Batman Episode 420: Bruce Wayne on Mary Jane

Good Accessibility is Essential, Robin

One of the aspects of Batman that I keep coming back to regularly is accessibility. I think accessibility of media and information is absolutely essential. However, when I am searching for Batman materials, I inevitably hit a wall because legal means of consumption are sometimes limited. Since Batman is a trademarked and copyrighted character owned by a massive media conglomerate, accessibility is not on their minds. It’s about squeezing as much profit out of Batman as they can, so they need to sell things and protect anyone who might take away some of that profit.

Most of the time this is regrettable, but manageable. But what about a situation in which it’s excessively difficult to find something that is important for my research? When I hit that research wall from problems like lack of availability at libraries, no institutional affiliation, or lack of funding? I could always see if I can find it through… less than legal means, though I try to avoid this route since I would prefer to avoid fines and/or jail time. Perhaps not a likely scenario, but possible. 

Also, I always want to support the creators as much as I can so they can have a living wage and continue their life and work should they want to. In other words, I want to be an ethical consumer who is not breaking the law. But if it’s completely inaccessible, can I say that’s the corporation’s fault and resort to illegal means like a torrent? Where do we draw the boundaries of what is “ethical” consumption?

An example from my personal life can put some of these issues and questions into light.

Adam West Was My Gateway Drug

When my low-income household finally got dial-up internet towards the end of the technology’s popular usage, I was only allowed to use it for school-related purposes. But every now and then I would find an opportunity to sneak in some free computer time at home and at school. Suddenly, the computer would be transformed into a Batman information device.

Somewhere in this small pocket of time, I came across information about the 1966 Batman Television (in color!) series featuring Adam West as the titular character. The images I saw were fascinating to me. Completely different from just about all the other interpretations I was knowledgeable of at the time. Not only that, but it was also a huge hit when it was released in the 60s. The show had an immense effect on Batman and is at least part of the reason why the character is still continuously published and has such a strong hold on the public culture and consciousness to this day.

There were corners of love for the show to be found—the 1966 Batman Message Board is the only one that I can remember—but the vast majority of the online discourse surrounding the show was negative. It was seen as unrealistic, ridiculous, campy, and dare we say it? Queer! Many complained of its lack of masculinity, how it’s not the “real” and “original” dark and brooding Batman. If you see anything by or with Michael Uslan in it, this exact phrasing will surface when talking about his childhood experience of the show in disgust. Instead of turning me away, if anything, this discussion just encouraged the budding queer contrarian that I was. I wanted to see the show with my own eyes so I could form my own views without filtering everything through the words of others.

Call it forbidden fruit syndrome: I was hooked. Gay and faggy? Sign me up!! How could I see this show? We could never afford much outside of essentials, let alone the frivolous purchase of something involving a “devilish pop culture character.” Although it was lightly tolerated, things like Batman and Pikachu were always derided. Besides, even if I had the money for it, at the time it still wasn’t legally available. Wired gives a good explanation of the tangle of rights issues that held it in limbo for so long. In short, too many parties owned a different piece of the pie, and each wanted the rest of the pie for themselves (Rossen 2014). Needless to say, no legal release means you couldn’t buy it, and you couldn’t find it at your local library.

The only way to even get a glimpse of the magic was through the movie, which was commercially available (though not available at the library of my rural town), or to find and purchase bootleg copies. Although I did find a bootleg set of the complete series, I had to settle for longingly staring and salivating at the photos of the crudely photoshopped and printed set. Little did I know that my opportunity would soon serendipitously present itself.

Forbidden Fruit for Forbidden Fruit

Around this time, I found out that my mother smoked weed, and not just occasionally… but rather problematically. The news of my mother shouldn’t have come as a shock. Issues with drugs abound in my family; abuse is ubiquitous, and we’ve even had the occasional dealer. Perhaps as a reaction to what I was surrounded by, the bookish, straight-A-goody-two-shoes, rule follower in me swore I would never do any drugs. After all, the D.A.R.E. program in school taught me unequivocally that drugs were bad. I even wrote a critically acclaimed essay about it (the critics being my fifth-grade teachers). So even though red flags may have been everywhere, naïve me couldn’t see my mother’s drug use and was appalled when it came to light.

Now that I knew, my mother and stepfather felt free to use more openly. One night I walked out onto the porch to them smoking a blunt and drinking beer. Turning around to return to my default of hiding in the Batcave (my room), they called for me to come back. In a good example of how not to parent, upon my return they encouraged 13-year-old me to take a puff from the blunt. I adamantly refused and probably added in a few moralistic remarks. After some back and forth, my stepfather upped the ante by throwing money into the equation. He said I could buy any one thing I want up to a certain amount. I can’t remember what the exact amount was, but I remember it was just enough for the bootleg DVD set.

After much internal debate (“Am I going to die from this?!?!?!” “What would Batman do?”), I bit the bullet and took a puff. For Batman! In what is now a blur, I tried to take the smallest drag I could, coughed a lot, and at some point, made my way to the computer to show what I wanted. Shortly after, I got what at the time was my holy grail: all 120 episodes of 1960s campy magic to watch… when I had access to the TV. This long-awaited moment was magical. I loved every second of my first watch, and I find something new to love every time I rewatch it. It’s like a utopian society where everything is black and white. There are no questions, no grey areas. Bad guys are bad and good guys are good, and the good guys always win. 13-year-old me wanted to live in that world and maybe have the hero as his parent(s) instead… well, I still feel like that sometimes.

Batman Media Belongs to Us All

Which brings us back to accessibility. I shouldn’t have had to smoke cannabis to get my hands on this show when I wanted to. An extreme example to be certain, but one that illustrates how problematic lack of access can be. Not everyone has parents that are/were manipulative/abusive in weird ways, and not all resources are as hard to get as 1966 Batman was. Fast forward about a decade, and as of 2014 the rights issues have been resolved.

It is now easy to get a copy of Adam West’s Batman for your home. The show can be purchased on the cheap on various (legal) physical formats like DVD and Blu-Ray as well as purchased on digital platforms. Based on a cursory search of libraries in my area, just about every system and branch has a copy. To assuage my guilt over possession of a bootleg copy, and of course to support the work, I am now the proud owner of a digital copy of the series. I also still have the physical bootleg DVDs because they are imbued with such intense personal meaning and sentimental value. To any FBI agents (or Batman) reading this: please do not come after me for doing something illegal to do something else illegal.

Okay, so the accessibility case is clear for 1966 Batman, but what about other items that might not be as well known? One example that comes to mind is the 1989 Batman newspaper comic strip which hasn’t seen a reprint except in a smaller and lesser-known magazine Comics Revue starting in issue 41.* A few dailies were also reprinted in Batman: The Sunday Classics, but this smattering is barely a preview (Finger, Al, and Kane 2007). In the case of this strip, DC/Warner Brothers Discovery most likely sees no real incentive to reissue it legally. You either have to be lucky and have a good amount of disposable income to find the originals/only reprints out in the wild or have a library that has them. The strip can be found online, but it is most definitely not legal, and I want legal means for all of us.

As Will Brooker argues, “Batman belongs to everyone; to the public, to popular memory, to a modern folk culture” (Brooker 2012, 152). He is a part of us, a part of who we are, therefore I should be able to access resources, especially those that are so essential to the culture like the 1966 Batman show. Money should not be a barrier. You should not have to risk fines, imprisonment, or a virus on your computer from some sketchy website’s pornographic popup ads just to view a piece of culture that has become next to impossible to access. These materials, this knowledge, and this history belongs to all of us.