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