“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”
—Alan Moore The Killing Joke

“Because even when they aren’t talking about me, they are.”
—Neil Gaiman Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

In the last three of “To Be Continued…” we have explored many chapters of The Batman’s history and many versions of the Dark Knight Detective from the dark, gunslinging vigilante to the campy pop-art experiment to the brilliant, but emotional crusader with the chilling smile to the grotesque gargoyle of the future. If DC has taught us anything with Zero Hour, “The New 52” and any series with the word “Crisis” in the title, it’s that the “real” version of Batman depends greatly on the zeitgeist and who happens to be writing him at the time.

“I love beauty.  I don’t care about pretty.”
—Frank Miller on drawing comicbooks

Previously on To Be Continued…  we discussed the full circle of Batman, starting with his debut in 1939 as a violent vigilante with no qualms about killing the bad guys (he was featured with a gun holster on the cover of 1939’s Detective Comics #33). It was not artist Bob Kane or writer Bill Finger who lightened Batman’s violent side or instilled the character with his now-trademark hatred of guns, but editor Whitney Ellsworth who mandated the change. The character devolved from the still very dark Dark Knight (now with a Doctor Watson to explain things to in his sidekick Robin) to a campy parody of himself, no longer inhabiting a bleak and menacing Gotham City, but a bright and colorful world at large. This culminated in the farcical TV show Batman (1966) and its feature film spinoff, but when Batmania wound down, DC Comics was free to re-darken the Detective.
 
The 1970s were a time of artistic experimentation. Bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin broke new ground in music and films The Godfather and Star Wars revamped old movie genres into critical and commercial successes. Comics were no exception to this innovation, especially at DC Comics where the cultural shifts were written all over every page. Wonder Woman had a wardrobe and attitude change, Superman munched on Kryptonite (while Clark Kent left the Daily Planet for a job on the TV news) and Green Lantern and Green Arrow addressed issues such as racism and drug addiction.

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I guess this is what it looks like when the wheel’s still in spin. Like pieces moving. Maybe one of the smoothest kinds of perpetual fictions were those tales of a certain group of mutants from the ‘90s. By the ‘90s, that team had grown so diverse that the form of storytelling was necessarily predicated on the micro-episodic. The story of each issue became the story of how each sub-group wove its way to its individual objective. Not at all unlike the storytelling in the now-mythic Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

“The Dying Batman… Driven by an instinct he cannot name–an instinct beyond understanding–he strides toward a certain destination… to where Ra’s Al Ghul stands alone…”
—Denny O’Neil Batman #244 September 1972

In our last electrifying entry of “To Be Continued…” we detailed how Batman has survived the evolution from his gothic roots through various incarnations, from the ridiculous to the shockingly dark and just about everything in between. The modern Dark Knight movies have worked to avoid any semblance of silliness behind Batman’s mask. Still, the very best and most memorable Batman comicbook stories are those that feature a more well-rounded, less caricatured hero both in and out of costume. The best writers and artists never forget that the Dark Knight can be very dark and is still a human being, rather than a crime-fighting machine.

By the 1970s the newly re-darkened Batman and Robin (though now not always a team) still did one important thing… they still appeared in broad daylight.

In Kane and Finger’s origin story for Batman, Bruce Wayne famously said “I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible.. a… a… a BAT!” In spite of the fact that some creators took this far too literally, Batman himself could tell you that Crime Never Sleeps. Thus, unfortunately for Bruce Wayne, Batman’s own sleep time often fell into the “Never” category as well.

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It’s a quiet tea between friends. The Shade, the erstwhile Richard Swift, and erstwhile Starman Mikaal Thomas take the October air on the Shade’s upper-floor balcony. Below them, the Shade’s garden spreads out, behind them the city towers, threatening to swallow the idyll of gentlemanly sedateness. The measured repose, as well the physical balcony,  put the Shade above his past, but the towering spires of Opal City certainly seems to suggest the lurking doubt that he may not yet be beyond the consequences of his earlier deeds.