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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 13, 2019 21:07:42 GMT -5
Even those artists whose work I detest get a certain level of respect from me, if only because they're out there doing the job (which, as I know from firsthand experience, is damned HARD).
Cei-U! I summon the props!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 17:42:33 GMT -5
There's something called Superheroes Decoded on the Blaze channel right now. I've got it on as "background noise".
One person (I didn't get his name) claimed that Batman was literally a joke prior to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.
First of all, incorrect use of literally.
Secondly, if I have my Bat-history right, while the shadow of the Adam West series loomed large for years and years after the show, didn't Batman return to his dark roots long before Miller's story? I remember reading dark tales as a kid. And the 80s annuals I bought had reprints of 70s stories like "A Vow From The Grave" and "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge". They weren't a joke at all.
Please correct me if I have my Bat-History wrong, but judging by what some say, you'd think Batman's camp exploits were taking place a day before Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was published. To my knowledge, the dystopian Batman resurfaced (in the comics) not that long after the West show had been cancelled.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 17:57:51 GMT -5
There's something called Superheroes Decoded on the Blaze channel right now. I've got it on as "background noise". One person (I didn't get his name) claimed that Batman was literally a joke prior to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. First of all, incorrect use of literally. Secondly, if I have my Bat-history right, while the shadow of the Adam West series loomed large for years and years after the show, didn't Batman return to his dark roots long before Miller's story? I remember reading dark tales as a kid. And the 80s annuals I bought had reprints of 70s stories like "A Vow From The Grave" and "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge". They weren't a joke at all. Please correct me if I have my Bat-History wrong, but judging by what some say, you'd think Batman's camp exploits were taking place a day before Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was published. To my knowledge, the dystopian Batman resurfaced (in the comics) not that long after the West show had been cancelled. If Denny O'Neil's "Dark Detective" of the early 1970s was "literally a joke" then I'd hate to see what a serious Batman looks like! Sounds like somebody was speaking who knew 1960s Batman but not 1970s or late pre-Crisis Batman.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 18:06:56 GMT -5
It sounds that way. And I have come across that previously. It feels like there are people out there who watched the final Adam West episode in 1968 and then went and had a slumber until 1986's TDKR. Because more than one person has said it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 18:24:01 GMT -5
It sounds that way. And I have come across that previously. It feels like there are people out there who watched the final Adam West episode in 1968 and then went and had a slumber until 1986's TDKR. Because more than one person has said it. Sure the Batman comics of the 70s may have been darker, but they weren't selling well (to the point where Detective was almost cancelled), so not that many people saw them. What the dud see int eh 70s tough was still goofy Batman on Super Friends and in things like the New Adventures of Batman by Filmation, and Batman's guest appearance in the New Scooby Doo movies, all of which reached a far wider audience than the comics actually did and had a much bigger influence in informing the common opinion of Batman in greater pop culture. Miller's Dark Knight was the first time a darker Batman reached the wider mass culture to change people's perspective on the Batman that had been informed by Adam West, Super Friends and Saturday morning cartoons in general. The Batman comics of the 70s and 80s were the tree falling int he forest that no one hears/sees. Sure it still fell, but it failed to register with anyone so they was really irrelevant in shaping popular perceptions of Batman. Dark Knight didn't reshape perception of Batman because it was a darker version in comics, but because it reached beyond the comic market with success in the book trade and reached a wider audience to have the impact it did. The comics itself were only reaching an insulated audience and not reshaping popular perceptions of the characters, so it's not that people were asleep at the wheel, it's that the comics failed to reach a wide enough audience to change perceptions. -M
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 18:34:46 GMT -5
But a) he didn't mention his own perceptions, and b) just because the comics weren't reaching a wide enough audience doesn't make Batman a joke.
Even if only, say, 310 people were buying the comics, they were still dark. Batman wasn't literally a joke. He was wrong to say what he did.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 18:43:44 GMT -5
But a) he didn't mention his own perceptions, and b) just because the comics weren't reaching a wide enough audience doesn't make Batman a joke. Even if only, say, 310 people were buying the comics, they were still dark. Batman wasn't literally a joke. He was wrong to say what he did. But Batman wasn't just in the comics, he wa sa joke in Super Friends, he was a joke in Scooby Doo, and he was especially a joke in the New Adventures of Batman (even voiced by Adam West again), so for most people Batman remained a joke throughout the 70s and into the 80s because that was how he was portrayed in the places that reached the most people. A couple of serious stories do no outweigh the entirety of how he was portrayed in mass media throughout the decade. And then there was the live action Legends of the Super-Heroes in the 70s where Adam West reprised his role as Batman alongside other DC characters... so Adam West Batman did not go away in '68. It was reprised and perpetuated by DC itself on television throughout the 70s despite what was being done in the comics, and so for most people Batman continued to be done as a joke throughout that decade and into the 80s. He was played for a joke everywhere excpet in the comics that nobody saw, so how do you think people will perceive and think of Batman during that time? -M
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 18:47:16 GMT -5
But a) he didn't mention his own perceptions, and b) just because the comics weren't reaching a wide enough audience doesn't make Batman a joke. Even if only, say, 310 people were buying the comics, they were still dark. Batman wasn't literally a joke. He was wrong to say what he did. I think we can assume that any given speaker is speaking from his own perception. If 80,000 people are reading moody Denny O'Neil Batman while 20 million people are watching goofy Batman on Super-Friends, then the predominant "Batman" of that day is goofy. Just as Star-Lord is now a comedy character thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 18:54:42 GMT -5
It's the way he worded it which bothered me.
