Was There Almost a Fleischer Studios Batman Series?

CBR

Comic Legends: Was There Almost a Fleischer Studios Batman Series?

By Brian Cronin

Published Apr 27, 2019

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover whether Fleischer Studios almost followed up their hit Superman series with one starring Batman!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and twenty-ninth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the weekly three legends.

NOTE: If the CSBG Twitter page hits 11,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow the CSBG Twitter page!

COMIC LEGEND:

Fleischer Studios almost followed up their legendary Superman series with one starring Batman!

STATUS:

Apparently True

In 1941, the animation studio known as Fleischer Studios (owned by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer) had one last gasp to keep the company afloat by cutting a deal with National Comics to release a series of animated shorts starring Superman...

The films were huge hits right from the start...

However, the Fleischers were hemorrhaging cash all over the place and even a successful series of Superman shorts were not enough to keep the business afloat and so in 1942, the brothers sold the business to Paramount Studios, who continued the Superman shorts.

Anyhow, before they went out of business, the Fleischers were in the early stages of signing a deal with National Comics to follow up their Superman series with a Batman one, as well!

In his excellent memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman, Michael Uslan (the guy who eventually brought Batman to movie superstardom in the late 1980s) wrote about the documents that he found in the offices of National Comics (by then, going by the name DC) when he worked for the company in the 1970s.

One of these documents (which Uslan reproduces in the book) is a letter from the Fleischers to National about the proposed budgets for a Batman series...

What is fascinating (and confusing at the same time) is how Fleischer refers to this proposed Batman series of short films as "live" black and white films rather than cartoons. Fleischer Studios really only did cartoons (although they worked some live action stuff into their animated work), so it is possible that Fleischer is using some term of art. Or, of course, he is suggesting that these shorts be live action rather than animated.

Whatever the plans were, they were obviously dropped when the Fleischers sold the company.

Amusingly enough, many decades later, Uslan did a story in Batman: Black and White #2 with artist Dave Bullock showing what a Batman film would have looked like around that time...

DC released an awesome animated version of the story...

Also, in the 1990s, Uslan produced Batman: The Animated Series, which certainly evoked the Fleischer animated Superman films in their own certain way...