Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
Speaker 1: the show where America is the star and the American people. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: Batman is a household name his list of comic issues,
Speaker 1: let alone live action movies, animated films and TV shows,
Speaker 1: video games, you name it, well, it's nothing short of astounding.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't always the case today. Andrew Farrago, curator
Speaker 1: at the Cartoon Art Museum, an author of Batman, The
Speaker 1: Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and beyond,
Speaker 1: is here to tell us the story of the Dark Knight.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's appropriate for a character whose secret identity
Speaker 2: is a millionaire and later a billionaire. But money was
Speaker 2: kind of the driving force behind Batman at the beginning.
Speaker 2: So as struggling and fairly undistinguished cartoonist named Bob Kane
Speaker 2: was working for National periodical publications doing funny animal comics,
Speaker 2: he was doing adventure comics. He was doing anything he
Speaker 2: could to try to make a name for himself, try
Speaker 2: to just make a living. And he heard that Jerry
Speaker 2: Siegel and Joe Schuster, who were the co creators of Superman,
Speaker 2: were making a really nice living. Hundreds of dollars a week,
Speaker 2: you know, just out of the Great Depression tail into
Speaker 2: the Great Depression from their creation.
Speaker 3: He talked to his editor, and editor said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you bring me another Superman and this will be
Speaker 2: lucrative for you. And he said, you know, I'll do
Speaker 2: it over a weekend. He basically went home and tried
Speaker 2: to come up with his version of Superman. And initially
Speaker 2: the character he came up with was really nothing like
Speaker 2: the Batman that we all know.
Speaker 3: He looked more like a circus acrobat with.
Speaker 2: A Domino mask, blonde hair, Leonardo da Vinci inspired black
Speaker 2: batwing cape. He's possibly going to be a flying superhero.
Speaker 2: But thankfully, Kane was in touch with a very talented,
Speaker 2: very inventive writer named Bill Finger, and Bill Finger saw
Speaker 2: the raw potential there. He took Kane's ideas, he refined it.
Speaker 2: He gave Batman the cape and cow and outfit really
Speaker 2: close to what we know to know and love today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he took Kane's concept and turned it into something that,
Speaker 2: eighty years later still energizes and excites fans everywhere. Batman
Speaker 2: made his debut in a publication called Detective Comics, and
Speaker 2: Detective very much spun out of the pulp magazines that
Speaker 2: have preceded it. So they were raw, edgy, dark stories.
Speaker 2: The good guys were very good, the bad guys were
Speaker 2: very bad. Bad guys often met very gruesome fates. And
Speaker 2: detective comics, as the title indicates, every month had detective stories,
Speaker 2: and Batman the earliest stories, and actually, throughout his history,
Speaker 2: you know, they have been detective stories. He's one of
Speaker 2: the people who claims the title the world's greatest detective.
Speaker 2: So each story had to have at least some hint
Speaker 2: of a mystery to justify Batman's inclusion. The early Batman
Speaker 2: comics did have stories like that. They did have mysteries
Speaker 2: involving poetical corruption and gangsters, and you know, the kind
Speaker 2: of stories one would say were ripped from the headlines.
Speaker 2: And prior to that it had been police officers, it
Speaker 2: had been private investigators, a lot of square jawed guys
Speaker 2: wearing suits punching gangsters on the cover. So obviously Batman
Speaker 2: wearing his incredibly dark costumes, swooping out of the night
Speaker 2: sky grabbing criminals energized audiences the same way that Superman
Speaker 2: the year before really energized readers, and very soon Batman
Speaker 2: became a staple. He appeared every month in that magazine,
Speaker 2: and Detective Comics circulation went through the roof, and he
Speaker 2: was awarded his own solo magazine. You know, in the
Speaker 2: late thirties. This was very forward thinking on the part
Speaker 2: of the publisher that's now known as DC Comics. So
Speaker 2: Caine and Finger knew we need colorful villains, we need
Speaker 2: eye catching covers, we need dynamic storytelling.
Speaker 3: They really were going that direction very early.
