What do you think of the Golden Age Batman (Earth-Two)

[Ubauba01]

What do you think of this Batman and his life story?

[MajorHoy]

By the way, you might want to check out this older thread:

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ciation-thread

[godisawesome]

I think Golden Age Batman is fascinating, and generally remains preferable to me over the Silver Age Batman.

His actual beginning in the Golden Age has a lot of stories that are fascinating both for how the character grows and evolves, and because a lot of the early stories are fairly grimey and gritty murder mysteries and pulpy adventures compared to the more prosaic, stagnant, and hyper formulaic stories of both the late Golden Age and most of the Silver Age… and then when he becomes the Earth 2 version, he gets the marriage and family with Catwoman, which is a cool little epilogue before it ends in tragedy.

[Ubauba01]

One interesting thing is how little the designs of Batman, Superman and Spider-Man have changed over the years.

While Batman had the purple gloves in his first appearance, those get ditched in favor of long dark gloves shortly after, although without the spiky bits coming out of the forearm.

It shows the importance of a cool, iconic design.

[Vakanai]

He aged and died thus having a life story - not gonna lie that puts him very, very low on my list. These characters aren't supposed to age out and fade away. At least it was an alternate continuity so not important.

[bat39]

Are we talking about the Golden Age Batman here or the Earth Two Batman? Not to nitpick too much, and the two significantly overlap but they're not quite the same thing.

Earth Two Batman is technically a Bronze Age character who was retroactively established as being the Batman from the Golden Age stories, albeit now having grown older and having a wife (namely a reformed Catwoman) and a kid (Helena Wayne AKA Huntress). Whereas Golden Age Batman is...the Batman who was in the comics published from 1939 to around the mid-50's. Golden Age Batman is the source from which both the Silver Age/Bronze Age Batman and the Earth Two Batman separately evolved.

Okay, nitpicking done. I must say Secret Origins # 6 is one of my favorite retellings of Batman's origin. I love how it recontextualizes the stories from 'Tec # 27 and 'Tec # 265 and weaves an interesting new narrative out of them while not technically contradicting anything from the originals. Batman basically being a 'trial run' for Bruce as a detective in the field before he applied to the GCPD is a unique idea, and the success of 'The Case of the Chemical Syndicate' cementing his decision to remain Batman and not join the police honours the original story.

'The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne' is another one of my favorite Batman stories.

Bruce and Selina ending up together and having a kid, namely Helena, is my preferred 'canon' ending for Batman - with all due respect to the likes of DKR and Batman Beyond. I love how the idea of Bruce and Selina being a romantic endgame has now become ubiquitous across the franchise, and how Geoff Johns made the Earth Two Batman's story at least a possible future for the current Batman in his current JSA run.