The DCU
Revisiting the Roots in this franchise. open/close all folders
Comic Books
Comic Books
- Batman
- Batman: Every so often, when the main members of the Rogues Gallery just can't come up with particularly good ideas for capers and run-of-the-mill street crime in Gotham City spikes upward, Batman will be called upon to beat down ordinary muggers and two-bit murderers. This never seems to bore Batman, however, but to strengthen his resolve: it reminds him how his lifelong quest began in the first place.
Batman: (to a mugger as he handcuffs him) Slime like you made me... I owe you.- Grant Morrison again in their run on Batman. Remember back in the Silver Age, when Batman made a social club for all his international imitators? Or when he participated in a psychological isolation experiment for NASA? Or when a female socialite became Batwoman to try and get his attention? Grant did, and they reminded us all.
- The Batman story "The Monster Men" does this for Hugo Strange. In his initial appearances very early in Batman's career, Hugo Strange was a fairly typical Mad Scientist whose main goal was the creation of "monster men"—that being, mental patients converted through genetic engineering into hulking, brutish superhumans. He then vanished from continuity for decades, and made scattered appearances in the 70s and 80s before being fully revamped in the Post-Crisis era in his modern incarnation as a Psycho Psychologist who grows obsessed with Batman's psychological profile and seeks to test and emulate him. "The Monster Men" marries the two portrayals by bringing those early appearances back into continuity, and retelling them such that Strange is both a geneticist and a psychologist, and his monster men represent his experiments with creating a higher form of being. Batman's defeat of him gives him a full up-close view of what Batman is capable of, sparking his obsession, as he believes Batman to be a better example of what he's looking for than his own creations.
- Red Hood and the Outlaws: As part of the Rebirth initiative, Jason's Post-Crisis origin is brought back alongside elements from his story that hadn't seen referenced in decades like Ma Gunn.
- Superman
- Grant Morrison's Action Comics run from the New 52 was based around doing this for Superman. Like in the original Golden Age stories, their Superman was physically weaker and had an Anti-Hero streak, as well as a strong inclination towards social justice. This was justified by having their stories be a Prequel of sorts, showing Superman as a brash, young idealist.
- The Superman storyline Kryptonite Nevermore was intended to return the character to his Golden Age roots as a weaker but wiser and more human character.
- Green Lantern: After years of cosmic adventures, Green Lantern (2023) focuses on Earth like the Silver, Bronze, and Dark Age comics.
- Teen Titans: There are several arcs the center around reunions of the Fab Five or on their memories.
- New Teen Titans: Starfire has got married and stayed in Tamaran. Nightwing does not want to hear about anything. Changeling tries to stop Mento, who got crazy. Cyborg is in the hospital, after Mento almost killed him. Raven has been missing since The Terror of Trigon. Kole is dead, and Jericho is crying for her. The New Titans are no more. So, who will work with Wonder Girl? Wally West, Jason Todd, Speedy, Aqualad and Hawk. The original Teen Titans are back! (but not for very long).
- Teen Titans (1996): Following the end of Teen Titans Volume 2note , apparently somebody felt the franchise had gone too far astray, so Devin Grayson's work on The Titans (launched in 1999) and the JLA/Titans crossover preceding it focused greatly on setting up the Fab Five as True Companions and building a new phase of the team based around the Fab Five and their personal nominees.
Films
Films
- The Dark Knight Trilogy features much of this approach to Batman.
- Like his earliest appearances, Batman's main clash is against the mob and corruption in Gotham with only very sparse supernatural elements, many of his gadgets are less explicitly bat-themed and he operates mostly solo, without a Robin.
- His villains are also strongly influenced by their original depictions in the comics: Two-Face is without a split personality, Bane is portrayed as the Genius Bruiser he was in his original appearance, and Heath Ledger and Anne Hathaway were reported to have studied The Man Who Laughs and actress Hedy Lamarr, the inspiration for their respective characters.
- In additon, per Word of God, this incarnation of Batman does not operate within a Shared Universe, much like the earliest DC/National Comics in which most superheroes were presumed to take place within their own universes.note
Live-Action TV
Live-Action TV
- Arrow in its fifth season made a conscious effort to return to being the gritty crime drama and "street-level show" it was in the first (and to a lesser extent, second) season, after two seasons of introducing sci-fi and mystical elements to the show in order to help establish the shared universe. Notable changes include a renewed focus on the organized crime element in Star City and Green Arrow abandoning his strict policy of Thou Shalt Not Kill, making him once again the lethal vigilante he was early in the show. Furthermore, the Big Bad of this season, Prometheus, is a skilled archer and Badass Normal more akin to Season One Big Bad Malcolm Merlyn than the nemeses of subsequent seasons. Also, Prometheus' origin is tied to Oliver's actions during Season One and is connected to the List, another early element of the show which has now been made relevant again.
Video Games
Video Games
- After Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy showed us just how Batman might work in a serious, modernized setting, Batman: Arkham Series reintroduced us to the dark, anachronistic Gotham and corny-but-not-to-be-trifled-with villains we got to know from the Tim Burton movies and the animated series. Then Zig-Zagged, as the prequel game took more cues from Nolan.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- The Batman started out doing its own thing with the Bat-mythos, but gradually, that got into more familiar territory: introducing Batgirl and Robin, giving Bats his signature Lantern Jaw of Justice (possibly to indicate aging), replacing Marion Grange with Hamilton Hill (who would be more familiar to the viewers of the previous animated Batman series) and playing down the new stylized designs of the villains.
- After decades of dark, serious Batman stories, Batman: The Brave and the Bold revived the goofy silliness of the Silver Age stories.
- Season 3 of Justice League takes many cues from the earliest Justice League of America stories from the Silver Age, in marked contrast to earlier seasons, which were mainly based on more recent Bronze Age stories. Most notably, the first episode features the League establishing the Hall of Justice as a second base in addition to the Watchtower, and continues the story with a fugitive Lex Luthor joining the new Secret Society (which is very much modeled after the Legion of Doom) after having his many crimes exposed. Overlaps with Decon-Recon Switch; the season spends much time reconstructing the same Superhero Tropes that the previous season deconstructed, returning to the light-hearted and optimistic tone of early League stories.
- Young Justice: Season 3 plans restores the first season's use of mystery and espionage, something that was mostly absent from the second season, Invasion.
