Batman is arguably the most iconic comic book hero of all time.
But what's his connection with a senator from Vermont?
Who are the real-life Batmen?
And who really came up with the character in the first place?
Keep watching to find out more about everyone's favorite Caped Crusader.
Most people are aware of the impact that Bob Kane had on the creation of the World's Greatest
Detective — but he wasn't the only person who can put his name to Batman.
Indeed, when Bill Finger earned a credit as the character's co-creator in 2015, it marked
the end of a long struggle for recognition for this little-known comic book writer.
In recent years, it has become widely accepted that Finger was responsible for many of the
innovations that had previously been credited to Kane.
This included the idea to turn Kane's red-shirted early concept for Batman into the design that
ultimately became the Dark Knight's first costume.
Not only that, but Finger also conceived, co-created, or co-developed both Alfred and
Commissioner Gordon, as well as Catwoman, the Joker, and even Robin.
The latter two were also heavily influenced by Jerry Robinson, who designed both characters
and who, according to him, actually came up with the Joker in the first place.
Robinson also claims that he gave the Boy Wonder his superhero name.
Of course, none of this is to say that Bob Kane didn't have a hand in crafting Batman's
world — but his contributions are as overstated as Finger and Robinson's are overlooked.
In addition to the many characters that influenced Bill Finger and Bob Kane when creating Batman,
the Dark Knight himself has a few in-universe heroes who inspired his superhero career.
The most well-known, of course, is Zorro.
The legendary swordsman is fictional in Bruce Wayne's world, but his black, caped costume
imprinted itself onto Bruce's mind when he saw The Mark of Zorro on the night his parents
were killed.
Another major figure who led Bruce to the life of a vigilante was the original Green
Lantern, Alan Scott.
This iteration of the Green Lantern not only defended Gotham in the mid-20th century, but
also met a young Thomas Wayne.
Bruce also has a childhood connection to Alan, having once witnessed the Green Lantern evade
several blasts from the original Icicle's Cold Gun.
Batman: The Animated Series introduces another costumed role model for Bruce Wayne: the Gray
Ghost, a fictional TV hero played by Simon Trent — whose voice actor happens to be
none other than Adam West.
"As a kid, I used to watch you with my father.
The Gray Ghost was my hero."
"So it wasn't all for nothing…"
Both the Gray Ghost and his alter ego are eventually introduced in the main comics continuity,
though not simultaneously: The Gray Ghost debuts in comics with a different man under
the mask, named Clancy Johnson, while Simon Trent makes his first in-continuity appearance
in Gotham Academy #4, during DC's "New 52" timeline.
A surprising debate has raged within the Batman fandom in recent years: Does Batman kill?
Some might point to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which he clearly does kill
more than a few people; the same holds true in the two Tim Burton-directed Batman movies.
In Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, Batman is more than happy to let his enemies
die, even if he refuses to kill them himself.
Hardcore Batman fans, however, will point out that movies aren't exactly the source
material — and in the comics, the issue is far more complicated.
Batman certainly has no problem dispatching his foes during his earliest appearances,
but he moves away from the practice not long after Robin enters the picture.
Those early killings are removed from the "main" Batman's history when the Golden Age
Batman is retconned into having existed on Earth-Two.
Since then, Batman has been largely against killing, once even calling murder "theft of
the highest order."
That said, he's been known to break this rule, having been responsible for a few deaths in
certain runs — and he even tries to kill Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Annual #8.
He also may have unintentionally killed a few dolphins armed with plastic explosives
in Detective Comics #405, although, for some reason, this incident doesn't seem to come
up much during fans' arguments over the subject.
Ask anyone what colors Batman's costumes tend to be and they'll probably list off black,
blue, gray, and yellow.
What they might not know, however, is that Batman's very first costume also included
a color more commonly associated with his greatest enemy.
That's right — in addition to being much smaller than they'd later become, Batman's
gloves were once purple.
Batman's small, purple gloves are a one-issue wonder, appearing in his debut story in Detective
Comics #27.
The Dark Knight would then leave his hands bare in #28 and on the cover of #29, before
very overtly deciding to wear blue gloves on the pages of that same issue.
Since then, his handwear has been mostly black, gray and blue, but the purple gloves have
returned on a few notable occasions.
These include Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Zero Year storyline in the 2011 Batman comic
series, in which they form a part of a more makeshift costume for Batman.
They also showed up on the Golden Age version of Batman in Detective Comics #1027 and the
two recent Generations one-shots.
You might think the famous giant penny in Batman's cave is a "memento" snagged from
Two-Face, given how coins are essential to his decision-making process.
"You live… you die."
"Now we're talking."
In some cases, you'd be right: In the post-Crisis continuity, the massive copper coin is revealed
to be Two-Face's; it also belonged to him in Batman: The Animated Series.
Originally, however, the man behind the mammoth penny is the aptly-named Joe Coyne, who debuts
in World's Finest Comics #30.
Years of frustration from constantly trying to amass wealth and only ending up with pennies
leads Coyne to "coin" himself the Penny Plunderer.
He swears revenge on the police who have incarcerated him by dedicating himself to crime, with pennies
as his signature motif.
Batman and Robin confront the Plunderer at a museum while Coyne and his gang are trying
to steal an oversized 1 cent stamp — in the process, they manage to subdue some of
the thieves with a giant penny that happens to be at the same exhibition.
Not long thereafter, the penny ends up in Batman's cave.
Since then, pretty much every origin story for the penny has either involved the Penny
Plunderer, Two-Face, or even both characters.
Interestingly, the same series that introduces the penny, World's Finest Comics, later contradicts
its earlier origin for the penny by saying Batman had obtained it while dueling the Joker.
Maybe giant pennies just aren't that hard to come by in Gotham City.
Batman is no stranger to strange adventures, and by the end of the 1940s the character
had encountered bizarre supervillains, time travel, and even Martians.
Yet when the 1950s and early '60s rolled around, Batman began feeling a little more...
super.
During these stories, Batman's comic book adventures became far more similar to Superman's,
as alien threats, sci-fi gadgets and monsters crop up more often.
Similarly, Batman's allies, who already included Robin and occasionally Batwoman, expand into
a full-on Bat-Family — echoing how a Super-Family formed around Superman during the same time
period.
These growing similarities to Superman were far from accidental.
DC Comics management at the time pushed Batman editor Jack Schiff into having the Caped Crusader's
comics emulate the Man of Steel's, whose comics outsold Batman's by quite a margin.
Sadly, that sales gap didn't narrow when Batman tried doing things Superman's way, prompting
the Dark Knight's adventures to revert to a more successful "back-to-basics" approach
in 1964.
If you've ever looked at Batman's Zur-En-Arrh costume and decided that nobody on Earth would
ever willingly wear something like that — well, you wouldn't be that far off from the truth.
Originally, the suit belongs to an alien named Tlano, who becomes the Batman of the planet
Zur-En-Arrh after viewing the original Batman's exploits with long-range equipment.
Tlano then enlists his role model's help in fending off an invasion from another alien
world, and Batman is surprised to discover that simply being on Tlano's planet grants
him super-strength, invulnerability and flight.
Sound familiar?
Small wonder, as the story, from Batman #113, is titled "Batman – Superman of Planet X!"
During writer Grant Morrison's run on Batman, the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh is retconned into
being Bruce Wayne himself, specifically an alternate persona created to counter mind
control.
Consequently, the events of Batman #113 are explained as a hallucination induced by Simon
Hurt — and perhaps even a subconscious desire on Batman's part to have powers like Superman.
This would also explain why the Zur-En-Arrh costume is so colorful, although Batman overtly
seems to attribute that to Robin in Batman #680, and it's hard not to note the visual
similarities between the two.
As for where the name "Zur-En-Arrh" comes from?
A misremembered "Zorro in Arkham," which is the end of a sentence Thomas Wayne utters
after he, Martha, and Bruce have finished watching The Mark of Zorro.
One strange quirk of Bruce Wayne's life is that crucially important events often seem
to happen to him while he's attending masquerade balls.
