batman

Not sure what to expect from the Christian Bale movie coming up. It's supposed to be a lot of backstory about how Bruce Wayne became Batman, which is material covered by Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One," but the previews don't look anything like BYO.

Batman should be an enjoyable character to read about, but he himself is not "tons of fun" -- the essential failure of the Adam West TV show and the two post-Keaton "Batman" movies, "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin." Batman is supposed to be a man on the edge of justice and sanity, not a comic buffoon like Adam West's Batman. (The better stories I've read don't include the buffoonish freakshow foes like the Mad Hatter, or Solomon Grundy, and weren't written by Jeph Loeb.)

Michael Keaton's Batman comes closest to the iconic figure in DC Comics, but even he fell a little short, in his use of guns and the way he opened up to Vicki Vale. Not his fault, admittedly -- that's just Hollywood in action. I have to say, though, the character was dead-on when Alfred brought Vale into the Batcave. Wayne's reaction was spot-on when he essentially said, "I don't have time for this right now. I have work to do."