Hey everyone, we all have seen Batman movies or read Batman Comics as a Kid, and we all have seen that one of the most crucial parts of Batman’s arsenal is the Batmobile.
That car looks so freaking cool, doesn’t it? And the best thing is that even the name lives up to its looks. But have you ever wondered that from where did the idea of the batmobile came from? It’s not that it was made along with the Batman, it came in later but when it came, it made Batman even cooler. Everything about it from the design, to the weapons, to the exhaust, to the jet fighter-looking cockpit, I mean its car which has got only fans and no haters.
Now, if we talk about the original idea, it made its first appearance in May of 1939 in the detective comics. So according to everyone, it’s fictional that Batman drives and it rests in the Batcave but I am sure you would have wondered for once whether it’s real or not or whether something like this can be made for the normal public? Well, some replicas have been made that look really cool and similar to the batmobile, and some just joke in the name of Batmobile.
The reason why Batman made it was to aid him in fighting the crime in the city. It has been made with military-grade material by Wayne industries.
Now when it first appeared in comics it was just an ordinary-looking red car but over time, the Batmobile evolved, from an ordinary red car to a car looking that’s prepped from Doomsday, it has come a long way. But one thing that has stayed the same on the car since its first appearance is the Bat motif, which typically includes wing-shaped tailfins.
Now the purpose of the Batmobile isn’t just to aid Batman in fighting crime, it has multiple other purposes such as vehicle pursuit, prisoner transportation, anti-tank warfare, yes it has the ability to fight tanks as well. it can also be used for riot control and serve as a remote crime lab for batman.
In some of its appearance, the Batmobile has individually articulated wheel mounts and is able to be driven unmanned and can be remotely operated. And since video games started to come around, they also started making appearances in games, from then its popularity went even higher.
There is a history with the name of the Batmobile too before it was even a thing, there was the bat plane, which was yet another proficient weapon in Batman’s arsenal.
The term batmobile didn’t come around until the 48th edition of the detective comics, which was released in the month of February 1941, to give you a perspective of how long ago this was, it made its first appearance 60 years before I was born. Seem crazy right? But yes, even though it might a bit hard to believe but the batmobile has been around for this long.
In the silver age of comic book: -
Originally, when TV was invented and the Batman TV series started coming around, the show producers had to show a real car, so what they did was that they took an existing car concept which looked very cool at its time, painted it black, applied the Bat Motifs and called it the Batmobile, for example. The first time Batman was aired on TV, he used to drive a Lincoln Futura, which was a concept car developed by Lincoln in 1955.
Now batman was all fun and crime until 1968, cause in 1968 the TV series was canceled, so from then on the Batman comics started becoming more darker and serious and this is why batman movies and comics are not sweet and happy, they are serious and dark and it has in a huge way shaped the image of DC as a comic brand who makes and writes serious and dark comic books and movies.
In the bronze age of comic books: -
At this age, DC started to take the Batmobile more seriously as they saw that the Batmobile isn’t just a car anymore, it’s a part of his personality now.
So, in mid-1985 a special version of the batmobile appeared in both comic books and TV series, it had a full set of front and rear canopies and this was the same time that Toy Batmobile cars started to become popular and they sold in high numbers, and it’s obvious why they sold like hotcakes, every kid wanted to have a batmobile, if not the real car then the toy car, cause something is better than nothing.
Now in the modern age of comic books which started from the 1990s onwards, there started to occur a variation in Batman’s vehicle arsenal. DC started to portray batman as having multiple capable vehicles and not just the Batmobile, for example, they showed a first-generation Hummer H1 which served as Batman’s secondary ride cause the Batmobile was damaged in an earthquake.
When the internet arrived, Batman started to become more and more popular not just through Comic books, video games, and television series but through the internet as well, thus along with Batman grew the Batmobile’s popularity. Seeing this, many designers tried to come up with some really good designs for the Batmobile.
In 2008 the world witnessed one of Christopher Nolan’s best creations the Dark Knight, with Batman being played by Christian Bale and the Joker by Heath Ledger, it’s unarguably one of the best Superhero movies ever made, even though I am a marvel fan, nothing beats the Batman.
And as the movie became popular, so did batman and joker and along with them the batmobile became popular so popular that in 2008, the very the movie the Dark knight came out, someone wrote an actual book on the batmobile, you can still find it on amazon, it goes by the name of Batmobile’s Owner’s manual.
TO give you an idea of what’s written in this book, it basically gives the specifications of the car if it were real. The book states that the Five-cylinder engine in Batmobile is more powerful than turbine jet engines and is capable of achieving up to 10,000 Horsepower or about 7,500 Kilowatt.
That’s all for this time, everyone, I trust you liked this one, if you did then do share it with your friends and do consider subscribing to Motordrift.
Till then
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