One example is a costume party held in his youth, at which his father wears a Bat-themed
disguise and is even referred to as a "Bat-Man" when he wins the prize for best costume.
Clearly, the get-up leaves an impact on Bruce, as he himself admits in the same issue.
Soon after, Batman even puts on the outfit himself to scare mobster Lew Moxon.
Simon Hurt also wears the costume as part of his ploy to convince Batman that he is
Thomas and somehow survived Joe Chill's attack.
The other masquerade ball that leaves a mark on Bruce is the one at which Barbara Gordon
debuts as Batgirl, in Detective Comics #359.
One of the biggest scenes in the film Batman Returns even takes place at a masquerade ball,
in which Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle learn each other's costumed identities and the Penguin
abducts his former associate, Max Shreck.
Then, in The Dark Knight Rises, a slightly less extravagant masquerade event plays host
to another meeting between Bruce Wayne and Selina.
"You're all gonna wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest
of us…"
Most of Batman's partners in crime-fighting are pretty conventional, as far as sidekicks
go.
Naturally, there are the many Robins who have worked for him over the years, some of whom
have graduated to new identities, such as Nightwing.
There have also been multiple Batgirls, along with unique junior heroes such as Bluebird.
There are some pretty strange outliers, however.
One such example is Jarro, a tiny leftover piece of Starro the Conqueror that Batman
takes in as his own and places in a jar in the Hall of Justice.
The diminutive starfish views Batman as a father and dreams of becoming his next crime-fighting
partner, even donning a small Robin costume at one point and holding his own against the
Legion of Doom.
He also happens to be the strongest psychic the DC Universe has ever known.
Batman's sidekicks get even odder once you venture outside of continuity: The Bizarro
World graphic novel, for instance, introduces Monkey the Monkey Wonder, a circus monkey
Batman adopts and tries to induct into the crime-fighting life... to less than stellar
results.
DC's heroes have often been compared to mythological characters, with Batman being frequently equated
to Hades or Pluto.
So it's perhaps natural that he has particularly unique interactions with Darkseid, the New
God of the fiery planet Apokolips.
In Superman/Batman #12, for instance, Batman earns the god's respect by threatening to
create hundreds of new fire pits across the planet unless Darkseid releases his hold on
Supergirl.
The two face off again during Final Crisis, when Batman fires a bullet at him made of
Radion; Darkseid retaliates by sending Batman back in time with his Omega Beams, simultaneously
turning the Dark Knight into a kind of "bomb" against time itself.
There have been times where Batman has also served Darkseid, albeit not always loyally.
When the Justice League accidentally hands Earth to Darkseid on a platter by destroying
the Philosopher's Stone in the JLA story "Rock of Ages," Batman gains the New God's trust
by posing as the infamous Apokoliptian torturer Desaad.
This storyline likely influenced Batman's role in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War,
which is set in a future where Darkseid's also conquered Earth and the Dark Knight serves
him willingly, having been brainwashed.
Rather than disguising himself as one of Darkseid's traditional servants, however, Batman performs
his duties as himself, albeit connected to Metron's Mobius Chair — a nod to another
comic book saga, The Darkseid War.
Bruce Wayne officially begins his crusade as Batman as an early adult, meaning he never
spent any time as a teenage superhero.
Yet in the Elseworlds story Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone, a teenager named Jamadagni Renuka
attaches a device to her ex-boyfriend Alec Swanwick's neck, downloading Batman's personality
into his mind.
While he's never outright confirmed to be the original Dark Knight, the mentally transformed
Alec's demeanor, gruff voice and deductive skills make it pretty clear he's meant to
be the Batman himself.
In this story, he's given a different codename — "Captain Thug" — while Jamadagni and
her friends are christened names like "Witchy-Poo" and "Prosthetic Lass," which are subtle references
to Teen Titans Raven and Cyborg.
That said, in the main DCU canon, multiple Teen Titans have taken on the Batman mantle.
During "Battle for the Cowl," ex-Titans Jason Todd and Tim Drake briefly assume the Batman
identity.
Dick Grayson, the Titans' original leader, has also been Batman, in both the 1990s "Prodigal"
storyline and after Darkseid sends Bruce Wayne back in time.
