Batman enjoyed a survivor’s privilege.
As one of a handful of superheroes to endure intact from the 1940s to the 1960s, the Masked Manhunter starred in stories that effectively recycled popular concepts from the fairly recent but by-then-forgotten past.
For example, Holyoke Publishing started Crash Comics in 1940 with a Superman pastiche, Strongman, but replaced him on the fifth issue’s cover with a Batman/Tarzan-inspired character, Cat-Man.
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| The Golden Age Catman, revived for Femforce |
A year later, he had his own comic and a costumed sidekick named Kitten (who, unlike Robin, was a girl wonder). Catman dropped the hyphen and appeared through 1946, undoubtedly annoying DC Comics the whole time.
So it must have been something of an in-joke when, in Detective Comics 311, DC introduced a villainous Catman with a orange, caped and cat-eared costume strikingly similar to that of the Golden Age superhero.
A bored trapper of big game, Thomas Blake decides to enliven his life by becoming Batman’s adversary. He’s inspired to choose a theme by the Joker and the vanished Catwoman, who hadn’t appeared since Detective Comics 211 in 1954.
The Feline Freebooter’s trick of surviving certain death with his “nine lives” was picked up by Catwoman in the Batman TV show three years later.
That same month, in World’s Finest 131, Superman, Batman and Robin fought the Octopus gang with the “help” of a well-intentioned but inept inventor who called himself the Crimson Avenger. That was also the name of one of DC’s earliest mystery men, a masked newspaper publisher who debuted even before Batman in Detective Comics 20 (October 1938.)
Three years earlier, in Detective Comics 286 (Dec. 1960), Batman, Robin and Batwoman defeated the super-power-hungry Star–Man, and three years before that Batman himself temporarily adopted the identity of “Starman” (Detective Comics 247, Sept. 1957). Starman had been a DC superhero launched with great fanfare in 1941.
Bill Finger wrote three and possibly all four of those stories, so maybe he was going through a nostalgic phase.
It occurs to me that this may also have been a nod to the successful revamping of Golden Age characters in the Schwartz-edited titles.
ReplyDeleteBruce Kanin wrote; Funny thing about Batman is that he endured more than Superman, i.e., Superman was rebooted/re-imagined/(re-youNameIt) via John Byrne in the late 80s. Batman wasn't. I believe that Batman's re-(whatever) occurred via the New 52, but so did everyone's.
ReplyDeleteNow THAT's durability!
Paul Zuckerman wrote: When I first read those stories, I had no idea of the legacy in any of those names. Did not know from Starman (though I would soon be introduced to him in the JLA/JSA team-ups). It was a while before I heard of the Crimson Avenger. Same with Catwoman, who was brought back just in reprints at first. Maybe DC thought Catwoman tangling with Batman would rattle the Comics Code Authority. In any case, she got a second chance though it is strange that her first actual appearance in the Silver Age was in Lois Lane comics, and not Batman, even though Batman picked up another female adversary by then, Poison Ivy!
ReplyDeletePhilip Rushton wrote: I really enjoyed those story arcs featuring Cat-Man and Clayface - for me they showed Bill Finger on top form and I've never understood why his work during that period is so often dismissed.
ReplyDelete