Even the line “Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot,” continues to be used in the Batman mythos today. We see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce’s vow for justice, his training, and the moment he realized he must become a bat. The origin sequence here is only two pages long, but it establishes so much.
Readers didn’t learn the Dark Knight’s backstory until 1939’s Detective Comics #33, which was his seventh appearance! At the time, comic heroes were largely pulp characters starring in disposable stories, so there wasn’t much thought given to their backstories. “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” may only be six pages, but Kane and Finger knocked every one of them out of the park.īatman’s origin is such a large part of his DNA that it’s hard to believe he originally didn’t have one. It’s an unassuming beginning, but while some things have changed since this debut (fortunately DC quickly dropped the hyphen from “Bat-Man”), it’s amazing how much here still rings true to the core of who Batman is. He’s a figure of mystery, who doesn’t have any dialogue until the final battle. In this debut story, Batman operates as a creature of the night, evading the cops as he hunts for criminals. He had more in common with pulp mystery men like the Shadow than he did with the Man of Steel. Inspired by Superman’s success, DC Comics (called National Publications at the time) commissioned more superhero stories, but rather than creating a copy of the Man of Steel, Bob Kane and Bill Finger sat down to craft a character that went in another direction.īatman was a caped superhero, but he had no superpowers. Why was that? It’s easy to see why people like Batman now, but what was it about these six pages that took root and grew to become one of the most popular superheroes ever created?
The issue contained nine other stories, but none of them had the cultural impact that its cover story did. “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” is a six-page story published in 1939’s Detective Comics #27.
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