Finally, it received a completely new cinematic interpretationin Warner Bros.' 1989 film, simply titled Batman, directed by Tim Burtonand starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Michael Keaton as Gotham'sDark Knight.

The character-along with his daring young partner, Robin, introduced inApril, 1940-has now travelled on an odyssey through six decades of development,alteration, interpretation and reinterpretation in comics, movie serials,a wildly popular mid-1960s television program and feature film, and graphicnovels.

Making its debut in a May, 1939, issue of Detective Comics, TheBat-Man was an immediate sensation with readers. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's notebook drawingof a flying contraption called an Ornithopter (a kind of sled with bat-wings)as well as the silent film version of The Mark of Zorro and the 1930 filmversion of Mary Roberts Rinehart's mystery novel, The Bat Whispers-Kane,in collaboration with Finger, contrived a new comic-book hero, called TheBat-Man. Laboringon humorous two-page comedy material for DC Comics, Kane ultimately turnedto more serious fare with such stories as Spark Stevens, Rusty and His Palsand Clip Carson. Ironically, the nearly 60-year saga of Gotham City's Dark Knight beganwith two young, hungry and ambitious teenage cartoonists in bustling NewYork City of the late 1930s by the name of Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

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