Batman – the one sane man in a world of madness and the macabre
Can you remember that quickening, that frisson of fear and excitement, of being six years old and peering into an adult world of action and adventure, where the villains were sadists or mad (or a combination of the two) and only our heroes stood between anarchy and a return to orderly society?
Thinking back beyond the start of Bronze Age, to that period of the mid nineteen-sixties when Batman first hit the television airwaves, the popular conception of Batman was shaped by three sources :
- firstly, by the campiness of the TV show and the contemporary comics with their pop-culture influence ;
- secondly, by three sets of trading cards reflecting elements of sadism and horror heavily prevalent in 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine covers ;
- and finally the rather more wholesome approach taken in the 1950s as evidenced in NAL/NEL paperback reprints and DC 80-page Giants.
For a six-year-old consumer of Batman in 1966, this was a heady (and confusing) mix. Also, as a 6-year old with rather limited disposable income, the Batman trading cards become the early overriding influence in entering Batman’s world, being easily swapped in the school playground.
The Batman trading cards printed by Topps in the US, and licensed by A&BC in the UK, were my gateway into a Batman world. The primary artists Norm Saunders and Bob Powell (I believe there were others) created 143 images of not-infrequent sadistic peril inspired by many of the situations depicted in spicy pulp covers they had painted in previous decades. According to Heritage Auctions, Powell was responsible for the original pencils while Saunders would finish them off with his masterful painting.
It would be interesting to learn if either National Periodical Publications or 20th Century Fox had any say in the choice of subject-matter on the cards, especially as Norm Saunders’ previous oeuvre had more recently included the infamously grisly Civil Wars News and WWII “Battle!” cards which had attracted the wrath of various concerned citizens’ groups a few years earlier.
Images of Robin about to be bisected by a circular saw, or strung up on a rack, or Batman tied down being threatened by multiple metal spikes, were par for the course, and have been the images that have stuck with me for the past fifty-some years. I’m certain that the scenes depicted would not have been approved by the Comics Code Authority if published in the pages of a comic book at that time. Many images depicted imminent pain, usually accompanied by a gloating madman, some with a subtext of bondage and cruelty. Take a look at “Black Bat” card # 31 “Threat of the Catwoman” which shows a tied-up Robin being approached by the Catwoman carrying a sword. Freud would have a field day with that image.
The 3.5” x 5” original paintings of these trading cards now sell at auction as prices around $5000. I was lucky enough to see an original painting of one of the more acceptable cards at the American Comic Book Company in Fullerton, CA back in 1979, and was amazed at how small the original painting was.
Contrasting with the perilous, near-salacious imagery of some of the trading cards, and the pop-culture trendiness of the TV show and current comics, New American Library & New English Library (4-Square) had embarked on reprints of largely 1950s Batman stories in paperback form in early 1966, printed in Black & White (content not unlike the semi-annual Batman 80-page Giant comics from DC, which were of course in color). I believe that I received my copy of “BATMAN – The Best of the Original Batman” paperback for my birthday in July 1966. These stories were more wholesome fare than the trading cards, yet were selected from the era just prior to the arrival of the Comics Code Authority. Sadistic death traps and topics of madness were still to be found, with the imagination of writer Bill Finger and the artwork of Dick Sprang and Charles Paris leaving an indelible memory.
In “The Crime Clown’s Crazy Crimes” (reprinted from Batman 74) we find the Joker faking madness to get sent to an asylum for the purposes of locating money owned by one of the inmates. Batman takes on the guise of an insane Swami to infiltrate the looney-bin. It is a very strange story, and I found the idea of Batman trapped in the flooding padded room of a mad-house quite unsettling at a tender age. Dick Sprang’s artwork was spot-on, and I especially liked the surreal scenes of Batman & Robin chasing the Joker through the fog, as well as the classic splash-page of Joker sitting on a beach, stealing a bawling child’s mud-pies – a scene incidentally no-where to be found in the story!
Of the other two Sprang/Finger stories, “The Testing of Batman” reprinted from issue 83 stands out as a classic, as Batman & Robin undergo rigorous tests, of which one is running on a conveyor belt away from huge spikes! There is some fantastic Sprang imagery in this story with shots of Batman & Robin climbing a skyscraper unaided, as well. My 6-year old heart was in my mouth.
New American Library and NEL/4-Square were to publish 2 more 1950s comic collections in 1966, but this period of the influence of pulps and horror comics in depicting Batman’s world was not to last long. The Topps trading cards transitioned their content from paintings to TV show publicity shots for the final 2 sets by late 1966/early 1967, with the final episode of the campy TV show airing in March 1968.
Batman was soon only to be found in the single media of comics. As comic stories matured with the transition from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age, Batman was soon to undergo a transformation as well in June 1968 in Batman #204, with the emergence of the character as foremost a detective in a world largely devoid of costumed villains – at least for the next few years.
Copyright Ian Baker
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