Batman the hugely popular comic book hero was created in 1939 by screenwriter Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane. He first appeared in Detective Comics with the ambition to repeat Superman's huge success, even if unlike the latter, Batman does not possess superpowers, but only extraordinary human physical abilities. Batman is the story of Bruce Wayne, son of the very rich Thomas Wayne. After witnessing, while still a child, the murder of his parents by a thief, little Bruce (Batman) decided to avenge them. He solemnly swore that he would spend the rest of his life fighting all criminals. For nearly twenty years, young Bruce (Batman) devoted himself solely to intense training, such that his body became capable of incredible athletic feats, he also became a great scientist. In his thirties, Bruce Wayne (Batman) decided that the time had come to move to the path of facts. As he thought: "Criminals are fearful and superstitious people, I need a disguise that terrifies them. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible a ... a ..." At that moment a bat appeared in the window. "A bat! - Bruce exclaimed - Here! It's like an omen ... I'll be a bat!". He chose the name of Batman (Batman means batman in English) and built himself a bat costume. Thanks to his qualities as a scientist, he has built a whole series of very sophisticated equipment and machinery, which allow him to face all the very dangerous supervillains that appear from time to time in his stories. Batman's alter ego, the very rich Bruce Wayne has transformed the basement of his sumptuous country villa into a scientific laboratory equipped with the most modern technological equipment. Here we find, inside a vast hangar-garagen built on the rock, his beautiful and well-equipped car (the bat-mobile), his airplane (bat-plano) and an infinity of weapons that he will also build from time to time based on the danger of his enemy: the bat-rope (a rope with hooks at the end that allows him to climb and jump from one building to another), the bat-rang (a kind of boomerang in the shape of a bat) and the bat-gun all tools that Batman will use in the course of his adventures. Since its inception (and not much has changed since then) the costume of Batman is composed of a gray tights with black shorts (with blue reflections), ankle boots and long midnight blue gloves, as a headdress he uses a mask that leaves only his mouth and chin uncovered, while on the sides he is equipped with a pair of pointy ears and wears a black cloak that folds like a bat's wings and is very useful as a parachute when Batman has to glide after taking a few prodigious leaps. Batman collaborates with Gotham City's (his hometown) police chief Commissioner Gordon, who often calls him through a bat-signal (a bright beacon with the effigy of a bat) when he has to solve some very intricate case or has to capture some super villain. In his adventures Batman is accompanied by another hero: the faithful Robin, the boy wonder. This is actually Dick Grayson, a boy who thanks to his agility, his fists and his intelligence manages to give Batman a hand. Robin dresses in a pair of red shorts, a yellow cape and green gloves and booties.

What strongly characterizes the adventures of Batman are above all the super villains that appear in his stories, a series of very strange, crazy, grotesque and original individuals, all having a particularity that distinguishes them. The most famous enemy of Batman is undoubtedly the Jocker, (who in the first Italian comic book translation, was called "the Jolly") an assassin with very white facial skin, green hair, very red lips and a perennial grin that bares his teeth. He is a kind of clown who likes to call himself a "crime artist" and his greatest joy is to carry out criminal actions accompanying them with jokes and jokes of bad taste for the unfortunate. This character (as well as all the villains in the series) gives Batman's adventures a fantastic, surreal and many times decidedly humorous setting. Another arch enemy of Batman is the Penguin, a character in some ways similar to the Joker, as he likes to have fun with criminal jokes. He is a short, plump guy who perpetually wears a tailcoat, a top hat and an umbrella which is actually a very sophisticated weapon. Another enemy of Batman is the Riddler, dressed in green tights all covered with question marks. The latter enjoys challenging Batman and Robin with quizzes whose solution always indicates the place where he will have to commit the crime. Catwoman is also very dangerous, specializing in jewelry theft. The gallery of Batman characters is really very large, so we remember only some of the many as "Two faces", a criminal who has half a normal face and the other half scarred by vitriol, "the Transformer", "the Scarecrow" , "Faccia d'Argilla" and many others. Alongside the duo Batman e Robin, very often there are also fascinating female figures such as Bat-Girl (the female version of Batman) and the Bat-Amazon, also dressed in bat-inspired clothes and in many adventures have managed to get the main protagonists out of trouble. From the adventures of Batman narrated in the comics, various films and cartoons for cinema and television have been taken. But it was thanks to the reinterpretation of the great cartoonist Frank Miller that Batman experienced a new youth starting in the 1989s. Batman's masterpiece comic has managed to give this figure that gothic and gloomy aspect typical of his debut, giving the stories a lot of action and drama, without neglecting the ironic aspect that has always distinguished him. In XNUMX, thanks to Tim Burton's film, Batman achieves unprecedented success that continues today, in fact at its first release it broke all the box office records in the history of cinema and fueled such a bat-mania that it became a business in the sale of gadgets. In the various Batman films that have been shot in recent years we must remember the splendid interpretation of Jack Nicholson in the role of the Jocker and that of Jim Carrey in the role of the Riddler.

Video of Batman the animated series

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD
For the 1st time on Cartoon Network
From 3 May 2010, from Monday to Thursday at 19.35pm

The BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD series arrives for the 1st time on Cartoon Network: there will be many new adventures of the bat man that will entertain the young viewers of the channel.

Animated transposition of a series of comics, the TV series brings back to the small screen the knight of the night flanked in each episode by other characters of the DC Universe, to face the bad guys and solve the crimes.
The characters that from time to time flank Batman are this time the perhaps less famous (but no less tough) superoes created by DC Comics, one of the most important and active comic book publishers in the United States of America, which counts among its superhero protagonists like Superman and Wonder Woman. In this series we find, in fact, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Plastic Man, in addition to the inevitable Joker.
The show tells an adventure in each episode, the tone of the series is much lighter than the previous ones and reflects a fun retro mood of comic book adventures.

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