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

[Robo Ape]

Originally Posted by Clea

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]

Originally Posted by Robo Ape

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]

Originally Posted by Robo Ape

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]

Originally Posted by 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?"

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]

Originally Posted by nepenthes

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]

Originally Posted by nepenthes

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]

Originally Posted by nepenthes

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.