Batman - the story of the superhero of comics and cartoons

Batman the hugely popular comic book hero, was conceived in 1939 by screenwriter Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane. He appeared for the first time in the books of Detective Comics with the ambition to repeat the enormous success of Superman, even if contrary to the latter, Batman does not have 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 on 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 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. on the basis of 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 Batman costume consists of a gray tights with black shorts (with blue reflections), ankle boots and long gloves in midnight blue, as a headdress he uses a mask that leaves only his mouth and chin exposed, while on the sides he has a pair of pointed ears and wears a black cloak that folds like the wings of a bat and is very useful as a parachute, when Batman has to glide after doing some prodigious leap. 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-criminals who 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") a killer with a very white 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's 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. This likes to challenge Batman and Robin with quizzes whose solution always indicates the place where he will have to carry out the crime. Catwoman is also very dangerous, specializing in jewelry theft. The gallery of Batman characters is really very large, so we only remember some of the many like "Two faces", a criminal who has half a normal face and the other half scarred by vitriol, "the Transformer", "the Scarecrow" , "Face of Clay" and many others. Alongside the duo Batman e Robin, very often also fascinated female figures like 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 restore to 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.