Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham #3 by Jamie Hewlett

Prince - Trust

The Detective by Hello Berlin

Batman by Daniel Douglas

The Batman

For a character that has been booted and rebooted to the point where any sense of permanence or progression has been subordinated to an endlessly regurgitating state of origin, Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson's take on the caped crusader manages to eke out a place of its own in this ever-expanding pantheon by making him deliberately inexpert. This desire to play the masked vigilante as disconnected and insufferably weird is just enough to numb the nagging feeling that, perhaps, the Dark Knight might be better served by a period of hibernation. Although the overarching story is completely dissimilar, this The Batman is grounded in themes and ideas that didn't quite make it to the screen when Frank Miller and Darren Aronofsky were circling Warner Bros' prize property in the early 2000s - a Bruce Wayne estranged from the gaudier aspects of his wealth and a Batcave that, rather than occupy a cavernous space beneath a mansion, is actually a cordoned off stretch of abandoned subway. 

Like Miller and Aronofsky's recalibration, this Bruce Wayne isn't portrayed as worldly either. There's zero sense of the globetrotting pilgrimage that underpinned Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale's shinobi cinema take. Reeves' Batman has put down roots then rotted, a phantom committed to drifting along the streets that claimed his parents. Pattinson offers up gauntness, a malnourished cigarette stink that is reflected back to him by a Gotham filled with blaring video screens and neo-Grecian majesty; a city resplendent with ill-gotten gains and drowning in a constant downpour. Suited up, Pattinson's Batman isn't played as intimidating either. The street-level cops he interacts with are not awed by his supernatural presence, they treat him as a nuisance - an unwanted physical affectation that, for some reason, is allowed to pollute their evidence gathering procedures. 

Pattinson has a theatrical, carnival, quality to his looming. The horned cowl he wears more evocative of a Victorian depiction of The Devil than the usual animisitic totem. Batman as a dressed-up, Spring-Heeled Jack style, eccentric rather than the world-shaker who counts Superman amongst his friends. This Batman then has been plucked out of folklore and deposited into a particularly dour police procedural. This clash plays beautifully, at least at first, largely thanks to Pattinson's decision to not adapt in the slightest to the superhero production line. Rather than a gleaming Adonis, this masked vigilante is sinewy and violently unhinged; his venom maintained by poisonous-looking chemicals that can be injected into his body when he finds himself in dire need. Firmly located within sodden squalor, Reeves and Cinematographer Greig Fraser's film very obviously strives to evoke David Fincher and Darius Khondji's despondent work on Seven but the invocation frequently plumbs deeper influential depths. 

A constant technological prickle recalls the uneasy symbiosis of analogue and biomechanical machinery tidied into every frame by Ridley Scott and Jordan Cronenweth on Blade Runner. In the early goings, eyes gather and compute long strings of visual information, spitting out leads for this button-pushing meddler. It's a shame that the demands of Bruce Wayne's case have him leave this visually unusual feedback loop; damning his interactions to yawning exposition dumps and criminals casually surmising their murderous intents. Although the aesthetic is often sublime, the actual structural mechanics underlining this beauty frequently work directly against the spell. As well as an elasticated relationship to bodily harm that (bizarrely) aligns him with his Warner stablemate Daffy Duck, Pattinson's Batman isn't just dim, he's blank. An empty vessel just waiting to be filled up. 

Mouth-foaming data is batted aside, more than once, when Bruce Wayne finds his way to another, contradictory, perspective. There are sequences in the film where Batman dutifully trots from meeting to meeting, instantly rearranging his entire outlook based on nothing more than the last thing that was said to him. The character's strongest convictions are the revulsion he feels regarding firearms, an abstinence he lords over those who plainly weren't rich enough to keep a butler on staff to teach them the ins and outs of Spanish martial arts. In a film where, comfortably, hundreds of innocent civilians are swept away by polluted filth, why shouldn't Zoë Kravitz's Selina Kyle shoot a man involved in the brutal murder of her lover? Similarly, Batman's yelping admonishment of the supervillains he faces comes off as rote and sanctimonious when we've seen that the public-facing 'Bruce' persona is a barely maintained shadow. Scenes designed to draw clear lines under the idea that Batman and his foes are reflections of each other repeatedly fail to land because of the voyeuristic strangeness constantly being generated by Pattinson. If anything, the final Wayne's unholy quest to pummel turnstile hoppers makes considerably less sense than a violent uprising determined to rid a terminally compromised city of its parasitic ruling class.  

