The Four Color Media Monitor

CTV News reports the 11th year of Batman Day has come around again, and is being celebrated at a specialty store in Saskatoon:

There may not have been a Bat-Signal in the sky, but the bat was still in the spotlight Saturday as a Saskatoon comic bookstore celebrated the legendary Dark Knight.

Created in 2014 to mark Batman’s 75th anniversary, Batman Day is typically observed on the third Saturday in September. The day honours the pop culture icon known as the Caped Crusader.

“He was first created in 1939,” said Jeff Kocur, owner of Amazing Stories.

“That is now so many movies, TV shows, books, video games. He’s ingrained in culture.”

And quite often, it seems to come at Superman's expense, and even say, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, if it matters. Consider that Spidey's origin, though it does stem from tragedy, was never depicted as inherently bleak like Batman's is, mainly because a sense of humor was often conveyed in Spidey's adventures. Maybe that's why to date, there's never been a Spider-Man Day, let alone a Fantastic Four Day. And when Mary Jane Watson's repeatedly kept out of the main spotlight by editorial mandate, that's why Spider-Fans like myself couldn't warm to the idea.

A customer at the specialty store also said:

She also pointed out that Batman played a key role in shaping DC comics’ identity when he debuted in Detective Comics, the series that inspired the company’s name.

But the Man of Steel played no role whatsoever? Or Wonder Woman? Seriously, I find it very appalling when even 2nd and 3rd tier characters are left out of any discussion. Characters like Robin are only mentioned once, while any recurring girlfriends like Vicky Vale and Silver St. Cloud get no mention at all. Nor does a minor heroine like Spoiler/Stephanie Brown, and nobody takes issue with how DC editors did everything they could to prohibit extended merchandise or appearances in animation for Chuck Dixon's creation. Not that I think toy merchandize is the best idea, but even so, the negative mandate was a terrible example. Why, what about the mistakes made with Jason Todd post-Crisis on Infinite Earths? Even that could make a pretty good topic for history discussions.

I'm as much a Batman fan as the next person is, but as I've made clear before, the Masked Manhunter collapsed as a storytelling vehicle by the turn of the century, and never recovered as a result of the disaster that came about when Dan DiDio was editor/publisher. And the mainstream press seems uninterested in writing about that.

Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, good writers, history, msm propaganda, women of dc