Batman will celebrate his 84th birthday later this year. In 1939, the Caped Crusader exploded onto the pages of Detective Comics and hasn’t stopped fighting crime since. Now a rock-solid cultural icon, Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego have delighted generations around the world across movies, TV shows, video games, and comic books.
It’s a tough question, but when was the character at his best? Bat-fans on DC_Cinematic are trying to puzzle out in which years the Dark Knight was most compelling, and the most popular answer is surprisingly recent:
It’s difficult to argue with 2005-2015. Over that time we got the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, the Arkham Asylum games, and a suite of brilliant animated projects. Over in comic books, Grant Morrison was busy exploring the weirder corners of the character (and temporarily killing off Bruce Wayne) in his critically acclaimed long-running Bat-saga, with Scott Snyder introducing the now-iconic Court of Owls in his New 52 run.
There are some counter-arguments to be made, especially as 1985-1995 defined Batman as a serious character and ditched the campy 60s vibe:
Even so, it’s difficult to counter the double threat of the Dark Knight movies and the Arkham games:
Could The Batman usher in another golden era?
While Batman may not hit the heights of 2005-2015 for a while, we’re just glad we lived through an era in which the character was even more of a pop culture colossus than normal. We have high hopes for Matt Reeves’ The Batman sequels, and somebody out there has to be working on a truly next-gen video game that’ll let us take the fight back to the streets of Gotham City.