Old Style Bat Stories Are More Entertaining Than The Current Storylines?

[Robo Ape]

They may lack the so called sophistication and depth of the current Bat storylines but their is something to be said for the old style Bat tales presented in The Batman Chronicles, and that is the fact that they are a whole lot more entertaining.

Yeah they maybe simple and slight in some ways, though they do have their moments but Bill Finger & Bob Kane could certainly show the current Bat writers a thing or too about writing good entertaining tales that are easy to get into.

[Clea]

How do you define "entertaining"? What is it about the older stories that you find to be more entertaining than current stories?

[Choppa]

What do you consider to be "old style"? Does that include the 70's? The 90's? Because I liked both of those eras more than now.

[Sabrinaset]

I have a bunch of Bat-reprints from the fifties, and as goofy as they were, I'm actually enjoying them a lot more than some of the stuff I got off eBay from the nineties!

On the other hand, the Dini run is great!

[Inverted]

I kinda like reading those early stories where Batman fights the villans from Chinatown in the 30's. Something about it reminds me of a time when people didn't know much about the East except for stories, and pulp fiction. There is a cool mystic quality about that.

[Lew Moxon]

The first Batman comic book belongs on any list of the best Bat comics ever made.

It's definitely my favorite one of the golden age.

I mean the first issue of "Batman" the one that introduced Joker and the Cat.

[Ben Reilly#6]

Ah, yes, the Golden Age tales. They cetainly do have a great flare to them. Really, who doesn't love the earlier stories of Batman kicking people out of windows, off of rooftops, and into giant vats of acid? Wrestling tigers and shooting vampires in the face just as they're starting their night? Batman wielding a gun, period?

And even Bruce Wayne; the wealthy socialite, who tags along with Commissioner Gordon to murder cases (for fun!), and leaves in the middle of the investigations bored out of his skull?

That's more hardcore than anything even Frank Miller could come up with in this day and age.

(I'm not being sarcastic, by the way.)

[Gilda Dent]

While not an absolute by any means, one could substitute nearly any superhero title for "Bat" in the OP and for me the answer would be "Yes."

This does, of course, depend on what "old style" means. My preferred era for most titles is Silver Age through about the time I was born, roughly late 70's. Anything published before I was old enough to read it as it came out qualifies as "old style" to me.

[Mia]

I agree about the old stories. Yes the dialogue is dated. But the stories are far more substantive. I also like the fact that Batman has to 'fight' for his victories, they aren't just 'handed to him. Batman doesn't merely show up, scowl and criminals wet themselves and cower in fear like the current stories.

I also like the fact that in the old stories he does actual detective work and fights organised crime, as opposed to just freaks. His relationship with Robin is more like a real partnership. While it's clear that Batman is the boss, he does far more than just bark orders at Dick he actually talks to him and instructs him in a very respectful manner

The stories are also much more tight and don't just consist of 'splash' pages.

I read the old stories and really see how they can work in a modern era.

[Superboy-Prime]

I want some of what you guys are smoking.

[jgiannantoni05]

I appreciate all the eras/decades of comics. Maybe some day DC will do a Batman title written and drawn in Golden Age style, a retro bat title.

I like current state of Batman comics just fine though.
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[Robo Ape]

Ah, yes, the Golden Age tales. They cetainly do have a great flare to them. Really, who doesn't love the earlier stories of Batman kicking people out of windows, off of rooftops, and into giant vats of acid? Wrestling tigers and shooting vampires in the face just as they're starting their night? Batman wielding a gun, period?

And even Bruce Wayne; the wealthy socialite, who tags along with Commissioner Gordon to murder cases (for fun!), and leaves in the middle of the investigations bored out of his skull?

That's more hardcore than anything even Frank Miller could come up with in this day and age.

(I'm not being sarcastic, by the way.)

Well at least the stories of the 30s/40s know what entertainment is rather than being exercises in flaunting the writers ego/cleverness or producing some pretentious claptrap & passing off as an entertaining story.

[Clea]

Well at least the stories of the 30s/40s know what entertainment is rather than being exercises in flaunting the writers ego/cleverness or producing some pretentious claptrap & passing off as an entertaining story.

Again, what do you mean by entertaining? In what way(s) do you find the older stories to be more entertaining to you? Are there any particular years and/or decades of the comic that you prefer?

