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1<br />
•;-•<br />
BE<br />
L THE<br />
HYPE<br />
IE<br />
by The Watchmen and Dark Knight and the world gearing itself up for<br />
1 989 the arrival started of with BATMAN. the comic industry reeling from the success achieved<br />
Of course by this time you're all quite sick of reading about Batman!<br />
Bathype and the great Bat yawn in general, but no round-up of last year would<br />
be complete without it. And, I'm afraid, a little scene setting is in order before<br />
we get to know each other better.<br />
Bathype was an exercise in damage limitation and image control rivalling<br />
Chinese efforts post-Tiananmen Square. The message Batman h coming<br />
VE<br />
penetrated right to the depths of our consumer hearts. By August I Ith, the<br />
only licensed image you could buy of a character fifty years old were those<br />
that came directly from Tim Burton's film. Firstly, Robin was killed of a<br />
in a perfunctory little epic called A Death In The Family (DC), that grabbed<br />
world headlines. Fifty years of teen icon were buried in a howl of commercial<br />
anguish. "What are we gonna do with all these luncboxes with Robin on them<br />
now?" cried more than one distraught DC exec.<br />
Warner insisted that anything that contradicted their desired 'R' rated<br />
Batman should be witheld from the schedules; thus Grant Morrison/Dave<br />
McKean's Arkham Asylum, wherein the lunatics - the Joker, Two Face, the<br />
Penguin et al - take over, was pulled and censored, finally released when<br />
the video was safely in the corner shop. Alas, we shall never see Morrison's<br />
interpretation of The Joker, complete with stilletos, stockings and Madonnalike<br />
basque - lost forever to the demands of marketing and the sensitive American
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