Speaker 2: Within about a year of Batman's debut, we had the
Speaker 2: introduction of Robin the boy Wonder again, bright red, yellow
Speaker 2: green costume. They called him the laughing young Daredevil. Would
Speaker 2: I would say, that's why we're still talking about Batman
Speaker 2: today in the present tense, instead of some interesting pulp
Speaker 2: inspired character whose time came and went immediately. I think
Speaker 2: for the better. Changed the tone of the stories. It
Speaker 2: made Batman a father figure, gave him someone to talk
Speaker 2: to when he was his way through a case, and
Speaker 2: that gave the readers a surrogate, a stand in where
Speaker 2: they could feel like, hey, I could do that, I
Speaker 2: could take part in these adventures.
Speaker 3: At partnership really pushed Batman.
Speaker 2: Even farther into the superhero territory than he'd been before,
Speaker 2: and that pushed the villains that much farther into extremes,
Speaker 2: because right after Robin's debut, you had Joker, who was
Speaker 2: evil and dangerous a villain as there was. We had Catwoman,
Speaker 2: two Face, and the Penguin and the Riddler, who are
Speaker 2: just as iconic as any heroes from that era.
Speaker 3: They really tapped into something.
Speaker 2: They knew what would be popular, they knew what would sell,
Speaker 2: they knew what the kids liked. They did pay incredibly
Speaker 2: close attention to their competition, so they paid attention to
Speaker 2: what kind of numbers is Superman doing, what's going on
Speaker 2: in Captain Marvel this month, who's the big new character
Speaker 2: on the stands, And if there was a way for
Speaker 2: them to tap into an audience, even if it was
Speaker 2: taking away readers from other books that were coming out
Speaker 2: from the same publisher.
Speaker 3: Then they tapped into that.
Speaker 2: And the first year before Robin was introduced, the stories
Speaker 2: were very grim, they were very dark, and very quickly
Speaker 2: the publisher realized, you know, we're reaching hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 2: maybe millions of kids with these comics. Maybe we have
Speaker 2: a responsibility here to be a better example. So they
Speaker 2: decided early on, Batman doesn't carry a gun. Batman doesn't
Speaker 2: use lethal force. He tries to find a better way
Speaker 2: to solve his problems. If he can solve a problem
Speaker 2: without violence, by using his intellect and using his detective skills,
Speaker 2: that's even better.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Andrew Farrago tell the remarkable
Speaker 1: story of Batman's history. When we come back Batman through
Speaker 1: the years here on our American Story, liehbib here the
Speaker 1: host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
Speaker 1: we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
Speaker 1: from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
Speaker 1: can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
Speaker 1: to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
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Speaker 1: Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give and we're back
Speaker 1: with our American Stories and the story of Batman. Andrew Farrago,
Speaker 1: curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, was just telling us
Speaker 1: how Bob Kane and Bill Finger not only created the character,
Speaker 1: but paid close attention to what the audience wanted with
Speaker 1: the idea that children were their primary audience. The publisher
Speaker 1: as well as the creators made it clear early that
Speaker 1: Batman didn't use lethal force, but rather his intellect to
Speaker 1: defeat his foes.
Speaker 2: Back to Andrew, so Batman was fighting murderers, he was
Speaker 2: fighting killers. He was fighting really the lowest of the
Speaker 2: low as far as the villains went. And as more
Speaker 2: children were reading these books, as DC Comics was increasingly
Speaker 2: concerned about setting a good example, they realized, why don't
Speaker 2: we tone him down a little bit, why don't we
Speaker 2: have him do funny crimes and zaney crimes? And by
Speaker 2: World War Two, especially when kids wanted lighthearted entertainment, these
Speaker 2: adventures were becoming.
Speaker 3: Outrageous, more over the top.
Speaker 2: He had another artist by the late forties early fifties
Speaker 2: come on who really redefined Batman, an artist named Dick Sprang.
