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[BATMAN: CHILD OF DREAMS]

Thanks I know there are plenty more references in the comics, I'm just wracking my brain trying to remember them all. But for now here's a fairly substantial one. So substantial in fact that I was surprised to find no one had mentioned it before in any other thread. It should interest the members of this site.

BATMAN: CHILD OF DREAMS

The most heavily Burton-influenced Batman comic of all time is probably Batman: Child of Dreams (originally published in 2000-2001, paperback edition published in 2003). Written and drawn by Kia Asamiya, and adapted into English by Road to Perdition writer Max Allan Collins, this graphic novel was an experimental fusion of Batman and manga. It was very heavily influenced by the Burton movies, and the paperback edition includes an interview with Asamiya in which he credits the 89 movie for introducing him to the Batman mythology.

"...what really got me into Batman was the Tim Burton Batman movie. I started reading American comics more at that point too."

There are plenty of references to both Burton movies throughout the book, but I'll start with the most obvious one. The Batman in this story was allegedly modelled on Michael Keaton, and several reviews I've read have pointed out the visual similarity. The Batman Wiki page on Keaton's Batman even goes so far as to list Batman: Child of Dreams as one of his appearances: http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Batman_(Michael_Keaton)#Appearances

The image of Batman on the cover portrays a remarkable resemblance to the actor.



But while this story does not take place within the standard Post-Crisis canon, it isn't technically part of the Burtonverse canon either (if such a thing exists). Both the Joker and Penguin are still alive, Harvey Dent is Caucasian, and Commissioner Gordon resembles his comic counterpart rather than Pat Hingle. The similarities with the Burton films mostly stem from Batman himself and his arsenal of gadgets.



Gotham City looks similar to the version from the 1989 film. Note the bridge on the left side of the image. Its explained in the back of the book that manga is typically read from right to left, as opposed to the western style of left to right. In order to make it easier for westerners to read, the pages were flipped horizontally (which is why Two-Face's scarred side is on the right side of his face rather than the left). So originally the bridge would be on the right side of the panel, just like the opening shot of Batman 89.



The main love interest in the story is a Japanese TV journalist called Yuko Yagi, who's come to Gotham in the hopes of landing a one-on-one interview with Batman. The first time she and Batman meet is when the Dark Knight rescues her from a Two-Face imitator (the central plot concerns a criminal mastermind deploying genetically enhanced imitations of Batman's greatest foes). This scene is clearly influenced by his first encounter with Selina Kyle in Batman Returns. The Two-Face imitator has a gun to Yuko's head. Batman hurls a Batarang so that it becomes embedded in a wall, making his opponent think he's missed. Then he tugs on an attached cable, pulling the Batarang out of the wall so that it hits the Two-Face imitator and knocks the gun out of his hand, allowing Yuko to escape.



Some of the reviews I read pointed out that while Batman looks like Michael Keaton, Bruce Wayne looks less like the actor. This is true to an extent, and Wayne chiefly resembles a standard manga character. He has straighter hair, a more prominent nose and a smaller forehead than Keaton. But his eyebrows, jaw, mouth and cheekbones still resemble those of the actor.



Yuko is invited on a date by Bruce Wayne. She dresses for the occasion in a long black coat and matching beret.



The dinner date takes place at Wayne Manor, and begins with a series of images depicting the two talking and eating together, implying a cosy and intimate meal...



...until the following page reveals they are actually sitting at opposite ends of a long dining table. A gag taken straight from Batman 89.



The date ends prematurely when the Joker is sighted in Gotham Park, standing atop a mountain of pills and beckoning to nearby spectators. The way he goads the crowd in this scene recalls his dialogue during the parade in Batman 89.



This is later revealed to be another imitator, and the real Joker is still locked up in Arkham Asylum. Nevertheless, this imitator has been injected with the Joker's DNA and displays the same criminal characteristics. Batman tries to take an explosive detonator off him, only for the Joker to pull the same detachable-hand trick from the movie.



Another fake villain who shows up is the Riddler, and Asamiya seems to have modelled him on the Jim Carrey version from Batman Forever.



The Joker imitator then lures Yuko into a trap by tricking her into thinking she has a date with Bruce.



But Batman rescues Yuko from the fake Joker, at one point hoisting her from the jaws of death using the grapple gun.



Batman then takes her back to the Batcave.



Unlike the movie, Yuko is unconscious when he takes her to the Batcave, but wide awake when he takes her back to the city.



Notice the dialogue in this scene. Batman only speaks when he has to and is generally characterised in a similarly reserved manner as Keaton's Batman. Throughout the story he refers to the fact that he likes to remain in the shadows and that, if he does his job properly, no one should even know he was there; echoing Burton's sentiments that Batman is a character who likes to remain hidden.

Also, Bruce Wayne is this story is not shown to be an extrovert partier, but rather a focused and intense businessman. Early in the book we are told:
"But somewhere along his tortured, if righteous path, the bat became dominant, of the two words making one...the man beneath the cape and cowl overshadowed by the dark role he played on the darker streets of Gotham. He was born Bruce Wayne, and yet now he spent his days pretending to be himself...ever since becoming a nightmare figment of his own imagination...even as children of all ages acted out their own Batman fantasies."
This could easily be a description of Keaton's Batman, uncomfortable in his own skin and immersed in the monster he's created out of his childhood fears.

