Right, sorry. The first Robin was Dick Grayson, son of murdered parents and probably the most famous in the wider non-geek world. Eventually he grew out of wearing tight pants to fight crime, left home and called himself Nightwing, and was replaced by Jason Todd, a character so popular with fans that when his fate was put to a public vote in the 1980s, they voted to have him murdered by the Joker. Nice.
I’ll add it to the list. Any other noteworthy Batman versions I need to know about?
Geek Syndicate
ter games Arkham Asylum and Arkham City) and Heath Ledger’s creepy, mesmerising turn in The Dark Knight. Alright then. So anything else before I go and start reading and watching all this stuff? Well we haven’t got to talk about the strong line-up of villains, not the wider supporting cast. For the sake of brevity I’d mention Two-Face as great example of tortured, tragic villainy, and Barbara (Batgirl/Oracle) Gordon as a great example of a character almost casually thrown away by a writer (Alan Moore, in The Killing Joke) only to be picked up and wonderfully developed into one of the great female comicbook characters. Okay, but... And! there is also all the nonBatman books set around Gotham and environs: Barbara Gordon and others in Birds of Prey; the excellent CopShow-a-like Gotham Central; Dick Grayson’s stand-along Nightwing series; Teen Titans and The Outsiders... ...I only really wanted...
Not to mention the number of times Batman has been used as a tool for deconstruction of the genre. I already mentioned The Dark Knight Returns, but he turns up thinly disguised in a lot of other works... …do we really need too...?
...and the whole series of big arcs like Knightfall, where he got his back broken, and the period where...
In the wake of the cross-cultural marketing triumph that was Tim Burton’s Batman movie, Warner Brothers (who own DC Comics) commissioned a cartoon series, known under various names but mostly just Batman: The Animated Series. This ran for years and also led into a Superman Animated Series, a Batman of the Future series, and the excellent Justice League series, as well as several TV movies. It also has two outstanding vocal performances in Kevin Conroy’s Batman and Mark Hamill (yes, that Mark Hamill) as the Joker, a striking art-deco inspired visual look and even introduced several characters - most notably fan-favourite Harley Quinn into the mainstream comics continuity.
On the bright side they brought him back from the dead in the end, because, well, comics. At least once. Even I’m confused by it. Anyway, After Jason we get Tim Drake, another long serving Robin, then in recent years we’ve had Stephanie Brown (who also got killed off and then ret-conned (retroactive continuity) back to life) and Damien Wayne (Bruce’s son - its complicated). Oh and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns has another female Robin, Carrie Kelly, but that’s in the future, or a possible future of a parallel dimension or something or other. Riiiight. You should totally read The Dark Knight Returns though.
And the Burton film itself? It’s become a little fashionable to knock it, partly due to resentment of how dreadful that run of films became by the time Batman and Robin limped into cinemas, and partly because they now feel very much of their time and haven’t aged that well in places. Jack Nicholson’s hugely over the top take on the Joker particularly pales in comparison to both Hamill’s portrayal in B:TAS (and the two recent compu-
...oh I give up.
Matt Farr
33