Speaker 2: He had a more cartoony art style, and Batman was
Speaker 2: this big, barrel chested, smiling adventurer. Robin started cracking puns
Speaker 2: and wacky jokes. They would have crazy adventures that involved
Speaker 2: things like giant oversized prop typewriters, or blimp chases, or
Speaker 2: time travel bad guys that he's fighting during that time,
Speaker 2: include aliens, they include mad scientists. You may have a
Speaker 2: criminal where Batman is trying to uncover his identity, and
Speaker 2: they'll realize that the criminal is spelling out his name
Speaker 2: one crime at a time. They went from being let's
Speaker 2: be just a little bit different than the real world
Speaker 2: to let's go totally nuts and have a crazy, fun
Speaker 2: adventure story. I would imagine anybody who read the first
Speaker 2: issues in nineteen thirty nine and then took a break
Speaker 2: and came back around nineteen fifty two would not have
Speaker 2: recognized the character. And actually this was totally fine with
Speaker 2: the audiences, because up until that point there was constant
Speaker 2: audience turnover in comic book readership. You did have some
Speaker 2: diehard fans who started reading in the thirties and kept reading,
Speaker 2: but generally speaking, kids would read from about eight until
Speaker 2: maybe twelve or so, drop out, and then a new
Speaker 2: batch of eight to twelve year olds would come in.
Speaker 2: So stories didn't have to be particularly sophisticated. They didn't
Speaker 2: really need continuity that carried over from one.
Speaker 3: Month to the next.
Speaker 2: Stories could repeat themselves every few years because they assumed
Speaker 2: that the reader were new and hadn't seen them before.
Speaker 2: Characters like Batman and Superman. They were seen as very safe,
Speaker 2: very respectable books that any kid could read. You knew
Speaker 2: you were getting a good, reliable, adventure.
Speaker 3: Story every month.
Speaker 2: By the early sixties, Batman was actually in danger of cancelation.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It may have been that they weren't challenging their audiences.
Speaker 2: They had competition from publishers like Marvel, who were really
Speaker 2: winning the hearts and minds of younger readers. They were
Speaker 2: seen as more dynamic, more fun, and more challenging stories.
Speaker 2: At this point, they actually turned to some creators who
Speaker 2: had recently revitalized one of their comics, The Flash. They
Speaker 2: took a character from World War Two era and came
Speaker 2: up with a new version of him that really engaged readers.
Speaker 2: It was exciting, it was more modern, it was more dynamic,
Speaker 2: where as Batman in the early sixties looked like a
Speaker 2: throwback kind of a relic. So they had creators like
Speaker 2: writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine and Fantina come along
Speaker 2: and this is this is really what ultimately say Batman.
Speaker 3: They did an era called the New Look. They modernized him.
Speaker 3: He was not the barrel.
Speaker 2: Chested, grinning kind of Superman knockoff character.
Speaker 3: That he was.
Speaker 2: They made him more streamlined, they made him a modern detective.
Speaker 2: They gave him computer equipment and modernized everything about the character.
Speaker 2: And that was, you know, that was a signal to
Speaker 2: readers that hey, take a look, we're changing things.
Speaker 3: We are aware that Marvel Comics exists and that that's the.
Speaker 2: Comic of choice for young readers and teens right now.
Speaker 2: But you know, we can be cool, we can be hip,
Speaker 2: we can be with it. And right around that time,
Speaker 2: executives at ABC were looking at bringing they wanted to
Speaker 2: bring a comic strip to television. They want to take
Speaker 2: advantage of things like technicolor, and they wanted to take
Speaker 2: advantage of nostalgia that people had for popular characters. So
Speaker 2: some producers, including a man named Bill Dozier, were determined
Speaker 2: to bring comics to television.
Speaker 3: Somehow. That was going to be it. That was going
Speaker 3: to be the kind of thing that.
Speaker 2: They could put toe to toe with shows like The
Speaker 2: Adams Family and The Munsters that were.
Speaker 3: Winning over young audiences.
Speaker 2: This really coveted young audiences and their families, and they
Speaker 2: had all grown up raating Batman. They had fond memories
Speaker 2: of him, and they thought, we can do this we
Speaker 2: can make this a fun television show. The TV show,
Speaker 2: and it debuted in nineteen sixty six, was an immediate sensation.
Speaker 2: It was a huge hit in the ratings and really
Speaker 2: nothing would be the same for the character after that.
Speaker 3: It was just a smash in every sense. You had
Speaker 3: Adam West as Batman.
