blockbuster, that wasn't always true.
 
thekingsguard said:
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.
Okay, I know, this is a bit necro, but...:eek:

This makes me think of what happened to Captain America in the early '70s. Steve quits, but finds, while he can stop being Cap, he can't stop being Steve. He can't look away.

The same is true for Supes (or for Clark). So what happens? Does he have to start busting up slum buildings? Knocking down tenements? Busting cops?:eek: Protecting whistleblowers? Looking for government corruption?

Does he have to be part social crusader, almost in the Miller DD mold?

In essence, does Clark end up being more important than Superman?:eek:
 
I don't see Batman ever becomjng less popular...

... Because as an idea he is constantly reinventing himself. The 1939 Batman is different from the 1950's Batman, who is again completely different from Adam West's screen role. Even in the 1990's movies, Michael Keaton plays a different Batman then George Clooney just years later. And then there was of course Frank Miller with 'The Dark Knight returns', which was something of the quintessential character sketch of the early 80's. Every generation has its own Batman and the one we love so much today may be as outdated 10 years from now as Blackwater Security in Baghdad.

So, don't write off Batman too soon. He might disappear for a few years like Dr Who did in the '90s, but only to come back as a completely new incarnation, better and more poignant then ever.
 
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