In the history of Batman the character has had three major
flashpoints wherein he achieved mainstream prevalence and wide scale
importance. The first was in 1966
with the Adam West TV show, the second was in 1989 with Tim Burton’s Batman, and the third was in 2008 with
the release of Dark Knight. I’ve often referred to the 4 year
period from 2007-2010 as the definitive years of the 2010s and the explosion of
popularity Batman enjoyed over that period is integral to understanding the
superhero dominated landscape that we now live in. Obviously enough Batman had been present outside the comics
in the previous years of the 2000s be it through the Justice League show or his The
Batman cartoon but 2008 brought Batman to a mass audience like never
before. Dark Knight represented a moment of transcendence for Batman in a
way he never really achieved in the mainstream before; it was the moment people
realized Batman didn’t have to be meaningless.
Batman ’89 and Dark Knight Returns had established
Batman wasn’t just for kids but Dark
Knight showed the entire world that you could tell a Batman story that was
driven by a defining ethos and ideology with a point behind it. Couple that with the success of Iron Man’s winning combination of
fidelity, continuity, and character introspection and the ensuing cocktail of
geek cinema in 2008 basically set the stage for everything that would come
after. So, when DC chose to
capitalize on this success with a new Batman cartoon it only makes sense they’d
go lighter and more kid friendly than ever before.
