With The Dark Knight on the verge of release, and a slew of new Bat-flicks coming to Blu-ray and DVD, Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius examines the enduring appeal of the Batman.

With his seventieth birthday fast approaching, and if you'd like to send a card, post it next May to Wayne Manor, Gotham City, The Batman is arguably the most popular comic book character of all time. Bruce Wayne and his pro-active alter ego may be mortal, in fact that's part of his charm, but the reality is, with legions of fans across the generations, he's going to live forever. Never afraid to evolve and adapt to the needs of his audience, for seven glorious decades now, Batman has dazzled us, from the shadows, with his super-sleuthing, crime-fighting, planet-saving brilliance.

Created for DC Comics by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Batman made his debut in Detective Comics #27 and currently features in several monthly comicbooks. "Batman is one of the most psychologically interesting characters in our cultural history," says Paul Levitz, President and Publisher of DC Comics, the largest English language publisher of comics in the world and home to such iconic characters as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. "Batman isn't a guy who finds himself endowed with superpowers and simply says, 'I'll do good with them because I'm a good person'. This is a man who watched his parents die and then had to decide how to respond. He's tortured by feelings of guilt and anger and his desire for vengeance, yet he sets out to become a transformative being, someone who can change the world."

The world's a dangerous place, it isn't getting safer, and we're powerless, really, to do anything about it. Now, more than ever, we need Batman. "What's always been fascinating about Batman is that he is a hero driven by quite negative impulses," says Batman Begins director and co-screenwriter Christopher Nolan. "Batman is human, he's flawed. But he's someone who has taken these very powerful, self-destructive emotions and made something positive from them. To me, that makes Batman an extraordinarily relevant figure in today's world.

"Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology," adds Nolan. "There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide."

"What distinguishes Batman from his counterparts is that he's a hero anyone can aspire to be," says co-screenwriter David Goyer, known for adapting the other-worldly realms of superheroes and fantastical characters into inventive, action-packed hit films such as the Blade series, Crow: City of Angels and Dark City. "You could never be Superman, you could never be The Incredible Hulk, but anybody could conceivably become Batman. If you trained hard enough, if you tried hard enough, maybe, just maybe, you could become Batman." Of course, the billions of dollars Wayne has at his disposal are kind of useful, too.

"It's a journey that never ends," says Batman Begins and Dark Knight star Christian Bale of Bruce Wayne's mission. "He is in a constant battle with himself internally. He must continually assess his actions and control his demons, overcoming the pull toward self-destruction and the negative emotions that will destroy his life if he allows them to."

"I love the inherent tragedy of the man," adds Batman writer Greg Rucka. "The really good characters in Gotham are filled with pathos. Your heart breaks for them - and especially for Bruce Wayne. When Batman is made properly, and Batman Begins certainly did this, what you're seeing is a man who is driven by a fundamentally altruistic mission, even if it's for the most personal reasons. And it's a mission that he's doomed to fail at. Still, he doesn't stop. There was a line that I used in a Batman comic - and I've heard it echoed elsewhere - that Batman is on a fool's errand. Well, it is a fool's errand, but that doesn't make him a fool."

Coming this summer to keep us occupied until Batman's 70th Anniversary is a whole slate of different Bat-projects across all media: films, tv, videogames, comicbooks of course, novels, toys, t-shirts and lunchboxes... anything really, that you can stamp a Bat-signal on. Top of the list has to be Christopher Nolan's new movie The Dark Knight, released in cinemas July 25, preceded by shiny Blu-ray releases of Batman Begins (2005), Adam West's Batman: The Movie (1966), and animated portmanteau Batman: Gotham Knight (2008), an anime-style project in the style of The Animatrix, designed to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Plus of course I'd urge you to check out Batman's comicbook back catalogue courtesy of Titan Books, and if I could recommend a few titles for you to get on with, try Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, Hush by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, Matt Wagner's Batman and the Mad Monk, and from writer Michael Uslan and artist Peter Snejbjerg, the remarkable Detective #27.

Speaking as a longtime Batman obsessive, though the character received lots of attention as a result of Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and its sequels, in terms of capturing the essence of Bats and his world, the film was a dismal failure. The cartoon spin-off that, in one shape or form, continues on TV today, was and remains a far more successful incarnation of the Bat, but really what I'd been waiting for my whole life was Batman Begins, instantly the greatest superhero movie ever made. And it looks like Christopher Nolan's outdone that previous effort with sequel The Dark Knight. Fingers crossed, it'll be the movie of the summer. Better yet, the movie of the year. Hell, let's just say the movie of the decade and be done with it.

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