Batman '89 Comic Adaptation

In those pre-Internet days, you had two choices if you wanted to experience a film: see it over and over (I did) or purchase the novelization (I also did). But what if you wanted to see the movie when you were at home? Well, that's where comic book adaptations come into play.

Finding My Copies

I have all my comics in comic boxes. The large majority of them, especially the ones I purchased prior to 2000, are all bagged. My younger self also arranged them in order, with Batman titles filling at least half the boxes. But over the years of me wanting to read this or that, I would scour the boxes, looking for whatever. As a result, the boxes are not always in the same order. Naturally, when it came time for me to search through my boxes looking for both versions of the comic adaptation (Baxter format and regular paper), they were in the last box.

The Big Guns

To adapt Batman '89, DC Comics brought in some of the biggest names in the business. Writer Dennis O'Neil was, along with artist Neal Adams, responsible for bringing the darkness back to the Batman comics in the early 70s. The Adam West TV show had made Batman a bright, sunny character and that take moved into the comic books. Not after O'Neil and Adams took control. Who better to write the movie version doing the same thing?

Jerry Ordway was the artist working on Superman at the time (and future Shazam writer/artist) with a  distinctive style easily seen in a panel or two. What he brought to the Batman movie special was photo-realistic pencils sketches of the actual actors and gorgeous layouts.

Nipping and Tucking

With only 64 pages, O'Neil and Ordway needed to trim the 126-minute film down. But they also had to showcase--ahead of the actual movie premier and audience reactions--what they thought would be good scenes. Thus the big fight scene between Batman and Joker's goons after the museum escape is completely gone. Gone, too, is Michael Keaton's iconic declaration "I'm Batman" in the opening.

Cool Additions

Yet O'Neil and Ordway add things that were likely in the script but which didn't make it on screen. In the moment where Joker takes over the TV airwaves, in the movie and comic, you see a guy tied to a chair with the words "Not an Actor" flashing on screen. Well, in the comic, Joker spoons Smilex liquid into the man's mouth...and kills him. Pretty dark stuff for a movie, but one with a visceral impact.

In the finale, when Joker is throwing out his guaranteed "free money," a character (who resembles the way Ordway drew Clark Kent) looks at the cash. It was Joker's face...on a one dollar bill. That would have been a nice addition to the film.

The most interesting addition is at the end just after Commissioner Gordon finds Joker's dead body, they also find Batman's cape and cowl. When they lift it, reporter Alex Knox is under it. He quips, "Can I still make the late addition?" as we see a mask-less Bruce Wayne sneaking away. Perhaps the novelization covers this, but does that mean Knox is in on the secret? Pretty much implies it.


I know I read the comic a few times before I put it away in its bag decades ago. I saw the movie enough times and read the novelization to get large chunks of the story memorized (still thirty years later), but I always enjoyed the comic. O'Neil and Ordway were fantastic, and they made a book that can stand alongside the blockbuster movie.