Many readers of DC Comics during the 1990s may remember Elseworlds, a DC Comics sub-imprint
meant to reinterpret DC's characters in various ways.
Throughout that decade and into the early 2000s, Elseworlds stories were a staple of
the DC line, with several of the imprint's stories being incorporated into the DC equivalent
of the multiverse.
The funny thing is that Elseworlds was essentially created by accident, according to writer-editor
extraordinaire Brian Augustyn, who wrote the very first issue without realizing it at the
time: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight.
As he explains in the deluxe edition of the graphic novel, Gotham by Gaslight first came
about when fellow comics giant Mark Waid suggested an annual of the Secret Origins title that
told alternative histories of DC favorites — essentially the germ of what Elseworlds
would become.
Gotham by Gaslight, however, became a standalone story instead, and years of Elseworlds specials,
one-shots and graphic novels followed in the same vein.
Interestingly, the first comic to actually be given the title Elseworlds was not Gotham
by Gaslight, but another Batman story — namely Batman: Holy Terror, written by Secret Origins
contributor Alan Brennert.
Several big-name actors have come close to assuming the role of the Caped Crusader at
one point or another, from Pierce Brosnan to Bill Murray.
Interestingly, many of the performers who almost became Batman still ended up appearing
in superhero movies — primarily as villains.
Josh Brolin was considered for the role of the Dark Knight in Batman v Superman: Dawn
of Justice, but instead wound up taking his MCU role as Thanos to great heights; he also
became a major Marvel Comics hero, Cable, in Deadpool 2.
Jake Gyllenhaal also auditioned for the role of Batman in Christopher Nolan's films and
eventually joined the MCU as Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Some actors who almost played Batman even landed a villain role in the very same film.
Cillian Murphy auditioned for the role of Batman in Batman Begins and was later cast
as Scarecrow instead.
"He's here."
"Who?"
"The Batman…"
Meanwhile, Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in The Dark Knight, declined to play Batman
in Begins after being offered the part personally by Nolan.
Amazingly, Ledger's reason for doing so was that he claimed he would never take a part
in a superhero film.
In addition to inspiring cosplayers around the world to don his cowl, Gotham's Creature
of the Night has imitators who have gone as far as to adapt his superhero lifestyle, too.
Canada has Brampton Batman, aka Stephen Lawrence, who spends his evenings helping those in need
and even stopping the occasional crime.
"If you'd like, I can hold you like this."
There's also Alexander Brovedani, alias Toronto Batman.
Though largely retired, he still makes an occasional public appearance.
Japan, meanwhile, has "Chibatman," the Batman-like hero of the city Chiba.
He once told the BBC his goal is to "bring the smiles back" to everyone he meets, ever
since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
Dark Knights have also been spotted around the U.S. as well, the most endearing perhaps
being Batkid, whose famous one day-turn as the Caped Crusader is the subject of the documentary
Batkid Begins.
Sadly, not every Batman has shared Bruce Wayne's long career: the Batman of the U.S. state
of Maryland, Lenny B. Robinson died during a traffic accident in 2015.
Nevertheless, he left behind an admirable legacy of brightening children's days whenever
he'd set foot in hospitals dressed as Gotham City's most famous defender.
Not every government official in Gotham City likes Batman, but he's got himself at least
one major real life politician on his side: U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
Leahy has been in nearly every Batman movie from Batman Forever through the Dark Knight
trilogy and up to Batman v Superman, only skipping Batman Begins along the way.
He's even lent a voice to Batman: The Animated Series, on which he played the Governor.
Leahy sat out The Batman, however — as much as he'd have liked to take part, he explained
that his workload as Senator kept him from making his customary trips to Gotham for Matt
Reeves' movie.
In addition to joining Batman on the silver screen, Leahy has added his own dab of ink
to Batman's comic book adventures.
Both Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman and Batman: Death of Innocents: The Horror
of Landmines bear text pieces written by the Senator.
As Leahy told The Washington Post, the latter comic — which the Vermont politician gave
to the entire Senate — may have actually been instrumental in getting his historic
anti-landmine legislation passed.
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