[Sabrinaset]

You do have to wonder what would have happened if Jim Lee was sent back in time to the 50's or 60's and walked into the offices of DC saying he could draw Batman, then wondering why everyone was mad at him because he took a year to draw a story. He might being new meaning to the term "starving artist" :biggrin:

[earl]

I've been re-reading a bunch of 70s and 80s Batman (Pre-1st Crisis) and it is interesting to see how different the 'Earth 1' Batman is to his modern counterpart. The guy was just so much less neurotic and not nearly the uberman compared to the current Batman. Earth 1 Batman would fly on airlines and have Alfred pick him up at the airport. Now that is something you wouldn't see these days. The 70s/80s Batman was much more of a detective who would get by more by his wits than brute force than the current version, who seems much more obsessive and paranoid more akin to Alan Moore's Ozymandias.

I think that Batman of Earth 1 is as nearly as removed from the current Batman as the golden age character was removed from the 70s version. There are certain elements that get added to the character with each decade, so there is a similarity, but the differences are interesting.

I'd almost like to see someone explore these differences further. I'd love to see DC get someone like Matt Wagner to do a Golden Age Batman series starting from the origin forward starting in 1939 kind of like Sandman Mystery Theatre except with Batman. Or have someone do a Batman series playing off elements of the run from the late 60s through to the first Crisis 'Earth 1' Batman, setting the story say starting in 1969.

I think that is kind of the missed opportunity of the 52 earths. DC keeps putting out dozens and dozens of comics based in the same continuity instead of maybe letting people craw out some new continuities on another world, except letting the series maybe run a bit longer than just an Elseworld miniseries. Take something like Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, there are a bunch of people who would like more comics based on that version of the DC Universe.

As for the older stories, they are hit and miss, but even some have appeal in that they are just odd. I'm reading some Detectives when it became the 'Batman Family' and were extra sized issues. I just read the two parter by Denny O'Neil and Don Newton which centered around Leslie Thompkins and Maxie Zeus (his first apperance). The artwork is really great and the story holds up OK, definitely a bunch more exposition dialog than a modern writer would use. In the same issue there is an odd 8 page story where Bruce Wayne holds a kangaroo race, to capture some Australian gun runner. Pretty odd I admit and kind of laughable, but there is some charm to it I suppose. It had a lot of story for 8 pages. Of course, these stories were when I was a kid and just starting to read Batman. I think the readers getting into comics are a bit older that when I started reading them.

There was a slew of golden age reprints in Batman books when I first started to read comics and I liked quite a few of those stories. I loved some of the Golden Age stories where they would get into all of the different costumes that Batman would wear over the years or when he had to soup up the Batmobile. They made boodles of stories, but some of them are pretty good, albeit in that they are really made for kids and so you have to look at them a bit different than say something by Brian Azzarello or The Killing Joke.

I like a lot of these older stories more than stuff like War Games where Batman almost moves into the background of his own book where you have this convoluted storyline that stretches out for pages and not much ever happens. Doug Moench would have done that entire War Games storyline in like 2 or 3 issues tops.

[Robo Ape]

Again, what do you mean by entertaining? In what way(s) do you find the older stories to be more entertaining to you? Are there any particular years and/or decades of the comic that you prefer?

Entertaining meaning interesting/enjoyable to read, what other definition would you be using here?

[Clea]

Entertaining meaning interesting/enjoyable to read, what other definition would you be using here?

In what ways do you find the older stories to be more interesting and enjoyable than contemporary stories? Is it because they tend to be self contained? Because they're witty?

[Captain Jim]

I've said this before: I enjoy all eras of Batman stories.

In response to Clea (and I was actually thinking this before I read that post), I *do* think part of the appeal to the earlier stories is that they don't go on and on and on forever. Too many times I've read a single part of a "serial" and wondered afterwards, "Did anything actually happen in this issue?"

[nepenthes]

Entertaining meaning interesting/enjoyable to read, what other definition would you be using here?

well i had some questions too but if that's how you're gonna be fielding them, i won't bother


golden age stories are a nice little novelty. but they're still kids books. Finger and co were in the job to make money with easy disposable tales printed on cheap paper, they were not there to write stand out batman or hero stories. todays artists are.

[Clea]

I've said this before: I enjoy all eras of Batman stories.

In response to Clea (and I was actually thinking this before I read that post), I *do* think part of the appeal to the earlier stories is that they don't go on and on and on forever. Too many times I've read a single part of a "serial" and wondered afterwards, "Did anything actually happen in this issue?"

I like one or two issue storylines quite a bit. I don't mind longer, serialized stories so long as the writer still manages to make each individual issue interesting. I'm quite tired of drawn out, serialized stories in which nothing much (if anything) actually happens in the individual issues.

