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When did Batman become more popular than Superman?
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130 posts in this topic

I was doing a 7 day fast once for spiritual reasons-on day 3 I cracked-I was heading to McDonald's and Star Wars came on the radio and this inspired me to stick with it.

Things that happen when you fast for 7 days:  you notice that people seem way too casual about EATING.  You read an entire cook book.  You think about food constantly.  When you break the fast you compose huge dinner of home made tamales, steak, choc cake etc, eat 2 bites and you feel sick and are full.  I learned later you're supposed to drink broth and jello.

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3 minutes ago, kav said:

I was doing a 7 day fast once for spiritual reasons-on day 3 I cracked-I was heading to McDonald's and Star Wars came on the radio and this inspired me to stick with it.

Things that happen when you fast for 7 days:  you notice that people seem way too casual about EATING.  You read an entire cook book.  You think about food constantly.  When you break the fast you compose huge dinner of home made tamales, steak, choc cake etc, eat 2 bites and you feel sick and are full.  I learned later you're supposed to drink broth and jello.

Why on earth would you be doing a fast without knowing how to do a fast (and break a fast) properly?

:eek:

I used to fast regularly. It's an awesome thing.

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2 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Why on earth would you be doing a fast without knowing how to do a fast (and break a fast) properly?

:eek:

I used to fast regularly. It's an awesome thing.

I just read Way of the Peaceful Warrior and just did what he did.  Hoo boy does your body rebel when you stick food in it after 7 days!!

Ps at no point would I have been willing to eat another human being and I always shake my head watching movies or hearing stories of people eating each other after like 2 days.

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56 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

It might be goofy and campy but it's an awesomely crafted piece of work as most of Burton's work is.

I thought it was freakin' awesome back in the day...but I was 9 or 10. 

I'll have to give it another shot, but it was a whole lotta awesome sauce for its time. 

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26 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Nope.

But then I don't have the emotional attachment to the Star Wars theme that I do to Batman.

I didn't see my first Star Wars movie until maybe 10 years after it was 1st in theaters.

I saw Batman the 1st weekend it was released.

Bah. The theme to Krull crushes them! James Horner was an animal. 

 

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9 minutes ago, dupont2005 said:
59 minutes ago, kav said:

The first superman movie was better right?  

I don’t see myself ever bothering to watch it again, but I sure was excited to show the Tim Burton Batman to the comic book movie loving kids in the family

I just remember the superman theme song being so long that I got burned out before really enjoying the movie idk...

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1 hour ago, Jaylam said:

 . I also re-designed the Bat-mobile, which served as inspiration for the TV show's version.

Um sorry Carmine, the new batmobile appeared first in the TV show, then began to appear in the comics-not the other way around.  You cannot take credit for this one.  I believe it first appeared in World's Finest-Curt Swan.  Other boardies may know better.

Edited by kav
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3 minutes ago, dupont2005 said:

Ive seen every live action interpretation of Batman on that list until 2008, and then nothing 

 

but I did watch the first 2-3 episodes of Gotham 

Cant stand any of the Batman movies.  I know I'm in the minority.  They just seem so dumb and a wasted opportunity.  

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2 hours ago, Jaylam said:

Superman had been flying high for years, but by the early 60's, Batman was faltering, then this happened in 1964 and Batman's star began its accent. 

From the book Amazing World of Carmine Infantino, by David Spurlock, quoting Infantino:
 Quote:

In the early 1960's, Bob Kane, who had created Batman in the 1930's with the aid of Bill Finger, and had further developed the mythos with art assistant Jerry Robinson, [Kane] was still handling production of all the Batman material. I didn't know for sure and I couldn't prove it, but I believed that Kane was farming out almost all the Batman work to unknown, uncredited "ghost" artists. And the work just wasn't good.

I was working on Adam Strange [in MYSTERY IN SPACE] and [Julius Schwartz] phoned me about coming in to see him.
I said "Let me just finish this job I'm on first," and he said "you should come up now, Irwin wants to see you."
Irwin Donenfeld was the Editorial Director and Publisher of DC then. So Julie and I went in, and Irwin told us that Batman was in terrible shape. He said "I'm going to give you six months to save the character. If you can pull it out, fine, but if you can't get up the sales, we want to drop it. That's how bad it was.

