Written by Sam Hamm
Art by Joe Quinones
Published by DC Comics
Oh, how I have been waiting for this.
Batman is my favorite movie, after all.
It’s the movie that I felt in my soul at age 8, seeing it the first time in the theater that summer of 1989. I already was a Batman fan, from the 1960s TV show and the many cartoon appearances.
Then that movie showed up, a comic book dream wrapped in Tim Burton’s signature dark fantasy and Danny Elfman’s most iconic film score.
I got the action figures, I wore the Halloween costume, and I still have the VHS tape that my grandfather got us that Christmas. (Yup, with the Diet Coke movie tie-in commercial and everything.)
Anton Furst’s design of Gotham City, with its art deco buildings stacked atop each other, remains influential to this day. The Batmobile design remains among the greatest ever done. Michael Keaton was the first to create the “Batman voice.” And I remember my father rolling with laughter watching crazy Jack Nicholson as the Joker, stealing every scene.
This version of the Caped Crusader, my first monster blockbuster and father of the superhero movies we have today, is a part of me forever.
Batman ’89 #1 does not disappoint, either.
A six-issue miniseries written by Sam Hamm, who co-wrote the Batman screenplay and story for Batman Returns, the issue contains all the cinematic flavor of the Burton-directed Batman films while expanding the world and filling it with more characters from the comics or dropped from the finished products.
And it’s lovingly illustrated by Joe Quinones, whose concept art from this Batman ’89 universe set the internet ablaze and inspired DC not to turn away sacks of nostalgia cash. I don’t blame them when the product looks and reads this good.
In this story, Batman remains a costumed vigilante collaborating with Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. However, public sentiment around Batman remains mixed after presumably years of operation and stopping the Joker and Penguin. Despite those victories, violent crime remains high as the city prepares for its annual Halloween celebration in Gotham Square.
As a group of Joker-themed criminals attempt to hijack armored cars full of cash with a military helicopter, Batman appears and foils the plot. But this Batman does so by causing the copter to crash and leaving a security guard killed, another with a fractured skull, and $40 million in property damage.
That kind of collateral damage draws the ire of District Attorney Harvey Dent – returned to the likeness of role originator Billy Dee Williams. It also stirs up his political ambitions for state attorney general, and so he begins his crusade to get Gordon out of power by taking it to shutting down Batman. How could he progress as a lawman if he represents such a lawless city that works with a costumed vigilante?
Hamm is already trying to lay the groundwork for Dent’s turn to Two-Face, though I’m not sure how successful it will be in trying to attach a dark side to Williams’ smooth portrayal.
An intriguing part of the Dent character in this comic book, however, is how it leans into Dent being a Black man by showing his roots in the Black neighborhood of Burnside. Hamm brings up the thematic idea of Dent having two faces by dint of his double consciousness as a successful Black man in white society and having to “look the part.” Of course, dating Barbara Gordon, a sergeant in the GCPD, may not help his image in the old ’hood.
This all builds to Batman appearing in Burnside as the National Guard and local police have been called upon to protect Gotham. It’s also clear this is the pathway to seeing the version of Robin as a streetwise Black youth that Marlon Wayans was expected to play on screen in Batman Returns. (Hell, look at the Kenner action figure, which may have undergone a repaint once Robin was dropped.)
So far, these are interesting threads around putting the old-money, white, aristocratic Bruce Wayne into a Black ghetto based around early ’90s ideas of race and social inequality. Especially at a time when diversifying fiction across the board has been such a rallying cry in the past year. (I mean, even Saturday Night Live already made good comic hay out of that premise back in 2017.)
I can’t count on Hamm – a 65-year-old white guy – to land this plane, given categorical track records on this kind of thing. But we’ll see if he does with proper, modern editorial oversight.
That said, buckle up for a very good piece of comics for those who love those Tim Burton Batman movies or remember them fondly for feeling so grown up and serious to the material, even when they were ridiculous.