Danny Elfman - Finale (Batman)

Batman: Soul of the Dragon

DC's direct-to-video animated movies are a curious proposition. From a technical perspective these 80 minute features struggle to meet the admittedly high standards set by the pillars of the company's best television animation - specifically, Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited. For an action focused series, one designed to be sold on home video in supermarkets rather than appear on TV for free, these productions routinely present as impoverished, both in terms of money spent and time afforded. Viewers who expect these DTV efforts to consistently scale up the free-flowing combat delivered by Joaquim Dos Santos' pit fighting Grudge Match JLU episode - broadcast on US television in March 2006 - will, more often than not, find themselves disappointed. 

Despite an enjoyable 1970s martial arts film framing, Sam Liu's Batman: Soul of the Dragon doesn't buck this trend to any significant degree. Action staging is cramped and robotic, almost completely failing to take advantage of a story that explores Batman's mystical self-defence training in the company of a number of characters created by the late, great Dennis O'Neil. Although functionally exposition, the flashbacks to this The 36th Chamber of Shaolin influenced drilling contains a fight so far beyond anything else in the rest of the piece - including every aspect of the finale - that it inspires sensory whiplash. Charged with defeating a buzzcut bruiser with only one digit, Kelly Hu's Lady Shiva launches into an attack completely unconstrained by the limits of a physical camera. The overbearing mediums that neuter elsewhere are utterly abandoned; Soul of the Dragon becoming unglued and exciting. The film even takes on the perspective of an index finger, hooking into a mouth to expose vulnerable gums and teeth. It's an inventive, beautifully boarded, sequence that, all too briefly, caters specifically to animation's strengths. 

Batman and Harley Quinn

Paul Dini and Chip Kidd's coffee table book Batman: Animated features an illustration by Bruce Timm in which the animator-cum-sequential artist maps out the sticking points their television series encountered when dealing with fastidious network censors. The image depicts a beefy Batman crashing through glass with his hand firmly around the Joker's neck. The Clown Prince of Crime has blown a hole clean through Bruce and, apparently, struck the freaked out child surfing on The Caped Crusader's enormous back. A naked, cigarette smoking Catwoman tumbles with them, as does a syringe, a crucifix and a bottle of XXX hooch.

Sam Liu's Batman and Harley Quinn, yet another supermarket shelf-filler from the once-great DC animated stable, seems to be a feature length attempt to get as many of these taboos onscreen; settling the score with the long-forgotten pearl-clutchers who wouldn't allow a beloved children's television series to function as a cheesecake smuggling device. As such Liu's film ranges from competent to excretable. 74 minutes of padded-out nonsense that sees Dr Harleen Quinzel reject what sound like snuff movie shoots to admire a striptease prompted bulge in Nightwing's bat-suit. Eventually this one-night stand teams up with a wonk-eyed Batman, hoping to put a stop to Poison Ivy's latest attempts to wipe out mankind, but not before Quinn has stunk out an airtight Batmobile with a series of spicy food farts.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight

A disappointingly loose adaptation of Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola's Elseworlds comic. Sam Liu's Batman: Gotham by Gaslight ditches that piece's swirling sense of despair to knuckle down on the assembly of a time-shifted Bat family. The various Robins are drawn from the ranks of Dickensian pickpockets while Selina Kyle is recruited from a go-nowhere dalliance with a married Harvey Dent - an idea that (as far as I'm aware) hails from recent video game tie-ins. A killer stalks Gotham's streets, preying on poor, socially disadvantaged women. The city's police don't seem too concerned, they're more excited about an upcoming World's fair exhibition that, thanks to the slight budgets afforded to these straight-to-video features, looks more like a one-dimensional, MDF backdrop than a glimpse of tomorrow.

Gotham by Gaslight isn't a total loss however. Like Jake Castorena's recent Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this static, stuttering, film comes alive whenever bodies are in motion, most obviously in a series of hand-to-hand confrontations between Batman and a brawny, invective spitting take on Jack the Ripper. These two bruisers manhandle each other, using crashing weight and directed blunt trauma to eke out any second of advantage. Better still though is the cabaret interlude that introduces us to Jennifer Carpenter's Victorian take on Catwoman, the lead singer / dancer for this music hall performance. Wider shots of this Can-can call attention to a sense of soulless reproduction present in the regimented backing dancers but closer shots, particularly a sequence where Kyle leads the petticoat choreography, offer an fluid exuberance otherwise lacking in Gotham by Gaslight.

