In 1841 Edgar Allan Poe created the detective genre. Nearly a century years later, in 1939, Detective Comics introduced The Bat-man in issue #27. Edgar’s my birthday twin. We both spent formative time on Sullivan’s Island and around the Charleston area of the South Carolina Lowcountry 163 years apart. We’re both fond of writing short stories. Edgar invented the genre of detective mysteries in 1841 with his first locked-room mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Just one year after Action Comics gave us Superman we were delivered a darker hero. In 1939 Detective Comics introduced the world to The Bat-man, later shortened to The Batman removing the hyphen. Down the line following a handful of mergers DC Comics was officially branded in 1977 as the home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and an entire expanded universe of heroes, heroines, gods, and demigods. Poe understood the dark and the light of character.
Poe directly influenced the creation of not only Detective Comics, but also the creation of The Batman. In 2003 DC Comics published Batman: Nevermore (Volume 1). It was a limited series starring Batman and Edgar Allan Poe. Based in nineteenth-century Baltimore they team up to solve a series of murders from a serial killer on the loose.
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy would appeal to Poe’s shadowy sensitivities. The Joker arrived in 1940, and it’s no stretch of the imagination that he was born from Poe’s ashes. Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the maniacal madman solidified itself in film history. While other Jokers followed, only Joaquin Phoenix was able to recapture audiences with his psychotic portrayal in his origin story The Joker. Now that we have a new Superman my bets for the next film will feature Batman or possibly an all-in, decked out Justice League versus The Legion of Doom. Why wait? Knock it out of the park, Mr. Gunn.
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” — Edgar Allan Poe
2003’s Batman: Nevermore is centered around a serial killer’s murder spree in nineteenth-century Baltimore. Penned by writer Len Wein and drawn by Guy Davis. Wein’s storyline incorporates Poe’s stylistic undercurrents in a tale that never breaks character. Lenore makes an appearance as the love of this fictional portrayal of Poe throughout this series of murder mysteries. Poe’s motifs are on full display carrying the compelling narrative filled with intrigue and the usual suspects that Batman may not be a hero after all. He may be the killer in disguise.