Batman, first of all, is a detective from the pole rather than a superhero

I’m Superman’s negative twin and the most tortured of superintendents. Yet first of all, I have nothing to do with the world of superheroes, I am a pure character of the pole. I’m Batman.

In 1939, after a decade-long economic crisis, superheroes remain popular. Superman Adventures, Created more than a year ago, is read by thousands of children each month. Detective Comics, a publisher specializing in crime fiction, imagines copying the hit of the Kryptonian hero.

T. I. is a young cartoonist who imagines a superhero competing with Superman, Bob Kane.C appoints. As cartoonist Rudy spicert recalls,”Bob Kane, Bill Finger, as well as the creators of Superman and Captain America are all sons of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who live on the New York side, in the suburbs, who will transcend a kind of American dream through these Superman characters.”

The first version of bad man, a blond man in a red suit. He is then called bad-man, who is inspired by Zorro and Douglas Fairbanks, the actor who plays him in the cinema.

Many influences from literature and cinema

But in the absence of a horse, the Bat-Man will have wings, which Bob Kane will look for in Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. Finally, Kane gives the character a dark and nocturnal aura with a reference to the bat, which he finds in the film Tea Bat whispers.

Bob Kane hires an introduction to the project, a screenwriter named Bill Finger, for whom this first version of the superhero is not suitable.

Finger, and suggests covering the character’s head to leave the mystery, adding sharp ears and changing it from red to black to distinguish it from Superman.

Camille baurin, comics and superheroes expert : “The difference with an alien, Superman, who comes from another planet and bathes in a sci-fi universe, is very similar to the Batman detective genre. In fact, he has a detective in the sense that he’s conducting more investigations.”

The two authors collaborate, but don’t have the same vision of the character: Bob Kane wants a flashy superhero; Bill Finger instead imagines a Sherlock Holmes-style science detective, without the superpower, that we see in the first Batman story, Chemical syndicate case .

If Batman’s quick success is related to Bob Kane’s name, it is Bill Finger who writes the stories and discovers the hero’s mythology, including his civilian twin Bruce Wayne.

The most “Film Noir” universe

Batman develops in a” Pulp Fiction ” style, with cheap publications on crime stories, along with galleries of morbid gangsters, inspired by another comic strip of the time: Dick Tracy.

Camille baurin, comics and superheroes expert : “Superman acts, at first, rather to defend the oppressed of the Great Depression, the unemployed exploited by their employers, etc., While Batman fights crime in the first sense of the word. Over the years, he would develop a vision of justice more radical than Superman.

Some of the film noir’s codes are repeated in comics: introspection, voice-overs, original trauma, femme fatale, a desire for revenge, and even a desperate picture of the city.

Camille baurin, comics and superheroes expert : ” Gotham City is an embodiment of modernity, a kind of large megalopolis that reflects American success and at the same time not only in the lowlands, but also in the various institutions that govern the city, City Hall … It is a metaphor for progress, and it is with its negative side.

For almost 75 years, Bob Kane adopted Batman’s success under his own name.  T. I. was the influence of Bill Finger, who brought a dark shadow and moral reflection to the superhero universe.It wasn’t until 2014 that C comics recognized.

Camille baurin, comics and superheroes expert : “What’s interesting is that more and more recent authors tend to question this relationship of Batman to official authority, questioning all questions about this side of private justice and the morality behind it, that an individual can act outside the law, even if it is for the good of society?