"The Batman I personally saw since 1968 was a joke..." would have been fine. "Batman was a joke..." is stating a fact that goes against what the reality.
Of course perceptions play a role. If I see a serious politician only make blunders during speeches, I'm gonna think he's a joke. That's my perception. But the reality may well be that he's a serious politician if you take into account every speech of his, blunders aside.
So I stand by the fact I think the guy should have worded it differently. There may well have been people who were only reading the Len Wein and Denny O'Neill stories. The documentary speaker should have made it clear it was his perceptions based on what he saw. And that it was an opinion.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 19:16:51 GMT -5
Just to give you an indication of the impact of Dark Knight-the shop I was going to at the time, The Bookie, which had opened in 1969 was run by Hal Kinney one of the old school comics dealers who had emerged out of sci-fi fandom and was long time friends with the likes of Jim Aparo, Dick Giordano and others in the CT comic book scene of the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was a shop people came a long ways to be customers of, and he probably had 200-300 pull (or as he called them subscription) customers at that time. When DKR came out I added Batman and Detective to my pulls (I had only been a pull customer for about 3-4 months at that time and Hal loved younger collectors coming in and tried to help them out and mentor them,so he often commented on what I was buying) When I added the books to my list, he laughed and said, join the club...and told me he had more people add Batman to their pull list in the month after DKR had come out than he had in the 10 previous years of running the store combined. Let that sink in. More people started buying Batman in a long established shop run by a knowledgeable dealer in the one month after Dark Knight than had in 10 previous years combined. So yeah, DKR reached a lot of people and did a lot to change people's perception of Batman despite what was happening in the actual comics previously. Those comics weren't ona lot of people's radars, DKR was.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2019 19:18:40 GMT -5
Here's a pic of Hal from around that time too... -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 26, 2019 19:30:32 GMT -5
Hey @taxidriver1980, I get that you didn't like the way the person in the show said it, but DK did change things. Maybe for the worst.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 27, 2019 1:10:16 GMT -5
Detective wasn't selling well; but, the monthly Batman (Detective was bi-monthly, for several years, which is why Action got to 500 first) and Brave and the Bold were doing decent numbers, at different points. Englehart and Rogers gave a brief renaissance to detective, though that was probably bigger in the burgeoning comic shops that the stands.
Dark Knight did have a huge impact; but, it was only part of the equation for the mainstream taking the character seriously again, when the long (like nearly 10 years) gestatting Batman film project took their lead from it for the Sam Hamm rewrite and we got the Burton Batman. The media attention on Dark Knight was big; but, the movie was way bigger, for the mass audience. Funny thing is, when the project started, they were taking their lead from Englehart and Rogers, with Silver St Cloud and Boss Thorne as characters and Robin included. Thorne became Boss Grissom and Silver was replaced with Vicky Vale, Robin was a late erasure from the script, with casting actually underway for the role (allegedly, Marlon Wayans had been hired, with a take based on the Jason Todd revamped origin).
Anyone who says Miller rescued Batman has never read the Batman comics before Dark Knight. The character was "rescued" with the New Look Batman, then got campy to coincide with the massively popular tv show (that always gets forgotten in the discussion, that it was one of the top shows on tv, in its first season and still going strong in the second). After the show went off the air, DC went back to basics again, with O'Neil, Adams, and Irv Novick, plus Frank Robbins and some other contributors (including Haney and Aparo, on Brave & the Bold). The 70s had a more globe trotting Batman, who was like a superhero James Bond, at times. Mid and late 70s were uneven times, with the books going up and down, depending on that months story and team. Like I said, Englehart & rogers was a big fan favorite, in the Direct Market, but not as big on the mass newsstands (which were vanishing, in the mid-late 70s).