Batman / Judge Dredd by Eric Canete

Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an odd duck, a straight-to-video crossover between two children's properties that is spiked with nose-snapping violence and second-tier swear words. You'll believe a Ninja Turtle can say 'frig'. Despite being a standalone feature, Jake Castorena's film unfolds like four episodes of a toy cartoon stitched together for a video release - think 1997's The Batman Superman Movie: World's Finest but much less dynamic. The caped crusader plays Akela to his own teenage wards as well as the oozed-up, chainsticking reptiles, beating back mutated Arkham inmates and ninja masters alike.

The story unfolds in self-contained sequences, each structured with the kind of individual beats you'd expect from one of Nickelodeon's 22 minute long schedule fillers. This bagginess, as well as the feature's arthritic sense of moment-to-moment motion, ensures interest flags long before the film's conclusion but at least Castorena and his crew make a real effort to distinguish their characters not just in terms of personality but in how they fight. Batman and Shredder are equally matched, a good father and a bad father locked into contact-combat demonstrations that burn through the animation budget. Best of all, for his finale throwdown with Leonardo, Ra's al Ghul exhibits a twirling, balletic sword style that mixes swashbuckling caddishness with handicapped wuxia.

Batman #50 by Frank Miller

Godzilla vs Batman by Jeff Zornow

Neal Hefti - Batman Theme

MY HAND AT YOUR THROAT

Dead sporting of Zack Snyder to go to all the trouble of shooting a disappointing Superman film just so he can put Ben Affleck's Batman over. Henry Cavill's supercilious Superman is exactly the kind of prick you can build a Rocky IV narrative around. The real hero is the human who spends months deep underground, angrily dragging around a wet tractor tire so he can bulk up enough to go punch out God.

LET US PRAY

"I don't think this stuff happens in a Mylar-snug vacuum. I think that it's when this kind of material works, it's drawn from the sources around you but it's turned into metaphor. 

I'm waiting for the pop-cultural metaphor for 9/11. I haven't seen a sign of it yet. But just like Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a response to Communism, and film noir itself was a response, essentially, to Pearl Harbor and the Second World War, there will be something that surfaces. It might be a Western. It won't, specifically, resemble what happened."

-- Frank Miller speaking to Gary Groth of The Comics Journal in January 2003.

There's a case to be made that the Marvel cycle currently tearing down the box-office is exactly what Miller is describing - a pop-culture reflex that clearly delineates good and evil. The Avengers, made up of an ex-GI, an arms dealer, and a couple of rehabilitated assassins on super-secret service retainer, are the good guys. Thanos and the army of vaguely Egyptian jackal-men he gifts Loki are the bad guys. As with Star Wars and Vietnam, the culture heals itself by dreaming up realms untainted by implication.

That's not to say the Marvel material isn't evolving. Captain America: The Winter Soldier talked about the potential for duplicity when you have an organisation that puts itself above the governments of Earth. Avengers: Age of Ultron might even demonise Tony Stark's relentless push towards total automation. Those ideas are trace elements though. In comparison, this trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice reads like vandalism.

Although casting rumours point towards an overstuffed mess, this trailer is refreshingly simple. A mechanised Batman has made it his business to tear Superman out of the sky. Colour provided by talking heads that reference The Church of Superman that rose out of Metropolis' ashes in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. This underwhelming, underperforming Man of Steel is explicitly framed as a God. Ben Affleck's Bootstraps Batman means to teach him some humility. A different kind of simplicity, aggressive and nihilistic, but at least it's cinematic. Warner Bros and DC are blowing their wad, racing through Frank Miller's deathlessly antagonistic work to firmly establish an alternative to Marvel's conveyor belt of three-star entertainment.

LORD DEATH MAN

ALSO BOY WONDER, ROBIN

20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #14 - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Loosely patterned after Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, Batman: Arkham Asylum arms players with a Kevin Conroy voiced action figure stranded in the bowels of the titular madhouse. With umpteen hostages to rescue, players must creep and throttle their way to Mark Hamill's institute ruling Joker. Rocksteady's enterprising approach to licensed properties is best expressed in their playground. The environment bristles with a queasy duality. Victorian decadence, with rough utilitarian upgrades. A twilight world of cramped crawl spaces, and forgotten cave foundations. Rocksteady have built Arkham like a seizing mindscape - layers and layers of barely credible security actions papering over huge, alarming fissures. The asylum is total malfunction, a space scarred by the madmen it houses, and the spectral owners that haunt it. There's even a reptilian monster, prowling its deepest recesses.