The Batmobile in this comic is also clearly inspired by the Burton version.



In the interview featured in the paperback edition, Asamiya is asked what his favourite aspects of the Batman myth are. He replies:

"Personally, I love cars, so if I had the money I'd buy the actual Batmobile from the movie, register it and drive it in Japan. That's my dream."

Batman's costume seems to be based on the movie version too. The cowl, gloves and boots all look like the ones seen in the films.





On their way back to the city, Batman and Yuko are attacked by a Batman imitator. After defeating him, the real Batman removes the imposter's mask. He is shown to tear the material in a manner recalling the umasking scene from Batman Returns. The texture of the material as it rips suggests it is made from the same rubbery material.



Later in the story Yuko dreams about the first time she saw Batman when she was a child. This flashback has blatant parallels with the opening sequence of Batman 89. Yuko and her parents are visiting Gotham and walking the streets late at night. Her father struggles to locate their hotel on a map, while her mother suggests they find a taxi.



They wander down and alleyway and are confronted by a pair of muggers, one of whom is dressed like Eddie (George Roth) from the 89 film.



But of course Batman comes to the rescue, and the muggers turn to find him standing behind them, cloak spread in a wing-like fashion.



The story takes Batman to Tokyo on the trail of the main villain. Once there, we see him suit up – with the focus on the belt fastening, cape and chest emblem – similar to the suit-up scene from the 89 movie.



While investigating Tokyo, Batman finds himself face to face with Catwoman. Only this is actually Yuko, who has been injected with Selina Kyle's DNA by the villain and brainwashed into acting like the real Catwoman. She immediately attacks Batman and the two of them fight on a rooftop.



At one point Catwoman strikes Batman's ribs in the same weak spot she identified in Batman Returns.



She also makes a couple of nine-lives puns.





During the final showdown, Batman's opponent has injected himself with Bruce Wayne's DNA and donned a high-tech version of the Batsuit (which bears a slight resemblance to Bale's Batsuit from The Dark Knight). Once he has defeated his foe, Batman tears off his enemy's mask. And again, he physically rips the cowl like he did in Batman Returns.



The villain then activates a bomb in a final effort to kill Batman. Batman uses a voice activated remote to summon the Batmobile and make his escape.



At the end of the story – in a scene reminiscent of Batman Returns – Bruce Wayne is shown relaxing in front of a roaring fire while watching television back at Wayne Manor.



Well that's about it. Sorry this comparison was so longwinded, but Batman: Child of Dreams is a pretty long book and there's a lot to be said about it. All in all, it's actually a pretty good Batman story and a particularly enjoyable read for fans of Michael Keaton's Batman.

ITV4 HD was launched at the end of last year and should be available through Sky.

Just a heads up for everyone in the UK. ITV4 have started rerunning the old Adam West Batman TV series. They're showing two episodes back to back every day. First at 8:50 in the morning, then again at 3:00 in the afternoon. I think the latest episodes are the ones at 3:00, while the morning episodes are repeats of the 3:00 episodes from the previous day.

They're currently showing the first (and best) season. Today's episodes were a False-Face story. Tomorrow it's a Catwoman two-parter.

Batman Returns fans should definitely tune in for next Monday's episodes: 'The Penguin Goes Straight' and 'Not Yet, He Ain't' – as the movie sequence where the Penguin uses a remote control to hijack the Batmobile was taken from this story.

Here are a few more comparisons from Batman: Terror.









The Batmobile in this story, while not identical to the movie version, bears something a resemblance to it.



The same is true of the Batboat.



And here's a picture of the dining room in Wayne Manor, clearly influenced by the Batman 89 version. Note the lamp in the foreground and the chair beside the fireplace.



Paul Gulacy seems to have had a soft spot for the Burton films.

Here are a few other examples of the movies' influences on the comics that I spotted.

Gotham City Secret Files and Origins has already been mentioned a few times in this thread. In that particular comic, Wayne Manor was shown to have mirrors on the roof like it had in Batman Returns.



Bruce Wayne wears glasses in Batman #462. Probably not a reference to the movie, but you never know since it came out in 1991.



There's a scene in Batman #476 which is clearly influenced by the conversation in Batman 89 where Bruce tries to tell Vicki he's Batman.



While technically the grapple gun was introduced in the 89 movie, there was actually something similar in existence as early as the 1960s. In the Adam West TV show, batman occasionally used the Batzooka to fire grappling hooks up to hard-to-reach places. Around the same, the Batman and Robin in the comics were shown using guns that fired suction cups with ropes attached to them.




Having said that though, the idea for a gun that fired a tethered hook with a mechanised recoil function originated in B89.

The double grappling hook/line-launcher has shown up in several comics.



For a while the comics featured Batman wearing an all-black costume with a yellow utility belt and chest emblem, following the Troika story arc in the mid 90s.

Artists love to draw the old Batmobiles in the background of the Batcave. Here's the example from Detective Comics #850.