I had not been a big fan of the character;, but in 1964, with Julie Schwartz as editor, I started on Batman. I began drawing all the Batman covers with DETECTIVE COMICS. Julie said "You better come up with some cover ideas. We need something different." So the first one was a departure. It was different, with a three-panel layout, and people liked it. Julie suggested I make some changes to Batman's costume as part of our character update. We developed what was called the "New Look". This included changes to the ears and nose of Batman's cowl, as well as Julie's suggestion of adding the yellow circle around the insignia on Batman's chest. That was the first step in saving the book from cancellation. I also re-designed the Bat-mobile, which served as inspiration for the TV show's version.

As always, I had tons of other work, and getting Kane totally away from his creation was a sticky situation. So Kane continued handling the interior art on the regular BATMAN title. We noticed right away that the sales of DETECTIVE COMICS I drew featuring Batman jumped much higher than the BATMAN issues by Kane. So I was assigned to draw the covers of all the titles Batman appeared in. By improving the character in general, through my Batman stories in other titles, plus doing all the Batman covers, we saved the character.

The sales started to increase fairly quickly, Batman was coming back. We saved the book despite Kane, and the character was in demand again. About a year later when the Batman TV show premiered, we had an all-out Batman explosion on our hands! There were toys, games, posters, advertising, plastic models, action figures, etc., and I drew trhe art for all of it, most ooften with Murphy Anderson's inks. Batman became the most popular character in the world. We were getting an unheard of 95% sell-through, with print runs of up to 900,000 copies per issue!

Later on, when I became Editorial Director around 1967, I said to Kane "Listen Robert, what is your page rate? I know you're farming this stuff out, so here's what I want to do: I'll give you half of the page rate to not work on it. You don't have to do a thing, and I'll take care of everything. Just take the money."
He went for it. That's what I did to keep decent talent on Batman. Ultimately it came out that Shelly Moldoff had been doing Kane's work [as ghost artist].

I do know that the 1966 Batman TV series was huge. It was also a 'mini' Batmania, and when I say mini, I wasn't meaning to discount it's appeal. It just wasn't as big as 1989 Batmania but I do understand from what I read about it that it was a pretty popular show. Those 'Pow' and 'Wham' captions changed the game for television.

But I will reinforce that there were few things that affected pop culture the way Batman (1989) did. The Beatles was one of them. There are only handful of other things that got that big across Western culture (in North America anyway).

 

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44 minutes ago, kav said:

Cant stand any of the Batman movies.  I know I'm in the minority.  They just seem so dumb and a wasted opportunity.  

The one with Uma Thurman sucks but it’s still watchable. The Christian Bale ones weren’t bad but I was burned out on franchise movies by then. I actually like the Joker one and the Penguin/Catwoman one. 

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5 hours ago, kav said:

Dont you think star wars has a much more soul stirring overall effect tho?  The Batman theme is rather subdued in comparison.

Personally, I love the Batman theme way more than Star Wars, even though Star Wars is more well known.

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Carmine Infantino deserves a lot of credit for updating Batman in the 60's and making him popular again, and redesigning the Batmobile in June 1964 (Batman #164)... which caused some controversy at the time with Batman fans! Future comic writer Mike Friedrich wrote in Batman #166, "I feel the Batmobile should have a bullet-proof windshield that encloses the driver's seat because it's during this time that the Dynamic Duo is highly susceptible to an attack from above and beyond."

Bruce Wayne says in Batman #164, "The trend now is toward sports cars...small maneuverable jobs!"

Of course, this open-top convertible, with its bubble glass, sharp fins, and sleek design would influence the look of the TV show's Batmobile...as would much of Carmine's design for the book. Just looking at some of those pre-show covers you can see they took ideas directly from his comics. The TV Show Batmobile was directly built from a 1955 Lincoln Futura, a car that was specifically built for a movie (1959's It Started With a Kiss), where a married couple wins a futuristic car in a lottery. I wonder if THAT  car inspired Infantino?

 

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