So, I’m cleaning and I find a random issue of AMAZING HEROES from 1989. I leave it out and save for…bathroom reading later in the day. I see that THE BEAT (before she went by that name) has a column in this issue and one of the subjects is BAT-MOVIE HYPE. How timely. So, here’s what “the Princess” had to say on the topic back before some of you kids were even born.

batmania: I swore I wouldn’t write about Batman anymore, but I can’t help it !!! Batman is everywhere! At Once.

Here in LA, the bat symbol has become synonymous with the city’s underground scene. Just as the (no doubt at least sub-consciously WATCHMEN-inspired) happy face was the symbol of last year’s Acid House music craze in Britain, the Bat Signal rules in LA. A little giveaway touting a hotline for the hottest new dance clubs is called the Batline and sports that ever-ubiquitous Bat Signal. the LA club scene is littered with kids in bat-shirts and hand-painted Joker jackets. Warner’s must be spending all of the profits from the Batman comic just on policing the bootleggers and trademark-infringers.

A recent tour of Melrose Avenue (LA’s Mecca of overpriced haute camp and black-dressed hipness) reveals that it should be renamed Batman Boulevard. An antique shop features nothing but honest-to-gosh 1960’s plastic Batman toys in its front window. Bat-symbol rings, t-shirts, and earrings appear in every gloom-rock boutique worthy of the name. The Golden Apple reigns as “Bat-man T-shirt headquarters” selling a dizzying assortment of styles.

Batman is so hot he sizzles. I dunno, it’s kinda weird…almost like the Sons of the Batman have come to life or something.

Of course, it’ll all end when the movie comes out…

Posted by Mark Coale

6 COMMENTS

  1. “Of course, it’ll all end when the movie comes out…”

    It sure did for me. I remember sitting in the theater (at 13 years old) and thinking how boring it was. It was a bland feeling movie to me. This one doesn’t feel exactly like Batman ether (more like an elseworld) but I am looking forward to seeing it. It does look pretty good.

  2. Nice knowing you Mark. Reprinting early journalism of the Boss, AND from twenty years ago!
    I remember that summer… the first midnight showing for a blockbuster. Ghostbusters2 setting an opening record. Indiana Jones breaking it the next weekend. Star Trek V would have, had it not been so crappy, and then Batman. Prince’s Batdance. Nicholson making millions from the merchandising. Thinking that it should have been Adam West instead of Jack Palance. A glitch in the print that kept the audience from learning the Joker’s scheme, but not needing to know because the movie was so much spectacle. And complaining about the Joker shooting down the Batwing. (and finding so much more to hate in the second film.)
    oh, and I believe that was the beginning of the variant cover craze, with the new Batman title.
    So… 2027? Perhaps an actual Batman vigilante on the nightly news, crimefighting to promote the 3D Death In The Family, which uses realtime sampling of the audience’s subconscious reactions to edit the story.

  3. It’s funny… I can remember being a wee lad in The Big Apple in the early 70’s going store to store with my mom in search of a Bat-insignia patch to sew on my jacket and not being able to find a single one. No patches nowhere. How times have changed…

  4. “Nice knowing you Mark. Reprinting early journalism of the Boss, AND from twenty years ago!”

    Don’t you think I asked the Boss before posting it? I may be crazy, but I’m not dumb. :>

  6. I can (pardon the pun) beat that. I have an issue of Amazing Heroes that’s so old it has an interview with Jim Lee in it and his name is not on the front cover. ;o)

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