Happy 80th, Batman!

By: Arturo Rojas

On March 30, 1939, the now-historic issue 27 of the title Detective Comics was published, in which Bob Kane and Bill Finger introduced Batman for the first time, one of the most iconic characters in comic books and popular culture. Because of this, the world today is dressed to the nines…, or rather, caped to the nines, since the Dark Knight is turning 80.

It's easy to say, but that's eight decades spent fighting petty crooks, dangerous psychopaths, and intergalactic villains alike, and, more than once, his own Justice League teammates (not just anyone would be willing to take on Superman or Wonder Woman) — in short, being the bad boy among the good guys.

It's perhaps this last quality that has kept his army of followers not just holding steady, but growing with every new generation of readers.

That moral duality, which comes from his pulp and noir roots, makes him a hero who is not only capable of using the same tactics as the criminals he fights, but who also seems to find a certain delight in doing so (“Of course we're criminals. We've always been. We have to be,” The Dark Knight Returns, 1996) — yet who, at the same time, possesses the mental strength and discipline needed not to cross the line separating hero from villain (“We've both stared into the abyss, but when it looked back, you blinked,” Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, 2010).

An ordinary, everyday man (no, “The man… most dangerous on Earth,” JLA #3, 1997) who has pushed both his mind and his body to the limits of human perfection, who has confronted his own darkness to become a symbol that delivers a measure of the justice that most people affected by crime wish they could have: knowing that the perpetrators will feel firsthand a little — perhaps more — of the pain, anguish, and fear they inflicted on their victims.

We must admit it's comforting to know that even after 80 years, when we walk the dark streets of any city on Earth, when we sense shadows lurking at us in every alley, there's another shadow lurking after them… the shadow of the Bat.

Happy 80th, Batman!