The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon | review by Stephen Theaker

Glen Weldon is a respected writer on books and comic books for NPR, the American equivalent of Radio 4, and a panellist on their excellent weekly podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour, where his enthusiastically lugubrious voice, ad hoc taxonomies, and ever-readiness with an overarching theory make his contributions always entertaining. Though this sadly isn't a review of the audiobook edition, his distinctive voice can still be heard in every sentence, making this book (Simon & Schuster, hb 336pp, £16.99) a real pleasure from start to finish. Literally to the finish, since the bibliography is annotated with comments from him, and because he's a very interesting chap those comments are very interesting too.

The book is dedicated to Bill Finger, the original Batman writer, and it does a great deal to show how important his contributions to the character were. Even those who have read Batman books by the dozen may be surprised to learn that Bob Kane, “creator” of the Bat-Man, did so by tracing an Alex Raymond drawing of Flash Gordon on a rope swing, colouring his outfit red and blue, and giving him a domino mask. Milton “Bill” Finger was a quiet kid who wrote the scripts, and none of Bob Kane's editors even knew he existed, but Weldon tells us that Finger suggested the ears, the cape, the gloves and the colour scheme.

The dark knight's lack of regard for human life in his latest cinematic outing, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – the result, perhaps, of a death in the family – has provoked much controversy, but it's worth remembering that this is a guy who even at his jolliest still punches and kicks a number of people very hard in the face every night. Chances are, that would be enough to rack up quite the body count even without guns mounted on the Batmobile.

From Weldon we learn how little that violence conflicts with the character's early days: in his first year he killed twenty-four men, two vampires, a pack of werewolves and several giant mutants. Weldon argues that it's to this “grim, violent proto-Batman” that Denny O'Neil returned in 1970, establishing that as the “real” Batman once the swinging sixties were over: making the loner, badass Batman the default inspiration for later retellings by Frank Miller, Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan and Grant Morrison.

This isn't a book that trundles along with the critical orthodoxy; it has its own ideas at every turn. Apparently the Batman tv series was not well-liked among American fans, despised even, which may be a surprise to those of us brought up to think of it as a bona fide television classic. But this book sticks up for it, and identifies the neverending (and not so positive) effects of the ensuing backlash, which even now has barely petered out. When Weldon talks about Dr Fredric Wertham and his crusade against comics, readers may be shocked to see him say that, at least with regard to Batman, “The guy had a point.”

Being gay, the young Glen Weldon didn't just notice the “subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism” in the comic, he rather enjoyed it. Of course he notes how Wertham manipulated and misrepresented the evidence (for example deleting statements that the young men were much more strongly aroused by Tarzan in his loincloth and Marvel's Sub-Mariner in his skimpy swim trunks), but also praises how passionate and progressive he was in calling out racist and sexist stereotypes.

What Weldon really tries to get at is why Batman works. Why he appeals to nerds and why he is popular with normals (to use his words for those groups), why virtually all his films are huge financial successes, why so many of the comics, games and cartoons work so well, whatever the mood, whatever the style, from the sublime Batman: the Animated Series, which Weldon adores, to the technicolour team-up Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the finale of which he describes as a tour de force.

Partly, of course, this is because the character is owned by a huge multimedia company which can invest in paying the best talent to work on him. Put all that talent to work on Bouncing Boy and you'd still end up with some great comics, games and movies. For Weldon, though, what sets Batman apart, what creates the bond between Batman and Batfans, is a very specific thing: “the oath”, Bruce Wayne's candlelight vow to spend the rest of his life warring on all criminals to avenge the deaths of his parents. That is to say, he is just as obsessed as his fans. ****

This review originally appeared in Interzone #264.

Theakerly thoughts #5: Left Behind, PCHH, Simon Amstell on Wait Wait

Thought 1. Received our first ever payment from Amazon in respect of Kindle sales. I think we finally reached a magical £20 barrier, and it only took three years or so! The future is bright!

Thought 2. I’m beginning to wonder whether, if one purpose of genre societies is to give people involved in that genre something in common, the mistakes they make can actually be a good thing. Writers are happy to have something to talk about, about which to be interesting and clever, even if it makes them mad. The logical consequence of this is that societies should actively plan to do something controversial on a regular basis!

