‘Batman Beyond’ Gives Wing to Crime Fighter’s New Crusades

Since the character made his debut in the May 1939 issue of “Detective Comics,” Batman has undergone more incarnations than a Hollywood channeler. In the caped crusader’s multimedia career, he’s starred in one live-action TV series, five live-action films, two serials, an animated feature, 13 animated TV series, two newspaper comic strips and countless comic books and graphic novels. He’s done guest shots on other animated programs and on radio, and is the subject of more than 140 Web sites that range from official Warner Bros. sites to amateur fanzines.

It’s been a busy 60 years.

Now yet another vision of the Dark Knight will attempt to add to the legacy with “Batman Beyond,” a hard-hitting and fast-paced new cartoon series on the WB, part of its Kids’ WB! umbrella for shows for the preteen set. The series, which represents Batman’s 14th animated TV incarnation, moves into its regular home on Saturday’s at 9:30 a.m. this week, after an hourlong sneak preview earlier this month.

“Batman is a great character who can take a lot of interpretations,” says series co-producer Alan Burnett. “He embodies a sense of justice and vengeance that everybody understands, so it’s not that difficult coming up with stories for him. We found that going [onto] the new series opened our minds to new possibilities; the character is so strong, we can’t say we’ve ever wanted for story ideas.”

“Batman Beyond” was created by Burnett, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. The same trio was behind “Batman: The Animated Series,” a popular 1992 show produced by Warners Bros. Television Animation for Fox. It featured a look the artists christened “Dark Deco,” with stark patterns of light and shadow, angular silhouettes, dramatic camera angles and a sinister tone that evoked the world of hard-boiled detective fiction. Like the Fleischer “Superman” shorts of early ‘40s, the 1992 “Batman” series used stylish designs and backgrounds to compensate for the limits of the animation. (It seemed a pity to let the limited animation get in the way of the snazzy backgrounds.) The series scored a hit for Fox and was expanded into the animated feature “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm,” in 1993.

The same vision is obviously at work in “Batman Beyond.” The new program moves the story a few decades into the future, when high-tech gadgets abound, but the quality of life has declined. The streets of Gotham are meaner than ever and evoke “Blade Runner,” rather than “The Jetsons.” An embittered Bruce Wayne, now nearly 80, has retired from the superhero business, but brash young Terry McGinnis--whose father was murdered at the command of an evil industrialist--is ready to continue the war against crime under the master’s tutelage as the “Tomorrow Knight.”

“When we constructed the first series seven or eight years ago, we looked back at the whole history of ‘Batman’ lore: the original comic books, the live-action TV series, the Frank Miller [author of the 1986 novel “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns”],” says co-producer Dini. “We looked at what entertained us and what had really served the character over time, then picked and chose among those elements. With ‘Batman Beyond,’ we’ve taken the character a step further, which allows us to explore new influences.”

The artists have kept the sharp-edged look of the Fox series, but updated it with Space Age curves and geometric patterns. The many fistfights, martial-arts moves, laser-gun battles and computer-animated motorcycle chases show the influence of the violent Japanese science-fiction anime films, especially Katsuhiro Otomo’s cult favorite “Akira.”

“We think of [Bruce Wayne] as being like an old samurai who’s faced with an eager young student. The old samurai tells the student he should never pick up a sword, but the student stands there all night in the rain and is still there the next morning,” says Dini. “Wayne wants to be left alone but realizes his company has spawned an evil that threatens not only Gotham City, but all mankind. When he realizes this new kid wants to avenge his father’s murder, Wayne recognizes that Gotham needs Batman, and he needs Batman.”

A Popular Hero Like Superman

There has long been a place for Batman. His crime-fighting career began in 1939, when National Comics editor Whitney Ellsworth asked artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger to create a bizarre figure with the potential to become as popular as Superman, who had debuted in National’s “Action Comics” the year before. Kane and Finger invented a hero who, unlike the man of steel, was a human with no special powers. By night, bored socialite-millionaire Bruce Wayne became Batman, a human vigilante who stalked New York (later Gotham City), stopping robberies, kidnappings and murders wherever he found them.

