Batman Has Starred in a Surprisingly Large Amount of Movies in the Comics

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published May 14, 2020

In their latest look at recurring plot points, CSBG spotlights the surprising amount of times that Batman has actually starred in a motion picture.

In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.

Here's some inside baseball for you. When I come up with ideas for my articles, I'll jot them down as notes and then as I make up my schedule, I'll look at the various ideas I jotted down and if I'm ready to use one of them, then I'll arrange them in the order I plan to publish the articles. I'd show you what I was talking about, but it'd spoil my next few articles and we wouldn't want that! An idea doesn't get put into the schedule until I'm prepared to write it up. For instance, if I'm still researching it, it will remain as a note until I know I have it and then I'll schedule it. These notes are typically quite short. Like, say, for the article I just did about the Invaders Annual, it was "Our Lives Together - Invaders Annual." Well anyhow, I somehow put on to my schedule something that just said "Batman movie." I have no idea what I meant. None at all. I'm sitting there, asking myself, "Why in the world have you SCHEDULED something when you don't know what it is?" I still have no idea. However, looking at it, while I know this wasn't what I was thinking when I wrote it (I don't know what I was thinking, but I can tell you what I WASN'T thinking, as otherwise, I'd know it when I saw it), I thought, "Hey, maybe Batman's appeared in a movie in the comics five times. That'd be a neat Drawing Crazy Patterns, right?" And so here we are...

In Batman #37 (by an unknown writer and Jerry Robinson), Batman and Robin are filming a "Crime Does Not Pay" movie when another major motion picture is stolen...

They get it back by the end of the story and their movie is a big hit (but the Dynamic Duo skip their own movie premiere)...

David V. Reed and Jim Mooney did a clever story in Star- Spangled Comics #94, when crooks have been making underground films about the deaths of Robin and Commissioner Gordon to inspire the crooks of Gotham City to commit more crimes. Batman goes undercover as the guy playing Batman in the next film, but the villain behind it, Mr. Napoleon, figures it out, and Batman is almost killed for real!

They film the capture and release that as a movie...

In Batman #66 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Lew Schwartz and Charles Paris), Batman and Robin are once again doing a crime movie....

They are kidnapped with a bunch of other movie stars by a deranged classic film director.

In the end, he dies getting his last, perfect shot....

It is unclear if they then released that movie or if Batman and Robin are celebrating the other movie that they were making.

In Batman #103 (by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris), a movie director becomes obsessed with Ace the Bat-Hound's star appeal, so he gets Batman to agree to do a movie with the dog in it...

The rest of the comic is them filming the movie, while a crook is trying to hide as a prop guy...

We miss out on the release of the film, but I assume Bat-Hound became bigger than Lassie...

Finally, in World's Finest Comics #108 (by Jerry Coleman, Dick Sprang and Sheldon Moldoff), an alien filmmaker starts to film Batman, Superman and Robin in a movie, giving them seemingly real (but not really) threats to face, until some criminals that the alien kidnapped to get Batman's attention take over and suddenly the threats become very real...