Thought 3. Ranjna and I have finally started to get into Breaking Bad. In the same way that it’s hard to get Ranjna to watch dramas made in the UK, it’s hard getting me to watch dramas without aliens or spaceships. I try to kid myself that Breaking Bad is set in the early days of Borderlands, before things got really crazy, or maybe a retro town in the Firefly universe. Lawrence of Arabia was much more fun when I imagined it was set on Arrakis.

Thought 4. We watched Left Behind: The Movie last weekend. It’s an odd film about an attack on the United States of America (and, though not shown on screen, the rest of the world) by the shadowy head of a religious organisation with its roots in the Middle East, who kills over 125 million people directly (I think that was the number), many of them children and babies, all of them entirely innocent and wiped from the face of the earth in an eyeblink. Untold millions more are indirectly hurt and killed, for example as a result of planes and cars crashing after their drivers are killed. Astonishingly, the film sides with the quislings who think the best course of action is to start worshipping the mass murderer! Hopefully the second and third instalments will show us some real American heroes who won’t stop fighting till they end his atrocities forever.

Thought 5. I love shredding my to-do lists. Partly because it’s so satisfying to be done with the day’s work, and partly because we have lovely orange Niceday to-do pads that make very attractive strips, but also because there’s absolutely no need to shred them at all, and I love the idea of someone patiently piecing them together in the hope of finding some useful personal information.

Thought 6. I also love Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast from NPR, which I started to listen to a couple of months ago. It’s refreshing to hear people talking intelligently about their love of television, movies, games, comics and music, without the specimen-on-a-slide feel that you get when similar subjects are considered in, say, the BBC’s Late Review. They talk about what they love, but don’t ignore the things they find problematic. They’re also really decent about avoiding spoilers, which makes it listenable even for those of us in the UK.

Thought 7. Still on podcasts, Rambling Through Genre, Episode 8 features Lizzie Barrett, one of the jurors on this year’s British Fantasy Award for best newcomer (also known as the Sydney J. Bounds award), which comes up briefly, though Lizzie is appropriately discreet! The sound quality is poor, but Lizzie and the hosts have lots of interesting things to say. Well worth a listen. Elsewhere, Lizzie has suggested that such awards might be better judged anonymously to lessen bias, which is an interesting thought, one that might become practical as more publishers submit work for judging electronically. It would be harder to make it work with paperbacks, which often have the author’s name on every other page. It would also, as Lizzie mentions, mean nominations couldn’t be announced until the judging was done. But certainly an idea worth bearing in mind, and a good thought experiment.

Thought 8. I hope not to become a word count bore, but my plan to write 250 words a day seems to be working out. I’ve kept the chain going for over three weeks now. Admittedly, many of those words have been going into blog fluff like this, but the reviews are stacking up too, as well as a few bits of fiction. By the time we reach November I hope my writing muscles will be all set for NaNoWriMo, which I haven't won once since standing down from being an ML. I’m also finding it quite therapeutic; where things are bothering me I can write something about them here. Some thoughts may not ultimately be suitable for publication (there were originally thirteen thoughts in this post!), but it’s healthy to write them down and get them out of my system.

Thought 9. I was listening today to Peter Sagal’s appearance on NPR’s trivia quiz show, Ask Me Another (podcast 222, from 5 September 2013), and he was asked about the worst ever experience when hosting his own NPR quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, which is like a laid-back, avuncular version of our own News Quiz. Turns out it was the time they had Simon Amstell on as a panellist. Can’t believe I missed that one. Sounds like a classic example of Amstell’s comedy of awkwardness. Apparently he made fun of the show’s beloved topical limericks and the crowd turned against him! Peter Sagal said Amstell had obviously never heard their show before (how many people in the UK have?), but you can’t imagine they’d seen anything of his either if his approach came as a surprise. Peter Sagal did say he found it very funny. I hope I can track that full episode down, but there are highlights here.

Thought 10. I’ve been listening to the five new Pixies songs so much that I’m beginning to worry about wearing them out, so I’ve mixed in a few Black Francis/Frank Black/Grand Duchy songs that are in the same vein. “Black Suit” is the one of those that I’d really like to hear the Pixies record or perform. Always makes me think of Matt Bomer in White Collar.