Men In Tights

Whether your loyalties lay with Superman, Captain America, Dennis the Menace or Desperate Dan, comics were an integral part of childhood. As Batman turns 80, Katy Birchall salutes these iconic characters

IN early 1939, an editor at National Allied Publications—now DC Comics —gave young cartoonist Bob Kane a rather daunting task: create a superhero as popular as Superman, who had hit newsstands just the year before and caused a sensation. Mr Kane played around with a few ideas until suddenly—pow!—inspiration struck. He recalled Leonardo da Vinci’s designs of the ornithopter, a winged flying machine, and got to work drawing rough sketches of a masked man in a red costume with bat-like wings, before eagerly showing them to writer Bill Finger.

Together, they refined the idea. The wings were replaced by a black, scalloped cape, the costume became dark and sinister and the character’s backstory fell into place: wealthy playboy by day, merciless crimefighter by night. The Bat-Man made his first appearance in Detective Comics No 27, May 1939, and became an instant hit.

Now, 80 years later, Batman is hailed as one of the greatest superhero creations of all time. With numerous TV shows, video games, animations and big Hollywood film franchises under his (utility) belt, Batman isn’t merely a comic-book character, but a cultural icon.

And he’s not the only one. The comics universe has become nothing short of a cinematic phenomenon, with big-budget superhero films released by DC and its rival Marvel every few months, complemented by spin-off TV shows and merchandise in the form of anything and everything.

As part of the DC empire’s year-long global celebration of Batman’s 80th anniversary, the landmark 1,000th issue of Detective Comics was released in March, documenting the Caped Crusader’s past, present and future. It also serves as a nostalgic reminder of where this hero’s story, like so many others, all began—on the flimsy pages of a comic book, selling for just a few pence at the newsstand, but introducing children to a whole new realm of imagination.