Speaker 2: On the cover of Time magazinefe magazine, TV Guide. You
Speaker 2: had fashions inspired by Batman, you had catchphrases, you had
Speaker 2: every possible kind of merchandise under the sun coming out.
Speaker 2: It put the comic books back toward the top of
Speaker 2: the sales charts. You know, even though the show was campy,
Speaker 2: it was comedy, it was humor, but it really wasn't
Speaker 2: far off from the source material. Adam West was perfect
Speaker 2: as a stoic, square job, very sincere hero and crime fighter,
Speaker 2: and you had Burt Ward as his plucky, inquisitive, excitable sidekick.
Speaker 2: You know, if you look at the if you look
Speaker 2: at the roster, if you look at the cast list
Speaker 2: in the second and third season, you'll see that Hollywood
Speaker 2: A listers were fighting. They were begging to be on
Speaker 2: this show because they wanted to be a Batman villain
Speaker 2: or make a cameo appearance. It was the cool hip
Speaker 2: thing to do at the time. You know, all good
Speaker 2: things must come to an end, and the ratings came
Speaker 2: tumbling back down.
Speaker 3: To earth very quickly in the third season.
Speaker 2: But the damage had been undone, and Batman would have
Speaker 2: his ups and downs in the years since, but there
Speaker 2: was never any danger of him going away once the
Speaker 2: television show hit. The Batman TV show came to define
Speaker 2: the character for a long time, for a good twenty
Speaker 2: years as far as the public was concerned, and in
Speaker 2: a way it came to define comics. So you could
Speaker 2: not see a newspaper headline from nineteen sixty six through
Speaker 2: maybe even the early two thousands that didn't have Biff,
Speaker 2: Bam Pau superheroes in the headline. And not too long
Speaker 2: after that final episode aired, the show started up again
Speaker 2: and syndication. So much like Star Trek had this incredible
Speaker 2: shelf life after its cancelation, so to Batman, because almost
Speaker 2: the minute the new episode stopped, UHF stations picked it
Speaker 2: up and kids could still watch Batman every day after school.
Speaker 2: So as a as a kid in the eighties, that's
Speaker 2: how I was introduced to Batman.
Speaker 3: So this really loomed large.
Speaker 2: This was as far as the public is concerned, this
Speaker 2: was Batman. But that actually didn't sit well with some
Speaker 2: of the comic book creators. They looked at this campiness,
Speaker 2: they looked at the silliness, and they realized, you know,
Speaker 2: if we try to do this, if we try to
Speaker 2: translate this exactly how it is on the screen to
Speaker 2: the comics, you know, we're gon we're gonna look like dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: The TV show had its chance.
Speaker 3: It came. It went, we want to do modern comics.
Speaker 3: We want to do things.
Speaker 2: That again can go toe to toe with Marvel comics
Speaker 2: and with the other comics that are in the rack.
Speaker 1: And we've been listening to a remarkable story about Batman.
Speaker 1: And it all started with money as the driving force.
Speaker 1: Bob Kane had found out that the people making Superman
Speaker 1: were making a couple one hundred bucks a week in
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, and he thought, oh, I can come
Speaker 1: up with my own character. He and his partner Bill
Speaker 1: Finger did just that. By the end of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: they had their own book. World War Two came, people
Speaker 1: were looking for an escape, and a different version of
Speaker 1: Batman formed. And then came the early sixties, Batman's popularity
Speaker 1: was waning, and in came the TV show, and soon
Speaker 1: every a lister wanted to.
Speaker 3: Be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorsh and Eartha Kit, Jerry Lewis, Auto Preminger,
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Junior, and the list goes on. When we
Speaker 1: come back, more of the story of Batman through the years,
Speaker 1: here on our American stories, and we're back with our
Speaker 1: American stories and the story of Batman. Despite the widespread
Speaker 1: praise of the nineteen sixties live action Batman's Show during
Speaker 1: Adam West, the comic book writers felt the show was
Speaker 1: too campy. They didn't want that reflected in the print
Speaker 1: version because they would rather compete with what was going
Speaker 1: on over at Marvel and other competitors. Andrew Farrago tells
Speaker 1: us how instead the writers sought to pursue a darker tone.
