The Dark Crusader: Batman, American Insecurity, and the Making of a Conservative Icon in the New Deal Era

From his first appearance in the spring of 1939, Batman was on a mission to restore order to the modern world and conserve traditional class and racial hierarchies. Anxious about economic destabilization, urban corruption, and the infiltration of ethnic “others,” the early stories of Batman found in Detective Comics, Batman, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and motion picture serials depict a righteous defender of the American social and economic order against disruption from dangerous newcomers. Contrary to popular memory and modern reframing, Batman was not originally a simple street-level crimefighter. Instead, he was a defender of the wealthy—both the entrepreneurs and aristocrats like his alter ego Bruce Wayne—against the machinations of crime syndicates, unhinged revolutionaries, or foreign adversaries. Understanding the true appeal of one of America’s most popular World War II era cultural products helps to contextualize the growing resistance to New Deal liberalism. This paper explores what Batman can teach us about the cultural, social, and political climate of the contested mid-twentieth century.