Alejandro's Reviews > Batman '89

Batmania is back!!!


This harcover TPB edition contains “Batman ‘89” #1 - 6.


Creative Team

Writer: Sam Hamm

Illustrator: Roberto Quiñones


BATMANIA

Batman from 1989 was a pop culture revolution that year, people made lines to buy a t-shirt with Batman logo and certainly was the most popular movie then. People read articles in newspapers, months before its premiere, telling about the development of the film.

Polemic risen about if Michael Keaton should portrait Batman…

…and then the movie opened…

…and the polemic died and a pop culture icon was born.

I was lucky to watch that movie at theaters twice in a week. A friend got me from USA, the original soundtrack in cassette (yes, I still have it) and eventually I got the 90s Batman’s film collection first on DVD and later on blu-ray.

When I bought this TPB I thought that it was a following from the first film only, but it resulted that Batman Returns also ocurred, so the graphic novel is set after the events of the first two films giving an alternative continuation keeping Michael Keaton as Batman and Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

In the case of Pat Hingle’s James Gordon, you’ll find a dramatic change, showing a haircut and moustache to make him to look more like a comic book James Gordon. I would preferred having him to look more like in the live-action films, after all, the whole idea reading this kind of comic book projects is to watch the characters to look like their movie counterparts.


HOLY ROADS NOT TAKEN, BATMAN!

A real treat for this story is having Sam Hamm as writer since he was the screenwriter of precisely the first two Batman films, and he wrote this graphic novel adapting ideas that he discussed with the very Tim Burton and those ideas could be indeed a third movie if Tim Burton would remain as director, so this TPB is a priceless chance to read what may looked like.

In this story is introduced an adult Barbara Gordon who is a GCPD Sergeant Detective (that at least in my opinion she has the lookalike of Sean Young (who was initially casted as Vicky Vale for the first movie but she had to quit due an accident while filming an early scene)) but it seems that the thought model for the character was Winona Ryder. I don’t know, the drawing for me still it looks like more like Sean Young.

Also, you have Robin, but it’s a new character named Drake Winston and drawn to look like a young Marlon Wayans. I think that if they were creating a new Robin, they should think in a whole different name (like Miles Morales in the case of Marvel’s Spider-Man). Tim Drake is the comics’ third Robin and even he was created in 1989. I don’t know, maybe, just maybe, it was initially a joint project, but since Robin didn’t get to appear in the first Tim Burton film at the final cut, the two ideas took different paths.

At the end, this TPB is highly recommend to all fans of Batman films since it’s a priceless opportunity to read an elseworld scenario of how may looked like a third Batman film if Michael Keaton and Tim Burton would remain for a third entry in the film saga.