Speaker 2: Prior to the sixties, comic books were, whether stereotypically or
Speaker 2: just traditionally, there was something that.
Speaker 3: A reader outgrew.
Speaker 2: The cliche is it's something that boys are into until
Speaker 2: they discover girls. But with Marvel comics in the early sixties,
Speaker 2: you know, they had stories that were more geared toward
Speaker 2: the older audience. They were geared toward teenagers. They had
Speaker 2: storylines that continued from one month to the next, and
Speaker 2: they encourage readers to come back. With creators like Jack
Speaker 2: Kirby and Steve Ditko and stan Lee, Marvel felt like
Speaker 2: a clubhouse, and stan wrote columns and he answered letters
Speaker 2: in the books that encouraged a dialogue between him and
Speaker 2: the readers. So the Marvel Comics creators, instead of being faceless,
Speaker 2: uncredited people behind the scenes, they were up front. They
Speaker 2: had stan Lee's name, they had Jack Kirby's name, they
Speaker 2: had Steve Dicko's name prominently displayed in the books.
Speaker 3: And readers responded to that in a huge way.
Speaker 2: DC As they lost more and more of their market
Speaker 2: shared to Marvel, they realized that they needed to catch up.
Speaker 2: They realized, if the audiences are sticking around, if we
Speaker 2: want them to stick around, this is how we have
Speaker 2: to tailor our storytelling. This is what we have to
Speaker 2: do to keep these readers here, keep them coming back.
Speaker 2: I give a lot of credit to Dennie O'Neil. He
Speaker 2: was very smart, He was very well read. His formal
Speaker 2: training had actually been in journalism before getting into comic books.
Speaker 2: He actually got into them kind of by accident because
Speaker 2: he was interviewing Roy Thomas, who was a writer and
Speaker 2: editor at Marvel Comics, and Roy suggested, hey, we need
Speaker 2: we need more. We need smart guys like you writing
Speaker 2: comic books, and Denny went that direction. He was a hippie,
Speaker 2: so you know, he brought kind of a more adult,
Speaker 2: mature sensibility to the comics compared especially compared to what
Speaker 2: had gone before, and they brought that sensibility over to Batman.
Speaker 3: Their signature villain.
Speaker 2: Was a shadowy ancient criminal mastermind named ros al Gul
Speaker 2: who planned to actually exterminate up to ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the Earth's population because he felt that eco terrorism was
Speaker 2: necessary to restore balance to the Earth. So this was
Speaker 2: very heady stuff compared to two Face robbing the Second
Speaker 2: National Bank at two pm on Tuesday. They also had
Speaker 2: Robin grow up and start going to college, so he
Speaker 2: had solo adventures, so he had Batman throughout almost the
Speaker 2: whole decade of the seventies. He had Batman as this
Speaker 2: solo adventurer and Robin so after about ten years of
Speaker 2: solo adventures, there was kind of a half hearted attempt
Speaker 2: to bring him back into the Batman stories. The problem
Speaker 2: was he was now an older teenager. So the solution
Speaker 2: was to have Dick Grayson, the original Robin, grow up
Speaker 2: a little bit and take on a new superhero identity.
Speaker 2: So he did that and became a character called Nightwing,
Speaker 2: and they introduced a new sidekick for Batman named Jason Todd.
Speaker 2: And then in the mid eighties, DC, to celebrate their
Speaker 2: fiftieth anniversary publishing decided to kind of start everything from scratch.
Speaker 2: They were worried that new readers may have been put
Speaker 2: off by having fifty years of history to all these characters,
Speaker 2: so they wanted to do a fresh start with their comics.
Speaker 2: And with this fresh start, they decided that Jason Todd,
Speaker 2: instead of having an origin that was directly cribbed from
Speaker 2: Dick Grayson's, they decided he should have a new origin.
Speaker 2: They reinvented him as a street kid, a tough kid
Speaker 2: who actually met Batman because he stole the batmobiles tires.