Media pieces on comics tend to reflect only their effect on Hollywood productions (tv, movies, cartoons), with few really delving into the comics work with any depth. Even PBS documentary piece, with people like Joe Simon, Irwin Hasen, Jerry Robinson, Jules Feiffer, and Jim Steranko, yet told its story through the lens of media adaptations, from serials, to radio to tv and movies. Most of the characters and comics mentioned had other media appearances, with Blue Beetle seemingly brought up to point out it had a short-lived radio series (and was created as a knock-off of the Green Hornet, if only in name). I've seen just a few that really celebrated the work: the Jack Kirby bio, the Jonathan Ross documentary about Steve Ditko, and the documentary series Comics, The Ninth Art, which appeared to have been a joint British and Spanish production, which was released on VHS, in the US, in the 90s, from hite Star Video. It featured a historical look at comic strips and comic books from the Victorian era up through the late 80s and featured interviews with many creators, and noted historians, including Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Osamu Tezuka, Goseki Kojima, Jack Kirby, Richard Corben, Moebius, Druillet, Quino, Dennis Gifford, Maurice Horn, Alan Moore, Howard Chaykin, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Burne Hogarth, Lee Falk, Liberatore, Milo Manara, the then-editor of Heavy Metal and more. It highlighted most of the greats, from around the world.
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 27, 2019 3:35:23 GMT -5
Detective wasn't selling well; but, the monthly Batman (Detective was bi-monthly, for several years, which is why Action got to 500 first) and Brave and the Bold were doing decent numbers, at different points. Englehart and Rogers gave a brief renaissance to detective, though that was probably bigger in the burgeoning comic shops that the stands. Dark Knight did have a huge impact; but, it was only part of the equation for the mainstream taking the character seriously again, when the long (like nearly 10 years) gestatting Batman film project took their lead from it for the Sam Hamm rewrite and we got the Burton Batman. The media attention on Dark Knight was big; but, the movie was way bigger, for the mass audience. Funny thing is, when the project started, they were taking their lead from Englehart and Rogers, with Silver St Cloud and Boss Thorne as characters and Robin included. Thorne became Boss Grissom and Silver was replaced with Vicky Vale, Robin was a late erasure from the script, with casting actually underway for the role (allegedly, Marlon Wayans had been hired, with a take based on the Jason Todd revamped origin). Anyone who says Miller rescued Batman has never read the Batman comics before Dark Knight. The character was "rescued" with the New Look Batman, then got campy to coincide with the massively popular tv show (that always gets forgotten in the discussion, that it was one of the top shows on tv, in its first season and still going strong in the second). After the show went off the air, DC went back to basics again, with O'Neil, Adams, and Irv Novick, plus Frank Robbins and some other contributors (including Haney and Aparo, on Brave & the Bold). The 70s had a more globe trotting Batman, who was like a superhero James Bond, at times. Mid and late 70s were uneven times, with the books going up and down, depending on that months story and team. Like I said, Englehart & rogers was a big fan favorite, in the Direct Market, but not as big on the mass newsstands (which were vanishing, in the mid-late 70s). Media pieces on comics tend to reflect only their effect on Hollywood productions (tv, movies, cartoons), with few really delving into the comics work with any depth. Even PBS documentary piece, with people like Joe Simon, Irwin Hasen, Jerry Robinson, Jules Feiffer, and Jim Steranko, yet told its story through the lens of media adaptations, from serials, to radio to tv and movies. Most of the characters and comics mentioned had other media appearances, with Blue Beetle seemingly brought up to point out it had a short-lived radio series (and was created as a knock-off of the Green Hornet, if only in name). I've seen just a few that really celebrated the work: the Jack Kirby bio, the Jonathan Ross documentary about Steve Ditko, and the documentary series Comics, The Ninth Art, which appeared to have been a joint British and Spanish production, which was released on VHS, in the US, in the 90s, from hite Star Video. It featured a historical look at comic strips and comic books from the Victorian era up through the late 80s and featured interviews with many creators, and noted historians, including Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Osamu Tezuka, Goseki Kojima, Jack Kirby, Richard Corben, Moebius, Druillet, Quino, Dennis Gifford, Maurice Horn, Alan Moore, Howard Chaykin, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Burne Hogarth, Lee Falk, Liberatore, Milo Manara, the then-editor of Heavy Metal and more. It highlighted most of the greats, from around the world. I agree and it has to be that way. Look at the last two Avengers movies. hundreds of millions tickets sold, while the comic book maybe gets 40 k. As mrp likes to say, we are a niche hobby.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 27, 2019 4:55:18 GMT -5
But Batman wasn't just in the comics, he was a joke in Super Friends, he was a joke in Scooby Doo, and he was especially a joke in the New Adventures of Batman (even voiced by Adam West again), (...) No, he wasn't. In both the Super Friends and the Filmation cartoon, which I watched religiously as a kid, Batman and Robin were treated quite seriously. You can say that neither of those cartoons were very good, but the heroes in them were played straight. Even with Adam West and Burt Ward doing the voice-acting, the tone of the Filmation cartoon was far more serious than the 1960s TV show. The only comic relief was provided by Bat-mite.
Otherwise, as codystarbuck basically noted, the impact of DKR was only felt inside the circle of comics readers. It had virtually no impact on the broader public's perceptions of Batman, which were still stuck in the Bam! Pow! Socko! impressions created by the '60s TV show until Burton's movie came out - and not even that erased it entirely.
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