"
Batman’s come a long way since that first appearance in issue #27 of Detective Comics, with a cover date of May of 1939. At that time, the Nazis hadn’t even marched into Poland to unleash World War II. Superhero comics consisted of only a small handful of other characters, the most significant of course being Superman, who made his own entry into pop culture history the previous year in the April-dated first issue of
Action Comics. Batman borrowed a great deal from the tradition of
the Shadow and
Zorro, as well as a few of the early superhero characters like Superman and
the Phantom. And there was some influence taken from the feature film
The Bat Whispers, too."
"In those early years, Batman was dark and violent, carrying a gun and willing to kill criminals without a second thought. Even after his sidekick,
Robin the Boy Wonder, was added to the mix a year later for additional appeal to younger readers, Batman stories remained darker in tone and full of plenty of violence and death. But after several more years, the youthful nature of readership coupled with a great deal of censorship and absurd public hysteria forced the publishers to tone down the violence and resort to increasingly silly plots aimed mostly at child readers."