Speaker 2: Readers didn't really like this new version of him. They
Speaker 2: thought he was kind, he was kind of a punk,
Speaker 2: you know. He was not properly deferential to Batman. He
Speaker 2: was written, especially by the next writer of the Batman
Speaker 2: Comics Jim Starlin. He was written as kind of a
Speaker 2: hot head.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Starlin actually did not like Jason Todd or sidekicks and principle,
Speaker 2: so he kind of wrote a version that he knew
Speaker 2: would be unlikable, that he knew readers wouldn't warm too,
Speaker 2: and kind of brought everything to a head with a
Speaker 2: storyline called it Death in the Family. They wanted to
Speaker 2: do a big publicity stunt draw attention to their comics,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to take advantage of then modern telephone technology,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to do a call in poll. This
Speaker 2: was in part inspired by a Saturday Night live call
Speaker 2: in poll where you determined whether a lobster named Larry
Speaker 2: the Lobster would be boiled on air or set free
Speaker 2: at the end of the night. So they wanted to
Speaker 2: apply the same thing to a DC comics publication, and
Speaker 2: they said.
Speaker 3: We need to make it big.
Speaker 2: We need to make it life or death for readers
Speaker 2: to care enough to spend fifty cents to call in
Speaker 2: and make this phone call.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: We've got this Jason Todd character. Let's put it to
Speaker 2: a vote. Does he live or does he die? By
Speaker 2: a narrow very narrow margin by about seventy two votes.
Speaker 2: Readers said, yeah, the Joker should kill Jason Todd, So
Speaker 2: they killed him off in this violent storyline.
Speaker 3: It got national headlines. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Dannie O'Neil, who's the editor of those books, I was
Speaker 2: able to talk to him about this, and he said
Speaker 2: they had the fortune or misfortune of it hitting on
Speaker 2: a slow news day, so the comics sold out nationwide.
Speaker 3: They rushed them.
Speaker 2: He caught grief from friends, neighbors, the local deli, everybody
Speaker 2: was upset at him for allowing this to happen. It
Speaker 2: really indicated that the public was ready for a much darker.
Speaker 3: Take on Batman, and that's really what we got.
Speaker 2: But those darker comics paved the way for Tim Burton
Speaker 2: Batman movies. It really was tapping into what this older
Speaker 2: readership was seeking. We're now into at least the second generation,
Speaker 2: maybe third generation of creators who grew up on Batman
Speaker 2: comics and Batman movies and Batman television shows, who.
Speaker 3: Have their own vision for the character.
Speaker 2: They know what kind of stories they want to tell,
Speaker 2: they know the best way to tell them, and whether
Speaker 2: that's in comics or movies or television or video games,
Speaker 2: we're getting some truly incredible stories. It's a testament to
Speaker 2: the original core concept of Batman that he's more widely
Speaker 2: known than ever. You can barely say that about any
Speaker 2: other character from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: You can maybe say that about Superman.
Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse doesn't have the cultural relevancy today, Popeye doesn't.
Speaker 2: Batman is such an ageless, timeless concept. It's, you know,
Speaker 2: child suffers and unspeaks tragedy and then transforms himself into
Speaker 2: a protector, someone who whose mission is to make sure
Speaker 2: no one, no kid anywhere, has to go through what
Speaker 2: he did. And that's a story that you can tell today.
Speaker 2: It's a story you can tell one hundred years from now.
Speaker 2: Batman is a wonderful vehicle for telling all manner of stories.
Speaker 3: You can tell Batman.
Speaker 2: Stories about street level crime, fighting Nazis during World War Two,
Speaker 2: fighting Fifth Colonists, fighting Communists.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: And I think that's going to be true ten years
Speaker 2: from now. I think it'll be true one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now.
Speaker 1: And it is so true, Batman will be around for
Speaker 1: a very long time. A terrific job by our own
Speaker 1: Monty Montgomery and Robbie Davis, and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Andrew Farrago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum and author
Speaker 1: of Batman, The Definitive History of the Dark Night in Comics, film,
Speaker 1: and beyond. Get the book at the Usual Suspects online,
Speaker 1: and My Goodness. The major decision made was to stop
Speaker 1: catering just two young kids who would grow out of
Speaker 1: the comics, and instead choose adult themes so that adults
Speaker 1: too could enjoy these remarkable stories and characters. Batman through
Speaker 1: the Year is here on our American Stories