ART : UP TO BAT : Superhero’s Welcome Awaits Caped Crusader in Fullerton Show

If Batman is indeed Forever, the riddle of the Caped Crusader’s longevity may be answered by the simple, bold lines of a small drawing made more than five decades ago.

The heavy paper has faded to the brownish tint of a grocery bag, but Batman creator Bob Kane’s unpublished and rarely seen ink sketch clearly shows the square jaw, dark countenance and familiar cowl of his almost elemental character--an icon that has survived wildly different incarnations, assorted mediums and countless imitators.

The Kane drawing--done less than a year after Batman’s debut in May, 1939, for the fledgling comics medium--is among 66 rare pieces of original comic-book art featured in “KAPOW!: A Survey of Superheroes,” on display Saturday through Sept. 3 at Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

The exhibit charts the evolution of America’s monthly four-color mythologies, from Superman’s groundbreaking arrival in 1938 through offbeat ‘90s characters such as Tank Girl and Madman. In between, it covers key moments in the chronicles of dozens of do-gooders, including Captain America, Wonder Woman and the X-Men. It even allows visitors to try drawing their own fantastic adventures and see comics pages at various stages of production.

But Batman, featured more than any other character in the Muckenthaler survey, may steal the show, exhibit coordinator John Karwin concedes.

Besides the heat from one of the summer’s most heavily hyped films, “Batman Forever,” Bruce Wayne’s alter ego has the advantage of an incredibly long run (only Superman’s adventures have been published longer) and a remarkable number of high-quality artists with varied takes on the crime-fighter.

“I think the basic idea of Batman, the core of the character’s origins, is so simple it allows all these various interpretations,” Karwin said.

Kane, who lives in West Los Angeles, drew on influences such as pulp hero the Shadow, an obscure silent-film character called the Bat and Leonardo da Vinci’s centuries-old schematics for a bat-like glider. Though much of Batman may be borrowed, Kane’s original concept--a wealthy, masked vigilante driven to fight crime after witnessing his parents’ murders in a street robbery--is the engine that drives the hugely successful DC Comics character.

The exhibit, which was culled from private collections, tracks the hero and his interpretations from a simple, two-fisted mystery man to a high-tech walking arsenal.

There’s the cartoon-like 1950s Batman, when the hero had the mien of an overgrown Boy Scout, and the slick, stylish early 1970s work of Neal Adams, who returned the Caped Crusader to his Gothic roots and created, for many, the archetypal vision of the masked detective.

Also featured is a page from Frank Miller’s landmark 1986 graphic novel, “The Dark Knight Returns,” which brought a huge adult audience to the character and the comics medium. The graphic novel shows an aging, cynical Batman of the future rampaging through a dystopian Gotham City. Ironically, Miller’s work, with its challenging narrative layouts and adult themes, hangs not far from Mike Parobeck’s 1990 work from “Batman Adventures,” a monthly title that continues to offer younger fans a tame, primary-colors version of the hero based on his popular Saturday-morning cartoon.

Dennis O’Neil, who edits or writes all nine monthly Batman titles currently published by DC Comics, said the character has been almost a blank canvas for the hundreds of creators the company has employed through the decades to weave Batman’s never-ending adventures. It makes it difficult to pin down what different artists and writers added to the ever-expanding body of work.

“Batman is, I suspect, more about mythology than authorship,” said O’Neil, who last year made the bestsellers lists with “Knightfall,” a Batman story told in traditional novel form. “The stories must evolve to keep changing generations of readers interested. The essence of the character, hopefully, is preserved and you allow the external things to change.”

O’Neil, 56, was the writer who, along with artist Adams, shepherded the character back to his grim, obsessed persona after the cancellation of the campy ABC television series in the mid-1960s.

“We tried to take it back to the basics: This is a lone, dark creature seeking vengeance, a devil co-opted to the side of angels,” O’Neil said. “He’s lost that at periods, but it always seems to come back to that version and vision.”

In the 15 years before the classic Adams-O’Neil collaboration began in 1970, the comic book Batman had mostly been a cheery adventurer with a thousand gadgets who fought dinosaurs, apes and aliens, and even had a pet sidekick named Ace the Bat Hound. It was hard to believe this was the same Batman who, in the early ‘40s, had casually thrown gangsters off of rooftops and toted a smokin’ .45 automatic. As Karwin says of the ‘50s: “Things got a little silly.”

The blander Batman was a product of the postwar decade, Karwin said. Perhaps influenced by television’s new influence, comics readers were buying fewer comics, and the ones they were buying were titles focusing on war, horror and Western genres. Masked men, except for the Lone Ranger, were out of vogue.

