The Many Lives of the Batman

Book excerpt: First published in 1991, The Many Lives of the Batman is a serious academic exploration of the cultural phenomenon called Batman. Marketing savvy alone did not build the Batman’s extraordinary success; it encompasses a variety of audiences who have embraced the hero through a collage of different media manifestations during his long history. Batman’s overlapping lives are illuminated in this critical anthology, which analyses the contexts of the character’s production and reception across a wide spectrum of time and media forms. This volume includes interviews with the character’s original creators. The other essays consider such questions as the political economy of comic book and film production processes; the cult status of the sixty’s television series in various fan communities; and the postmodernism of past and present Batman films. Using the tools of cultural studies, the book unmasks the Caped Crusader’s mysterious attraction.