Which Batman era is your favorite?

[Uncle Mxy]

Yes, but those were not considered Cannon, but they were way, way, way better than the cannon comics.

You meant "canon", right?  I'll only accept "cannon" as in "Azrael and Hush should've be shot out of a cannon".  

[Super Monkey]

yes canon, sorry.

[Permanus]

The Neal Adams Batman and the one draw by Marshall Rogers are great for me but (maybe i'm not so popular in saying this but i like so much the Batman characterized by Grant Morrison in JLA).                                              

     

I love the Marshall Rogers Batman. I don't know about the Grant Morrison version, but I am a closet (okay, not so closet) Frank Miller fan, and I'm sure people will hate me for that. Batman: Year One was, for my money, one of the best written and best drawn Batman stories ever. Dark Knight Returns was right up there too, but to be honest I liked it more for its take on the DCU and its satirical content than for its actual take on Batman himself.

[Michel Weisnor]

While the artwork in the 70's is considered iconic, I choose the 50's. After reading a few issues there is such disparity from what came before and after (even the 60's). Plus, 50's Batman is the antithesis of the dark brooding insane Bats from 1986 onward. Silly Batman fighting aliens for me, he needed to lighten up anyways.  

[Johnny Nevada]

My vote's the 70's version easily... halfway between the "wacky space aliens" era of the late 50's/early 60's and the stupid a****** he is in the current/recent comics (apologies for the language... though guess I'm being *nice* re: my opinion of current-day Bats...). The Animated Batman of the 90's is also a favorite.

[TELLE]

I likes my Batman like I likes my Superman, all blue and silvery.

Batman from the (40s) 50s and 60s is best.  But I also like some classic 70s (Joker's 5-Way Revenge was a (eek!) childhood favourite) and 80s (Year One was a great Commissioner Gordon story by probably one of the best artists to work on Batman ever).

I loved the Batman/Batmite cartoon show (70s) and the 60s Adam West.

[Klar Ken T5477]

Like Telle, Im inclined to agree. Nothing says Bats to me like Dick Sprang  but I also dug the New Look designed by Carmine Infantino esp the stories he illoed including the first one set in an erstaz Greenwich Village.  Nathc, the Denny O'Neill - Neal Adams stories.  In the Jokers story, Telle mentions one of the Joker's henchmen (the one with the long hair) was artist Steve Mitchell who was working at Contyinuity at the time.  "Night of the Reaper' set in Rutland, Vt. Halloween bash was another fave.

[nightwing]

The 70s were certainly an exciting time to be a Batman fan (hence my "bronze-Age Batfan" site, embryonic though it is: http://batfan.superman.nu), what with Neal Adams, Irv Novick and Jim Aparo art all over the place, creepy-cool stories by Denny O'Neil, Frank Robbins and others, genuine, bona-fide mystery stories by writers like David V. Reed, those far-out, weirdo tales by Bob Haney over in Brave and the Bold, and finishing off with the stellar "Detective" run by Englehart and Rogers in '78 or so.  



I love the output of the 40s and 50s (the latter of which wasn't really all Sci-Fi; just the stuff featured on the covers), I'm so-so about the 60s (love the TV show but didn't much care for silly junk like the "Outsider" saga), but my vote has to go to the 70s.  This was a period where Batman managed to be creepy but not gruesome, formidable but not omnipotent, serious but not a jerk, and above all a hero...not a nutjob.  Modern writers are so sure they've got Bats all figured out by playing up this "vengeance-crazed" portrayal; they think this approach is more sophisticated and "realistic." What it really does is emasculate the character.  It casts Bruce Wayne as the eternal victim, forever unable to overcome the childhood tragedy that poisons his mind and renders relationships and personal growth impossible.  In the modern books, the bad guys have already won, because they've destroyed Batman from the inside.  In the 70s, Batman did what he did because it was the right thing to do and he could do it better than anyone else.  He was a hero who turned a tragedy into something positive.



But picking the 70s is also cheating a bit, because in the 70s I had re-runs of the 60s TV show every day after school, and those wonderful 100-Page Super-Spectaculars that always included stories from every decade.  The 70s gave young fans like me easy access to Batman's entire history, and I learned to love it all.