Today is officially "Batman Day," commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Dark Knight's first appearance in Detective Comics #27 (cover date May 1939, though it was technically released on March 30 of that same year, because comics). It also marks the 75th anniversary of Bob Kane receiving sole creative credit for the Caped Crusader, despite the much more significant contributions of a man named Bill Finger, who continues to be royally screwed by DC Entertainment despite being dead for 40 years and counting.
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Batman and Robin Will Never Die!
Is there anyone alive who doesn't agree that Batman is totally awesome? No? That's what I thought.
It's also well documented by anyone who's ever met me that I have a serious fascination with comic book writer / chaos magician / Scotsman / rockstar / occasional fictional character Grant Morrison, who, by sheer coincidence, has been guiding the adventures of the Dark Knight for the past 7 years or so as the man behind the pen. The good folks at Tor.com were kind of enough to let me indulge my Morrison obsession and love for clever poetic puzzles, and I re-read his entire story (so far) to provide a critical analysis of what appears to be his deconstruction of the identity of Batman -- both as a symbol or piece of mythology, and as the man himself behind the mask, Bruce Wayne.
This undertaking proved to be much more epic than I had originally anticipated, but I'm still quite pleased with the end results. So check it out, even if you haven't read all of Morrison's Bat-epic (but really, you should probably do that).