Adam West's Batman vs the modern "Dark Knight" version - which do you prefer?

I attended a comic book convention in New York about a year after the release of the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie in which DC Comics made a major announcement of a Batman movie that would embrace the noir roots of Batman and incorporate (at the time) the Neil Adams dark & moody approach to the character. During the announcement, the line that got the biggest cheer was when the DC spokesman said "I promise, there will NOT be a pot-bellied Batman!"

 

Animated series, and it wasn't particularly close in my mind. I'm a HUGE Batman/comic book fan, and this just seems to be the most accurate representation to me.

 

As mentioned earlier, the 90's animated Batman is my favorite of all the incarnations, much truer to the spirit of the character and extremely well written. Some fans consider this the definitive version of Batman. Several animated Batman movies came out that for my money are better than the live action versions. I highly recommend viewing 'Mask of the Phantasm' and from the Batman Beyond series 'Return of The Joker'. 'Return' features a great vocal performance by Mark Hamill as the Joker. Hamill voiced the Joker in the animated series, and being a comic book fan himself, he nailed the character. Try and get the original director's cut of 'Return of The Joker', it's much darker and creepier.

Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_2FSnybRRI

 

In the real world, a person who dresses as a bat to fight crime would have to be somewhat mentally unstable. In the fantasy world of comic books, not so. I've never understood why the "someone would have to be crazy to be Batman" argument is not applied to the hundreds of other super-heroes out there. Why is Batman the only one singled out as someone who "realistically" would have to be a little bit crazy to do what he does? It's a conceit of the superhero genre that people dress up and fight crime as vigilantes without being crazy.

Super hero comics are (or at least were, for their first 50 years) heroic fantasy for children. They were not created to be a realistic representation of the real world.

At any rate, I'm not saying Batman should be flawless. I have no problem with him making mistakes, and have enjoyed many stories over the years where he did so. What I oppose is making him psychologically damaged to the point he is depicted in many modern comics: obsessive compulsive, arrogant, antisocial, emotionally stunted, and incapable of having healthy relationships with others.

It baffles me when people want a character who has been consistently depicted a certain way for 40 years to be altered to reflect their own sensibilities, which is what Miller and Burton both did. They fundamentally altered Batman's personality. Why even tell a "Batman" story if you're going to change the character to the point he's not recognizable at Batman anymore?

 

The difference is that the changes in the 70's were changes in tone, not personality. Batman's personality remained quite consistent from the mid-40's to the mid-80's. It was only with Frank Miller that fundamental changes in his personality started.

 

You can thank the bargain with the devil (i.e. our government) that DC and the precurser to Marvel that made in 1955 for the sorry state of comics in the 1960s and 70s. You are undoubtedly right that, with the introduction of Robin, Batman became a friendlier hero, but did he really become the campy boy scout that Adam West portrayed prior to the Code being adopted in '55?

For those who are unfamiliar with the history of comics, you should google "Seduction of the Innocent." A book about the evil and corrupting influence of comic books on the youth of the nation. In response to Congressional hearings and threats of censorship, the biggest publishers agreed to self censor with under The Comics Code Authority. Of course, there was also hope that this would push upstart EC out of business, since they had the most graphic books. And, it succeeded in doing that, save for one book, which EC expanded to Magazine size to escape code regulation. That book was Mad.

The problem was with the castrated story lines, comics lost much of their audience. Gone were stories with killings, bondage art, horror themes, etc. I even heard Marvel couldn't use zombies as monsters until the 1980s. Stan Lee can be credited with introducing more adult themed material in Marvel's line, but DC seemed to stay focused on the pre-tween market for a much longer time.

BTW, I didn't vote in the poll, because I haven't seen the recent incarnation of Batman, but from what I have seen, I prefered the Animated Series. Mark Hamill was quite good as The Joker in the full length movie.

 

I have always enjoyed most every incarnation of Batman. Christian Bale obviously makes the most authentic Batman, but Adam West left an indelible impression on the character.

 

Nolan/Bale

The recent films are excellent on several levels, and have the mojo of the (contemporary) comics / graphic novels. Intense, exciting stuff.

Nicholson's Joker is a keeper, but Ledger – and the overall meatier modern movies – trump the '88 effort handily.

The animated series has some juice but is watered down by its Saturday-morning nature.

If Adam West took the 60s TV series seriously, he was the only one.

All enjoyable in their own way. An enigmatic, interesting character that can be interpreted in a number of ways. Not unlike Sherlock Holmes.
.

 

It's very disturbing to read about Batman's greatest boner in a Robin story. A Catwoman story, fine, but Robin? Eww.

 

What's even more disturbing is that there seems to be an entire wing in the Wayne Library devoted to the great boners of all time.

? ? ? ? ? ? ?

 

Love how they wake up in bed together.

 

Hmmm, maybe Dr. Wertham wasn't that far wrong?

 

Nice pyjamas, especially Robin's one

 

You want true freakdom, read about the creator of Wonder Woman, William Marston.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston

 

Dr. Marston's wiki history makes Batman's credited creator, Bob Kane, look positively plain vanilla by comparison!!!

 

Yet, to this day his invention is still used.

 

I prefer Cesar Romero's Joker look to any other one that has come after him.

 

Gotta say that I equally enjoy both the Adam West TV series/movie from the 60's and the recent Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale versions. I voted for Adam West here but very close.

 

Largely because he is one of the few superheros who has no superpowers and yet is (supposedly) one of the most capable of all of them. To justify how he could be so different from an ordinary man is to explain what makes him so different, and as it is no longer a physical difference (as with most superheroes), the idea would naturally imply that it is a psychological difference.

Perhaps some of us, even as children, require logic to persists in their fantasies. I never believed in Santa Claus, for example.

I don't much buy the "it's for kids, so it's okay it doesn't make any logical sense". Suspension of belief and all that only goes so far. But we all have different ideas of this, I realize.

As others have noted, Batman's noirish, brooding past existed well beyond Miller's reinvention and many of us consider it his true origin. I can't see how you can ignore the origin stories of both Batman and The Joker, and not see that this is Finger and Kane's intention.

The 70s TV series completely ignored both of these (Batman hardly ever talks about his dead parents, yet it's his driving motivation?), and in fact The Joker's origin in the TV series is that "he used to be a hypnotist"??

I understand that you consider this a "change in tone" versus a "change in personality". But what I'm really arguing about is this:

I can't see how you can consider the, in my opinion, much more radical changes that occurred with the 70s TV series as being passive changes, and consider what Miller did as the more radical change. The way I see it, the "root cause" of it all is the 70s TV series. Miller had to take it to "extremes" to counter the popular image of Batman being, well, an ***. It's the equal and opposite reaction to take it back to where it was.

For the record, I picked the TV animated series in the poll. I'm not saying Bale's portrayal is definitive. But it's this idea that it's a radical change, as opposed to the 70s series that is the change in personality/tone/everything that I'm against.

 

Adam West was in the bathroom of a restaurant when my buddy walked in to whiz. When he saw who he was there with, my buddy said, " I used to love you!!" Adam sez, "But, why don't you love me now?"

 

My favorite is his appearance in the Killing Joke storyline.

 

Adam West was the best!

 

Adam West, hands down. He was born to play the role of Batman.

 

was walter cronkite in there too?

 

There's a boner joke in there somewhere...