The new bestsellers didn’t sit well with some parents, church groups and child psychologists. The crime and horror comics were rife with sexual innuendo, torture scenes and illicit drug references, excesses that would eventually lead to U.S. Senate hearings and the Comics Code, a self-policing effort by the beleaguered industry. DC, hoping to offer a wholesome alternative and shield its franchise characters, preempted the controversy by making Batman and his caped cohorts as tame as possible.

That’s not to say the era was without merit or artistic spark.

Rare-comics art dealer Thomas R. Horvitz, who dipped into his personal collection to provide the Muckenthaler with the lion’s share of its exhibit, is quick to point out that the polished, energetic style of Dick Sprang defined the 1950s Batman and added much to the character’s mythos.

Sprang’s precise lines and flair for colorful, over-the-top villains refined the images created by his predecessors and moved them closer to the cartoon grotesqueness that was made popular by Dick Tracy’s rogues gallery. The exhibit captures Sprang’s love of oversized props and gadgetry--which would become part of many future Batman incarnations--with an unpublished watercolor painting of the trophy room inside the Batcave, with a giant Joker mask, a huge penny and a mechanical dinosaur collected from different cases.

Despite Sprang’s craft, the 1950s and early 1960s stories made Batman ripe for parody, but who would expect the hero to lampoon himself? Leaping to television, Batman became an unexpected national obsession in 1966 when the wooden Adam West made the once-fearsome hero a campy, ultra-square do-gooder that became the height of mod comedy.

The series lasted just two years, but the theme song, sound effects, ridiculous puns and bizarre gadgets formed the new dominant public image of the hero, much to the chagrin of his longtime fans. Kane’s creature of the night was suddenly remembered best for dancing the Bat-Tusi in a go-go club. Holy humiliation, Batman.

A second Bat-craze seized the nation with the 1989 release of the Tim Burton film and its sequels. This incarnation, however, stayed closer to the heart of the character and even included a cameo by Kane as a newspaper cartoonist. The film’s huge box office triggered a flood of new Batman comics.

The comic book industry had long since changed by then, with the collector’s market boom and the advent of serious graphic novels. Suddenly, DC Comics was flooding magazine racks with disparate versions of the character in high-quality formats to feed the hungry market.

The character, who is basically a guy in a cape, had to be jazzed up for the 1990s to compete with the myriad mutants, cosmic demigods and ultra-violent ninjas that crowd the comics universe. So, now you can read about Batman the futuristic demon, or 19th-Century Batman tangling with Jack the Ripper, or even a computer-generated Batman fighting the forces of evil in a surreal cyberspace.

The 1990s take on Kane’s creation is well-represented in the Muckenthaler exhibit, Karwin said, with Paul Gulacy’s moody portrait of the character from “Legends of the Dark Knight,” Dan Brereton’s watercolor paintings of Batman and Catwoman, and an unpublished piece by longtime Batman artist Jim Aparo.

“Everyone of these artists bring something different to the character, but there is still that thread running through, the powerful image of a man trying to avenge the deaths of his parents by training and dedicating himself to this bizarre life,” Karwin said. “It’s very dark, and I think that’s why so many writers and artists thrive with the character. There’s a lot there to explore.”

O’Neil, the DC editor-writer, said the adaptability of the character to different settings and eras may explain why Batman has thrived while similar mysterious do-gooders, such as the Shadow and Zorro, have enjoyed only rare, spotty revivals. For Batman’s current writers and artists, though, the character’s success--and the long line of talent that made it happen--makes for a tough act to follow.

“Batman has been around so long, been so ubiquitous, his adventures have taken on the weight of folklore and mythology,” O’Neil said. “This is American mythology. And we are the custodians of that folklore.” * What: “KAPOW!: A Survey of Superheroes.”

* When: Saturday through Sept. 3. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

* Where: Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton.

* Whereabouts: From the Riverside (91) Freeway, take Euclid Street north to Malvern Avenue and go left. The museum will be on the right.

* Wherewithal: $2 for adults, $1 for students and seniors, free for kids 12 and under. Opening day is free for everyone, with a tour at 1 p.m.

* Where to call: (714) 738-6595.

MORE ART

IN HUNTINGTON BEACH: ‘VEERED SCIENCE’: Through Sept. 4 at the Huntington Beach Art Center, this exhibit presents high- and low-tech works by artists with fresh views of science and technology. Also: “Fuzzy,” with law-related work by fine artists, computer artists, forensics specialists and inmates. (714) 374-1650.

IN LOS ANGELES: OLDENBURG: Claes Oldenburg, the artist famous for giant sculptures of commonplace objects, is the subject of a 35-year retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art through Sept. 3. The 200 works on view include sculpture, drawing and collage. (213) 626-6222.

IN LOS ANGELES: SURREALISM: “Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism in Early California Art, 1934-1957,” at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center through Aug. 27, includes painting, sculpture and photography by such artists as Lorser Feitelson, Man Ray and Beatrice Wood. (310) 443-7000.