[Vidocq]

well i had some questions too but if that's how you're gonna be fielding them, i won't bother


golden age stories are a nice little novelty. but they're still kids books. Finger and co were in the job to make money with easy disposable tales printed on cheap paper, they were not there to write stand out batman or hero stories. todays artists are.
That's unfair. They become children's books sure, but Batman punching someone through a window with the next panel showing us the man in a pool of blood dosen't seem like something out of Barney or Pokémon.

And during the Golden Age, the Market was flooded with Superheroes, ever funny book had a guy in a mask fighting crime. It is in those first few Stories were Batman stands out, writters did it because they had to eat yeah, but that only made their Job an unstable one, they were easily replaced, Knowing that made them try harder to make them and the character unique. Ever heard the frase ''do it as if your life depends on it''? it was the only reality during the Depression, seriously.

Now a days Writters do it for themselves, never for Batman, Fans read with the hope that they may have the same tastes as the writter and Everything that made Batman and Superman unique is watered down and distributed into Thousands of Characters.


I Like those early Batman Stories a lot my self, I don't like most parts of the Golden Age, But the first two Batman and Superman Chronicles I Love. To me they are the Real Superman and Batman, Before editors and codes neutered them.

[Lester C.]

If Batman were a real person he'd suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder or more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Each decade in his history sees him became a new person that is alien to his personality from the decade before.

[Robo Ape]

well i had some questions too but if that's how you're gonna be fielding them, i won't bother


golden age stories are a nice little novelty. but they're still kids books. Finger and co were in the job to make money with easy disposable tales printed on cheap paper, they were not there to write stand out batman or hero stories. todays artists are.

Hardly a reasonable response. As Vidocq said a lot of the content of the time was hardly overly child friendly and your doing a great disservice to the creators of the time by dismissing them and their work so easily.

The self contained nature and economic storytelling of the time gives them an advantage over much of the modern out put. Plus you felt their were genuinely written to entertain the reader and not as seems to be the case now written to entertain the writer first without full consideration of the reader.

They also weren't burdened with a small army of subsidiary characters as some stories seem to be now, they remembered that the title at the end of the day is fundamentally about Batman fighting crime through detective work and physical effort. It should not be used as an excuse to show excursions into the realms of metaphysics or the examination of every tiny aspect of the character's psyche. The current RIP storyline is especially guilty of this.

[Kirigi]

My favorite is this old Detective Comics from I think the late 70's called "Night of the Stalker". It's the best depiction of the character of Batman ever. I love when that guy tries to flee and his car keys are gone and Batman is there at a distance silently waving them mockingly.

[Chad]

golden age stories are a nice little novelty. but they're still kids books. Finger and co were in the job to make money with easy disposable tales printed on cheap paper, they were not there to write stand out batman or hero stories. todays artists are.

Who these stories were written for is unimportant - it's who they were written by that counts and you couldn't possibly have picked a worse author than Bill Finger to make your point. Bill Finger (and Siegel and Shuster, and Gardner Fox, and William Marston, etc, etc) were extremely well read individuals who completely understood the medium of comic books even as they were inventing the genre. Finger himself wasn't even an artist and yet was able to make the necessary corrections to Bob Kane's original Flash Gordoneque design for Batman to come up with the look we have now.

Finger's "disposable tales" included the first disposable appearances of Batman, the Joker, Catwoman, Robin, Joe Chill, Lew Moxon, the Riddler, Clayface, the Penguin, Commissioner Gordon, Bruce Wayne, and Alfred. He came up with Batman's origin and a sequel of sorts in which Batman finally caught up with his parent's killer (the "Let me tell you a story without an ending Chill, perhaps you'll be able to supply one..." is still one of the greatest moments in Batman history), and while it's hard to gauge quality writing since so much of that is subjective, it's telling that when DC would choose stories to reprint for their 80 page Batman giants, they almost always selected stories written by Finger (who had to point this fact out to them since the editors had no idea who wrote what due to the lack of records at the time - they just chose the best stories they could find).

One other thing:

Although I don't want to knock modern stories just so I can promote the old ones (it would not only be unfair to today's writers, but it would also be disingenious to the older stories which are classics based on their own merits) I do want to point out that today's writers have made attempts to retell many of these older stories and fallen short of what Finger and company accomplished. I don't know what Finger's, Kane's, Robinson's, etc, motivation was for creating their stories, but if they weren't attempting to come up with "stand out Batman" stories then I can't even imagine what they would have come up with if they had been trying.