He’s been called, The Defender of Gotham...The Caped Crusader, The World's Greatest Detective...The Dark Knight...(“I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be.”- Batman, ‘The Dark Knight’.) He’s gone by many titles…("I am vengeance! I am the night!"-Batman)... but his name is….("I am BATMAN!")…. Batman is one of the most famous and iconic, fictional characters in the world...BUT WHY is that? WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS CHARACTER that people love so much? In this episode of Pop Culture Icons, let’s do some detective work of our own, and explore the world of Bruce Wayne aka Batman.
(intro) Podcast. Presented by Sonic Embassy. Episode 13...Pop Culture Icons...The Batman...Part, 1.
Welcome to Podcast presented by Sonic Embassy. This episode is a part of one of our recurring mini-series called Pop Culture Icons, where we have fun and a lot of times get nostalgic exploring various nouns in popular culture.
If you were to google 'most popular comic book character', there is one that is consistently in the top 1, 2 or 3, many times number 1 in the search results I get, and that of course is Batman.
I haven’t been to a ton of comic conventions, but of the ones I have attended, I can easily say that, other than maybe Spiderman, one of the characters, or related characters within his universe that I see the most of either cosplay, or people wearing t-shirts of, is Batman.
From avid comic book reader to casual movie watcher, ask a group of people who their favorite hero is, and chances are someone is going to say Batman. Of course the flip side of that is you will also hear words like, overrated, overused, played out, and etc...We’ll talk about that subject later.
Created by Bob Kane & Bill Finger, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics issue #27 in the year 1939 in response to the popularity of The Superman.
So who is Batman and what makes him such an iconic character?? For these episodes, i had to get the insights of two of the biggest Batman fans I personally know, and one newcomer.
One, I personally call him the human almanac/encyclopedia. He is the owner of one of my favorite comic book shops in Charleston, SC, Soundwave Comics. He is an expert, whose insights I found invaluable to this discussion, Greg Woodard.
Greg- "My favorite comic book character IS Batman. I have loved Batman since I was a little kid. As a 1970's kid we all grew up loving Saturday morning cartoons, and I just, I can't even remember a time when I didn't think Batman was the best thing ever.
I think it was a combination of the cartoons and the fact that as a child my parents delivered newspapers in the little town I grew up in, and every afternoon, uh, we would stop by a little convenience store, and me being a little kid I had my choice. I could get a, uh, Icee, like a Slushie, I could get a candy bar, or I could pick a comic book. And by the time I was six or seven years old I had a paper grocery bag filled to the top with DC comic books, and 99% of them were Batman and Detective Comics cuz that was my favorite."
The other person whose insight I need for this discussion, is an avid Batman collector with quite an impressive man cave, or should I say, BAT cave, that I have been one of the privileged few to have been able to see it, it’s not posted anywhere on social media. And he's also a very good friend of mine, Nick. His collection, especially of Batman's universe is very impressive.
Nick- "Oh yeah, thats the problem with me. Before I buy something, I have to ask myself: Are you ready to follow this through? If you buy one, you gotta buy 'em all. And uh, so I've always been into figures, starting to like statues now, but figures is always what it was with me. You know buying the X-Men stuff back in the 90s and such, but when I got into the Batman figures, what got me was the Arkham Asylum figures. When I first saw those in a comic book store, they were just so beautiful. They looked exactly like-"
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