Batman is celebrating his 75th Anniversary and io9 is delving into the character’s origin and creation.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The website ran one article about Batman’s controversial creation in comics, and how Bill Finger should be credited as the character’s co-creator. In the comments to that post, a reader mentions how Batman owes a debt to the Victorian era British character of urban legend turned penny dreadful hero, Spring-Heeled Jack.
The commenter, Michael Munro, had this to say:
IMHO Batman owes a great unacknowledged debt to Spring Heeled Jack, who transitioned from London urban myth (1830s) to melodrama anti-hero (1870s) to prototype superhero (1880s-early 1900s). As written by “penny dreadful” author Alfred Burrage, SHJ was a wealthy aristocrat who assumed the disguise of a devilish, bat-winged avenger of the night, maintained a secret underground lair and used his athletic and technological skills to battle evil-doers – sounds familiar? . . . Basically, the collection of story motifs centered around a wealthy protagonist who assumes a heroic, masked secret identity dates back to Spring Heeled Jack in the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. By the time Batman was created, those motifs had already been elaborated in pulp novels – most famously by Johnston McCulley’s Zorro character and by Russell Thorndike’s “Scarecrow” stories – to the point that they were part of the zeitgeist. Batman was just the most influential comic book manifestation of those themes.
There’s certainly a lot of familiar elements there. It’s impossible to know for certain whether or not Bob Kane and Bill Finger were aware and inspired by Spring-Heeled Jack in particular, but the characteristics he displayed were certainly part of the cultural consciousness at that time in history.