In November 1939, readers learned that Wayne’s parents had been shot during a holdup, which led him to declare war on criminals of every stripe. While choosing a disguise to strike terror into the hearts of his foes, Wayne was interrupted by a bat flying into his den: “It’s an omen. . . . I shall become a BAT!”

Finger later recalled he had been influenced by the popular mystery-adventure series “The Shadow” and the 1931 film “The Bat Whispers.” In April 1940, Finger and Kane added Robin, and the “Batman” stories assumed their now familiar pattern.

“Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes,” Finger once explained. “I found as I went along that Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That’s how Robin came to be.”

During the ‘40s and early 1950s, Batman fought a weird array of villains that rivaled the bizarre heavies in “Dick Tracy”: the Penguin, the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, the Scarecrow, Two-Face and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The characters proved popular enough to spawn two movie serials: “Batman” (1943), starring Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft, and “Batman and Robin” (1949), with Robert Lowery and John Duncan. The dynamic duo also appeared as guest stars on the “Superman” radio program.

Hearings Held on Comic Books

The caped crusader and boy wonder came under fire in 1954, in psychologist Frederick Wertham’s sensational book, “Seduction of the Innocent,” which claimed that comic books, especially crime comic books, were leading children into delinquency, crime and perversion. The book caused Congress to hold hearings, and the ensuing cleanup took much of the pizazz out of the comics. The Batman stories became increasingly gimmicky as the artists added Batwoman, Bathound, Batgirl and Bat-Mite (who came from another dimension) in their efforts to breathe some life back into the character.

Batman languished for most of the next decade, until the campy live-action show debuted on ABC in 1966. Starring Adam West and Burt Ward, this “Batman” was played for laughs, with the words “zap” and “ooof!” appearing on the screen. An array of stars appeared as villains on a semi-regular basis, including Burgess Meredith (the Penguin), Cesar Romero (the Joker), Frank Gorshin (the Riddler) and Victor Buono (King Tut). Although blasted by critics for its silliness, “Batman” became a fad that launched a now-forgotten live-action feature with the same cast--and sales of $150 million in licensed merchandise in 1966 alone.

The late ‘60s and ‘70s were an era of derivative animated programming on Saturday morning, and in 1968 Filmation launched “The Batman/Superman Hour” on CBS, which was reworked into “The Adventures of Batman and Robin” the next year. That series ended in 1970. Batman returned in 1973 as part of Hanna-Barbera’s “Superfriends” on ABC, which ran in various incarnations through 1981. Filmation came back with “The New Adventures of Batman” for CBS in 1977, with West and Ward providing the characters’ voices.

For the next several years, Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, the two biggest Saturday morning cartoon factories, produced rival Batman programs. In 1980, NBC began showing reruns of the old Filmation series as “Tarzan and the Super 7,” which meant Batman cartoons were playing on all three national networks--a record no other cartoon character has matched.

The Batman cartoons finally went out of production in 1986-- when Miller re-conceived the character in “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.” Influenced by the sophisticated comics produced in Europe, South America and Japan, “The Dark Knight” offered a forbidding vision of the caped crusader. The relatively benign world of Gotham City became a gritty dystopia haunted by thugs, mutants and obnoxious television reporters. The aging Bruce Wayne cut a violent swath through the city as he conducted his vigilante campaign with grim determination.

This new vision of Batman revived interest in the character and led to the recent series of big-budget films. Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992) starred Michael Keaton in the title role; director Joel Schumacher took over for the less successful “Batman Forever” (1995) with Val Kilmer and “Batman & Robin” (1997) with George Clooney.

In “Batman Beyond,” the WB hopes it has a series that will appeal to enough kids to take the caped crusader into the next millennium.

Not bad for an old bat.

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* “Batman Beyond” airs Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. on WB. The network has rated it TV-Y7 (suitable for children 7 and older).