Oswald Cobblepot had previously been depicted in the comics as short and fat, with a pointed beak-like nose. But Tim Burton was the first person to give him more exaggerated physical deformities – namely pointed teeth, pale skin and syndactyly (a real life condition where the digits on a person's hand are fused together http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly). The more grotesque deformed variation of the character has subsequently appeared in numerous comics and animated productions.









The canonicity of the 'freak' Penguin in the current comics is somewhat blurry, as stories alternate between the deformed and more traditional versions, depending on the preference of the writer/artist. It's also worth noting that some comics depict the deformed Penguin on the cover and the non-deformed version on the interior, or vice versa (e.g. Nightwing #149, where cover artist Rags Morales depicted him with fused digits and interior artist Don Kramer didn't).

Some comics have depicted the Penguin as having normal hands, but resembling the Burton version in other ways (having pointed teeth, pale skin, etc).




Artist Paul Gulacy clearly used scenes from Batman Returns as the basis for a lot of his art in Batman: Terror (Legends of the Dark Knight #137-141). There are loads of examples of this in the story, but I'll just post a few here.






In an interview with MTV last year, artist Jim Lee mentioned that his drawings of Batman in recent comics have been influenced by Nolan's films, and that his drawings of Batman in earlier comics (such as Batman Black &White and Hush) were partly influenced by Michael Keaton's Batman from the two Tim Burton films.

MTV: Your work on these characters covered such a long stretch of time. Did you find any of your styles influenced by other versions of the characters as they became more prevalent in other media — like movie or television versions of the characters, perhaps?
LEE: Actually, the "Hush" run was before "The Dark Knight," and I did the comic book version of Batman — the grey tights, the dark blue, etc. I always liked that look and I always felt that the grey was kind of apologizing for the fact that this character was a comic book character and had his roots in four colors. So I always felt I could carry that off and still make it look cool. ... To me, there's nothing wrong with the classic costume, and that wasn't a costume I'd seen a lot of lately.
While it's not so much other versions of the characters [that have influenced me], per se, sometimes you see the cities in animation or movies and that can inspire you. The first designs from the original Batman movies was very influential [on my Batman], but then of course when Christopher Nolan did a very more realistic Batman, he kind of fused the two — so again, people aren't alienated by the fact that this Batman [in the comics] doesn't look like the Michael Keaton "Batman" era, but it also suggests sort of this Christopher Nolan "Batman" era. I guess some of that thinking goes into the art, but it's more in terms of the environment and things like that.

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/10/26/jim-lee-batman-costume-superman-art/

Similarly, Grant Morrison and David Finch have cited the Burton movies as an influence on the recent Batman Incorporated costume.

That's all I can think of for now.

A few other points that I noticed about the name.

• Jack shares the J and K sounds from Joker
• Jack is the least valuable face card in a deck. There is a playing card motif that runs throughout the movie. Grissom is the King, Alicia is the Queen. Jack eliminates the King and Queen and becomes the Joker.
• Napier is derived from the Spanish word ?naipe? meaning ?playing card?

I think the first instance of her carrying a whip was in ?A Christmas Tale? (Batman #39, 1947), her 8th chronological appearance in the comics. She kept the whip coiled around her waist like a belt, then surprised Batman with it when he tried to apprehend her.



It?s worth mentioning though that in her previous appearance, ?Nine Lives Has the Catwoman? (Batman #35, 1946), Batman had actually attacked Catwoman with a whip.

BatmAngelus is correct about the blonde Selina in Batman #3. She was wearing a wig and had dark hair underneath.

But how about this?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that her hair colour in Batman #35 was the result of a mistake made by the colourist. The Golden Age Selina usually had dark hair, like most other versions of the character.

The blonde Catwoman in B:TAS is almost certainly a conscious reference to Batman Returns.

Apparently Nolan is no longer involved in the project. He?s dropped out to concentrate solely on The Dark Knight Rises.

http://screenrant.com/christoper-nolan-superman-batman-dark-knight-rises-mikee-90198/
http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/12/02/christopher-nolan-superman-reboot-dark-knight-rises/
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/687701/christopher_nolan_steps_back_from_superman.html

I believe I've read that the comic adaptation's writer said that they didn't have access to the final cut of the film, so they had to go off of the final script, along with production stills.

Thanks for the clarification. I knew Jerry Ordway must have had some visual reference to base his art on. It makes more sense for it to be production stills.

It enhances Batman. He is alert and doesn't allow the police to get near him in the first place. Batman doesn't want to be in a stand-off position. Batman is proactive, and importantly, human. He will avoid conflict whenever possible.

That?s a good point. And considering this moment follows immediately after he fails to save Napier from falling into the vat of chemicals, audiences might have perceived it as a double-blunder on Batman?s part.

It just goes to show that there is a load of stuff (deleted / alternate scenes) still to be presented on a home release!

Let?s keep our fingers crossed for the 25th anniversary. It?s great to see Back to the Future getting a rerelease this autumn. It?d be swell in Batman could get the same treatment in 2014, along with a special edition DVD featuring all the deleted/alternate scenes as extras.