Batman Returns

Second time round, director Tim Burton succeeds by simply not trying to please anyone but himself. Batman Returns is Burton's kitschy Christmas aesthetic amped up into hysteria. Everything in the film is overbearing and expressionistic. Returns' locations have nothing in common with reality, this universe's Gotham City apparently existing within an enormous snow globe. Michael Keaton barely shows his face for much of the first hour; he's a background spectre, filed away whilst we are treated to the canon-diverging origins of the various super-villains. Rather than undermine the character it gives this Bruce Wayne a mythic, supernatural quality. We first see him alone, bathed in the Bat-Signal, slumbering in his Gothic castle-mansion. Returns' Batman is a vampiric justice-god, slumbering deep within his ancient fortress until he is needed. 

It's a significant and welcome step up from the confused thug of the first Batman. His tenuous relationship with the Gotham police and his casual use of deadly force also lend him an air of absolute danger. Danny DeVito's Penguin is a vile ooze slobbering goblin; a snarling mouth and creeping eyes backed by a circus troupe's worth of amoral muscle. Like the Joker, this villainous character is a splintered reflection of one of our hero's key traits - in this instance, Bruce Wayne's loss taken hideous, violent shape. Indeed Wayne initially feels pity for Penguin, hoping that the former Oswald Cobblepot can achieve the kind of parental reunion that has long been denied to himself. Similarly, Catwoman is often depicted as the female opposite of Batman, equally skilled and of a similar intelligence. In Returns she is also driven by the need for vengeance over those who have wronged her. 

Michelle Pfeiffer's damaged counterpart is a much better fit for this Batman than the screeching Vicki Vale then - Returns' Catwoman already shares, at the very least, Wayne's kink for dressing up then lashing out. Both Penguin and Catwoman are eccentric villains fuelled by slights, and seeking a kind of human validation that, unfortunately, seems to be beyond their grasp. The real evil in this piece is Christopher Walken's Max Shreck, whose primary motivating factor is nothing but slathering greed. Shreck isn't seeking anything like the emotional equalizers craved by his villainous peers, he just wants to be the biggest, most untouchable leech. Walken plays Shrek with a louche flair: he's a shark in a well-tailored suit. Walken's Shreck is pale and unmoving, a dead eyed seeker constantly scanning his surroundings for weakness and leverage. Shot through with pain, loss, and bad decisions, Batman Returns is both a beautiful and romantic take on DC Comics' Dark Knight Detective. 

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Batman

A hysterical, nightmarish take on the Dark Knight. Tim Burton's film is a macabre comedy, blessed with an insistent, thundering score by Danny Elfman. Michael Keaton plays Batman as the typical Burton hero - isolated and childish, but with an inkling of strange sweetness. Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale is portrayed as an overbearing stalker one minute, a blonde bombshell the next. Bruce Wayne and Vale are a dreadfully mismatched couple, Wayne seeking her out simply because she is desirable. She is a trophy to him, to be coveted and fought over. In terms of brain space, Wayne seems far more interested in the enemies he creates. 

Jack Nicholson's Joker is terrifying, a cruel mobster transformed, by a toxic waste dip, into a flippant libertine. His violence manifests throughout the film as an on-going Avant-garde experiment. This Batman is an aggressive but awkward phantom with zero moral underpinning. Indeed, the third-act clash between Batman and Joker is more like the meeting of two rather nasty bullies than a finale that naturally tracks into your standard heroic triumph. Batman physically and verbally pounds his adversary, obviously quite enjoying the momentary power he holds over this criminal. Burton's Wayne is distant and possibly even mentally unhinged. 

A leaf through Jack Napier's crime file is capped by a dreamy flashback in which Wayne recalls a version of his parents' murder. The sequence feels needling - a feeling mostly derived from where the nightmare is physically placed in the film. There's a sense that this is an unconscious manipulation, as if Wayne is constructing the kind of massive justification he needs to access the deeper, scarier, parts of his own psyche. This may not even be Bruce's actual memory then, just the live ammunition required to get the job done. Not afraid to examine the superhero as hopelessly damaged rather than courageous, Burton's film is pretty subversive for a summertime money machine. Miraculously, Burton even out-does himself with his kinky sequel Batman Returns.

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