I Have Seen The Dark Knight

For far too long in the comics, too many writers were trying to mimic the gritty Batman introduced by Frank Miller in his mid-1980s classics, Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Though these stories were products of their time (and, in their own ways, relevant at the time), subsequent writers didn’t get the memo and never stopped writing him that way. By trying to humanize Batman, they were dehumanizing him. As a result, Batman was becoming less of a hero and more of a cynical, paranoid man driven by dark impulses created by his own inner rage. Even Miller himself fell into his own trap with his eventual DKR sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and now he’s totally gone off the deep end with All Star Batman and Robin.

Quite frankly, Batman is portrayed all too often as an ass.

And I don’t like it.

Batman, to me, is a hero.

The Burton and Schumacher Batman films were all over the map; Burton’s films were good Burton films that just happened to feature Batman, while Schumacher’s devolved into silly toy commercials. Meanwhile, the campy Adam West television series from the 1960s was still playing in syndication across the globe.

Looking back on them now and taking them as they are, they’re simply not Batman to me. But they all had their moments, and they all played a part in getting us to where we are today.

Shining through like a beacon with a legacy that still burns brightly today was Batman: The Animated Series, which nailed it better than any of the live-action films did because it understood the difference between serious (in terms of respecting the character) and dark (for the sake of being dark).