The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media

First published in 1991, The Many Lives of the Batman is a serious  academic exploration of the cultural phenomenon called Batman. Marketing  savvy alone did not build the Batman’s extraordinary success; it  encompasses a variety of audiences who have embraced the hero through a  collage of different media manifestations during his long history.  Batman’s overlapping lives are illuminated in this critical anthology,  which analyses the contexts of the character’s production and reception  across a wide spectrum of time and media forms. This volume includes  interviews with the character’s original creators. The other essays  consider such questions as the political economy of comic book and film  production processes; the cult status of the sixty’s television series  in various fan communities; and the postmodernism of past and present  Batman films. Using the tools of cultural studies, the book unmasks the  Caped Crusader’s mysterious attraction.