“I’m Not Batman!”

8 Replies

Golden-Batman-for-Web-by-Mark-LewisI know what you’re think­ing. You’re look­ing at my draw­ing and going, “Hey! He goofed up! He col­ored that draw­ing of Bat­man yel­low!” Nope! It’s because it’s not Batman.

Some­time back, in cruis­ing around the inter­net and fol­low­ing var­i­ous links, I stum­bled across an arti­cle on a pop cul­ture site called Top­less Robot, talk­ing about a num­ber of Kore­an car­toon char­ac­ters who might hit the view­er with a sense of, mmm, déjà vu, shall we say. One that some­how stuck with me was the Gold­en Bat­man (or sim­ply the Gold­en Bat, as he was some­times referred to).

Dif­fer­ences between Bat­man and the Gold­en Bat­man don’t start and end with their cos­tumes. They gave Gold­en Bat­man the pow­er of flight (which sort of makes sense for a char­ac­ter named after a crea­ture who flies), as well as super-strength (shades of the old Bat­man sto­ry “Bat­man– The Super­man of Plan­et X”!). And that’s not all! Gold­en Bat­man can fire laser beams from his fin­gers. What do you think of that, Caped Crusader?

You can actu­al­ly find the Gold­en Bat­man car­toon on YouTube in five parts, if you’re curi­ous enough to see it. Dubbed into Span­ish though, odd­ly enough. Seem­ing­ly not avail­able in Eng­lish, for some reason.

8 thoughts on ““I’m Not Batman!””

  1. John G. Pierce

    He looks some­what like a com­bi­na­tion of Bat­man and the lat­er 40’s ver­sion of the orig­i­nal Atom. By the way, in some Ital­ian comics I have, the gray of Bat­man’s cos­tume is col­ored as red, for no good rea­son that I can see. And of course, as a for­mer Span­ish teacher, I find the fact that the car­toon has been dubbed into Span­ish as being some­what curi­ous. (Actu­al­ly, I’d prob­a­bly think that to be the case, whether I knew Span­ish or not!) But main­ly I won­der how such prod­ucts escape the notice of DC lawyers. Or per­haps they con­sid­er it too minor and unim­por­tant to both­er with.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mark Post author

      As far as the late ’40s influ­ence, part of that may be because when I drew this, for some rea­son I had Dick Sprang in the back of my mind.

      I’m not sure what the expla­na­tion might be as to how this escaped the notice of DC Comics. The legal reach of com­ic com­pa­nies was­n’t always as wide as it is today. Even today, some­times you see the odd infringe­ment out­side the US bor­ders. My friend Lyle once gave me as a joke gift this blis­ter pack he bought from a street ven­dor down in Mex­i­co, con­tain­ing three Mar­vel super­heroes, Bat­man, and Mr. Incred­i­ble. It’s the sort of thing I imag­ine that, if seen by a lawyer for one of those com­pa­nies, might make his or her head explode!

      Reply ↓
  2. C. Elam

    This is real­ly glo­ri­ous. I first became famil­iar with this char­ac­ter via a LIVE ACTION(!) film called “Super Bat­man and Mazinger V” and he con­tin­ues to fas­ci­nate me to this day. That par­tic­u­lar movie was espe­cial­ly deli­cious in that it mixed ani­ma­tion with the cheap SPFX and fea­tured Super Bat­man (who wore Kamen Rid­er Black RX’s belt) trans­form­ing in front of Cas­tle Grayskull.

    As a long­time fan of your art, I find this com­bi­na­tion unbeatable!

    Reply ↓
    1. Mark Post author

      Christo­pher,

      I’m very glad you like this. It’s kind of sil­ly, I admit, but there was some­thing about the char­ac­ter that stuck with me. Same with Won­der Princess, who was also men­tioned in that arti­cle on the Top­less Robot site. 

      I guess I have some­thing of a fas­ci­na­tion with char­ac­ters who seem famil­iar, but veer off from what you expect. This prob­a­bly explains why I had so much fun con­tribut­ing to Big Bang Comics, now that I think about it!

      Thanks for your con­tin­ued support.

      Reply ↓
  3. Lyle Dodd

    This strikes me as just.……odd. When was this char­ac­ter created?
    I can’t say why.…but it even creeps me out a lit­tle. I real­ize its meant to be a whole dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter but.….it still looks like Bat­man went yel­low to me.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mark Post author

      From what I can dig up, the char­ac­ter first appeared in this form in 1979, in an ani­mat­ed fea­ture. Sup­pos­ed­ly he’s based on a much old­er char­ac­ter called just “Gold­en Bat” (no “man”), who wore a skull mask. There was an ani­mat­ed TV series of that ver­sion of the char­ac­ter back in 1967.
      If the idea of Bat­man in yel­low is dis­turb­ing, you could always try anoth­er col­or, like they did here.

      Reply ↓
  4. Mike Toole

    Hi Mark! I wrote that Top­less Robot arti­cle, and found your art­work while look­ing to GIS some addi­tion­al images of good ol’ Gold­en Bat­man. The char­ac­ter’s look is a prod­uct of two things:
    1.) Batman
    2.) Eagle Ken/Mark from Gatchaman/Battle of the Plan­ets. You’ll see it if you look at the movie poster:
    http://imgur.com/QGqfenB

    Any­way, the piece here is fan­tas­tic– I love Gold­en Bats’ jol­ly expres­sion, and the sheer awk­ward­ness of his pose. I’m very pleased that you were inspired to draw him after read­ing my piece!

    Reply ↓
    1. Mark Post author

      Hi, Mike!

      I’m glad you like this piece. Yeah, when I stum­bled across your arti­cle, there was just some­thing about the idea of this odd Bat­man riff that stuck with me, and I had to do some­thing about it. Fun pop cul­ture goofi­ness. So, thanks for the inspiration!

      Who knows? I may one day revis­it your arti­cle and take a shot at draw­ing Won­der Princess too. (I just now took anoth­er look at the Won­der Princess image accom­pa­ny­ing your arti­cle, and noticed for the first time that they appar­ent­ly also bor­rowed anoth­er icon for that car­toon: the U.S.S. Enter­prise from the orig­i­nal Star Trek TV series!)

      Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *