Damian Noonan scours the web for caped and masked crusaders
The new Batman films, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, started with Batman Begins in 2005 and return once again to a Gotham City cloaked in darkness.
The official website for The Dark Knight, which opens on Friday, has trailers and goodies to download: but also see the magazine of the International Cinematographers Guild (icgmagazine.com and click "Current Issue") for an insider's view.
The original action hero movie. The character of Zorro was created by Johnston McCulley, a former police reporter, for a five-part weekly magazine serial in August 1919. Douglas Fairbanks is the caped crusader in this silent movie version, which runs for 58 minutes and is out of copyright (search for "Zorro"). Joe Shuster, the artist who co-created Superman with writer Jerry Siegel, has said: "The movies were the greatest influence on our imagination, especially the films of Douglas Fairbanks".
The first pulp science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, launched in April 1926: its covers by Frank R Paul are icons of popular culture (see a gallery at frankwu.com). A story in its August 1928 issue introduced Anthony Rogers, who falls asleep after breathing a strange gas and wakes 500 years later to become a heroic spaceship pilot. Renamed Buck, he became the star of the first sci-fi comic strip, which appeared in American newspapers on January 7, 1929. The Internet Archive has 12 of 14 known surviving episodes of the Buck Rogers radio show from 1939 (search for "Buck Rogers").
"Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows!" The Shadow, also known as "The Dark Avenger", was one of the great pulp fiction characters. He was created as a mysterious narrator to introduce radio dramas, but later starred in pulp novels and his own series (for which he was voiced by Orson Welles). Bill Finger, the writer who, with artist Bob Kane, co-created "the Bat-Man" in 1939, admitted borrowing a Shadow plot for his first strip. You can buy reprints of Shadow stories and other pulp fiction at The Vintage Library.
The first comic books to feature whole original stories, rather than reprints of newspaper strips, appeared in 1935; but for fans, the "golden age" of comics began with the arrival of Superman, the first superhero, in the debut issue of Action Comics in June 1938. On the website of the Department of American Studies at the University of Virigina, you can find the whole of that first Superman story (search the xroads site for "Superman").
Detective Comics, now known simply as DC, not only published Superman, but also weighed in with other top-ranking superheroes. Batman made his debut in May 1939 and was joined by teenage sidekick Robin in 1940. Read a recent reinvention of the origins of Batman on the DC site (click "Heroes and Villains").
Considering that he is now Marvel Comics' most important character, Spider-Man is a latecomer. He was created by Stan Lee, Marvel's head writer, with the idea that a teenager - Peter Parker - would be the hero, rather than just a sidekick. This fan site has covers of the early comics and audio of the unforgettable theme song from the 1960s TV cartoons (under "Things", choose "Shows", then "1960s cartoon" ).
The British comic 2000AD not only gave the world Judge Dredd, it also nurtured a wave of talented artists and writers who a decade later would be instrumental in revitalising American comic books. This official site has a complete gallery of covers and, if you register, whole stories to read. There's also a BBC mini-site (bbc.co.uk/cult/comics), where you can read classic 2000AD strips in their entirety.
These days, we like our superheroes to be complicated, flawed characters. Much of this is credited to Watchmen, by British writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, tidily summed up on this fan site. In 2005, Watchmen appeared in Time magazine's list of the 100 best novels published since 1923 (time.com/time/2005/100books).
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, 1986
Frank Miller's dark, gothic reinvention of Batman - again, originally a short series for DC, but later a graphic novel - was even more influential than Watchmen. It led inexorably to the Tim Burton Batman movie of 1989 and to the modern era of superhero films. Read early drafts of the script for the 1989 movie, by writer Sam Hamm, on this intriguing website, which also has an early attempt at a script for a Watchmen movie.
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